Faculty of Design

Industrial Design

Santiago Garcia Sanchez

The Teeter-Talker

Elementary school playgrounds are one of the most gender-segregated areas in North America. As a result, children prefer only socializing with other classmates of the same gender making it less likely that boys and girls interact and learn from each other. This promotes negative gender stereotypic beliefs, attitudes, and biases about and towards the other sex for the years to come. The Teeter-Talker is a collaborative school ground play equipment that facilitates a safe and welcoming space for young boys and girls to interact with one another and feel comfortable doing so. Taking the gender-neutral nature of the teeter-totter, this new take on the seesaw is to be played by six people and six people only that way no one is excluded and everyone is valuable. The objective of the game is to work together to get the ball to the center of the maze as quickly as possible. Every seat is designed to elicit new behaviours or further develop existing ones amongst the players that all target gender stereotypes. The idea is for the players to slowly let go of their preconceived notions on the other gender by dissociating those behaviours from specific genders. Ultimately, The Teeter-Talker serves as a way to bring boys and girls together at an earlier age.

“What if we took the most gender-neutral outdoor play equipment found in almost every elementary school and redesign it under the lens of gender unification and collaboration?”