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2026
Co-creating a playground for teenage girls in Distelhoek
Playgrounds are often designed around younger children and traditional ideas of play, leaving teenage girls with few spaces where they feel represented, comfortable, or welcome. Working with Createlli in Antwerp, our challenge was to develop a co-creative method that could uncover the often-unspoken needs of girls aged 12–18 and translate their insights into tangible design guidance for the redevelopment of Distelhoek playground in Merksem.
Outcome: A three-session workshop that guides participants through reflection, ideation, and visualisation. Through creative and accessible activities, the girls explore their identities, share how they experience public space, imagine new possibilities, and communicate what would make the playground meaningful to them.
Project partners:
Project Details:
Duration: 1 week
Team: Maitreyi Mandrekar, Petra Gana, Haerin Lee, Amber Buteneers and Madina Burgueva.
Methods: User-centred research, Service mapping and blueprinting, Co-design workshops and facilitation, User testing, Persona building, Cartographic design, Service design for a Social city.
You shouldn’t need balls to go to the park. Make space for girls!
Image captured during the final prototype exhibition at the University of Antwerp.
The Challenge
How might we design a playground with teenage girls, rather than for them?
Distelhoek playground in Merksem is scheduled for redevelopment, but teenage girls were largely absent from the existing space. Createlli wanted to understand what girls aged 12–18 needed from the playground and how their often-unspoken experiences could be translated into practical design guidance.
Our challenge was to create a co-design method that would help teenage girls express their needs, identities, aspirations, and relationships with the public space.
Primary research
To ground the project in the reality of Distelhoek, we visited the playground and carried out on-site observation and spatial mapping.
We also spoke with teenage girls at the playground to better understand their experiences, preferences, and concerns.
Photos from our visit to the Distelhoek playground.
Using a printed site plan, we then mapped where teenagers were spending time and recorded what they were doing through colour-coded dots and short annotations. This allowed us to identify patterns in how the playground was being used, which areas attracted social activity, and which spaces were being avoided or overlooked.
Mapping out the photos on a hand-drawn map and mapping out how the space is used through observations and interviews.
Secondary research
Collaborative dismantling of papers, reports and literature review to better understand the context.
We reviewed research on gender-inclusive public spaces, teenage girls’ experiences of playgrounds, and barriers to participation in outdoor environments. This helped us understand how safety, visibility, social belonging, and the dominance of sport-focused spaces can influence whether girls feel welcome. These insights informed the workshop prompts and helped us explore the playground as both a physical and social space.
Key insights and affinity mapping
What do teenage girls want?
The findings revealed that teenage girls’ needs extended beyond physical play: they wanted a sense of belonging, opportunities for social connection, freedom to express their identities, and greater agency over how they used the space. Safety was also understood as being able to speak, move, and participate freely. These themes helped us frame the playground as a space for passive socialising, creativity, independence, care, and shared ownership - not just structured activity.
How might we create a co-creative method that allows teenage girls to feel involved in and excited by designing a playground for them?
Ideation and brainstorming
We brainstormed a range of visual, reflective, and hands-on activities, then grouped and refined them based on accessibility, engagement, and how clearly they could lead to practical design ideas.
The final outcome was a three-session co-creative workshop structured around reflection, ideation, and visualisation. Participants first explored their identities, interests, and experiences of public space, then translated these into ideas for how the playground should feel and function. In the final session, they visualised and mapped their ideas, creating tangible concepts that could inform the future design of Distelhoek playground.
Brainstorming the final flow of the workshop and formats for each session.
Prototyping and iterations
Because the project took place within a one-week sprint, the method was developed through rapid cycles of prototyping, feedback, and refinement.
Video of our prototyping process and final workshop flow.
The final output
The final outcome was a four-session co-creative workshop. For Sessions 1 and 2, we developed and prototyped the workshop materials, including avatar-building sheets, sticker-mapping tools, illustrated playground maps, chill and active tokens, and a modular playground model for collaborative building. These prototypes were designed to make participation visual, accessible, and less dependent on verbal confidence.
We also created a detailed facilitation guide for Createlli covering all four sessions. The guide included step-by-step activity flows, timings, prompts, materials, intended outputs, limitations, and practical considerations for facilitators. This made the method easier to deliver consistently, while still allowing flexibility for different group sizes, confidence levels, and workshop conditions.
Glimpse of the facilitation guide made for Createlli
The final method gave Createlli a practical way to move from listening to teenage girls to visibly carrying their ideas into the design process.
The testing
We tested the workshop across three rounds. The first was conducted with our classmates to assess the clarity, pacing, and usability of the activities. We then tested the method with members of the public at an exhibition in Antwerp, gathering feedback on engagement, accessibility, and how easily participants could express their ideas. These insights informed further changes to the workshop materials and facilitation flow, which were tested once more during the final presentation before the refined method and guide were handed over to Createlli.
User testing and feedback photos from all 3 testing sessions.
My reflection and contributions
As part of a multidisciplinary team, I contributed to framing the challenge, developing the workshop journey, designing activities, creating visual materials, refining the method through rapid prototyping and designing the entire facilitation guide.
I focused particularly on ensuring that the sessions connected logically, moving participants from individual experiences to shared ideas and finally to tangible spatial concepts.
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The one-week sprint also challenged me to work quickly within a new multidisciplinary team, test ideas before they felt fully resolved, and use feedback to improve the method in real time.
First client meeting at the playground to do an ethnographic observation and research.
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