Date/Time: October 30, 2025 | 9:00 – 10:30 am

Room: 157-158

Audience: Architects, Engineers, Educators, Facility Personnel, Contractors / Suppliers / Manufacturers, Consultants

Call to Action: Utilize the Co-Design Playbook to plan customized co-design programs with and for educational facilities and their students, in order to both collaboratively evaluate and identify children’s priority experiences and design features for diverse learning environments, including schoolyards. Understand how to integrate insights and design visions from co-design processes into final design solutions.

Abstract: There has been growing interest among designers as well as educators in engaging children directly in processes to design and evaluate play and learning spaces. Co-design is a form of PD that specifically focuses on direct collaboration between designers and users towards creative outcomes. Research verifies that such participatory design processes with children tend to lead to better, more responsive designs as well as significant learning and development outcomes for child participants. Co-design processes also honor children’s right to be involved in decisions affecting their lives, and can help to uplift younger voices that are often neglected or misunderstood in traditional design processes. However, there is a lack of frameworks and guidelines that can help designers or educators to effectively engage children in the design of play and learning environments. The outdoor spaces of schools and other learning facilities are also being recognized as valuable, and underutilized, spaces to support children’s learning and development. Co-designing these spaces with children can help to guide environmental design and investment efforts that support children’s needs and preferences, while providing learning opportunities for children via the co-design process itself. Well-designed outdoor school spaces can provide new opportunities for learning and development to augment formal interior spaces. This interactive presentation will outline a comprehensive co-design process undertaken with public elementary school students in upstate NY to engage them in the assessment of their current outdoor schoolyard and in the design development for a slated renovation of this play and learning setting. The guiding framework as well as the suite of activities utilized during the co-design program will be shared, with an opportunity to have some hands-on experience with select activities. Strategies used to understand children’s priority experiences and design features will be highlighted, along with key learnings from children’s priorities and designs. A copy of the Co-Design Guide and supporting materials will be made available to attendees.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand key objectives, processes and impacts of co-design processes with children.
2. Learn of effective co-design activities and modules, and how to operationalize them.
3. Gain some hands-on experience with select co-design activities.
4. Learn of key insights from the co-design program, including the outdoor play and learning experiences and design elements which emerged as priorities for participating children.