Santiago Garcia Sanchez
Teeter-Talkers
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?
The Teeter-Talker is a collaborative school ground set of 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 it is to be played by six people and six people only, in order tp ensure that no one is excluded and everyone is valued. 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 goof 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.
Insight
This project has taught me a lot; not just about design, but also about myself and who I choose to be as an industrial designer. Design is a beautiful thing and as we all know it is a part of every aspect of our lives and so as designers we have free range to choose what areas interest us the most and want to pursue. For me, I've always known I had an affinity for children's design/toy design which is why the one thing that remained consistent throughout my entire thesis project was having my target users be young children.
Idea
My project has always been about one thing: bringing children together to create new and long lasting friendships. The scope of gender only came into the mix after all of the research that I conducted. I wanted to create a product that makes it easier for young boys and girls to start interacting with each other without it being forced, uncomfortable, or strange. My intention was to design a plaything that does not make children feel vulnerable for putting themselves out there and removes that pressure from them by instead having them focus on a unified task.
Impact
Gender segregation begins by the age of 3 years and increases in strength and intensity through the elementary school years. As a result, children are most likely to be socialized by peers of the same gender. This in itself is in no way a problem but the issue lies when over time, these same-gender peer preferences become stronger, strengthening gender segregation and the promotion of gender-typed behaviours and interests. This gender segregation cycle makes it less likely that boys and girls interact and learn from each other, and promotes gender stereotypic beliefs, attitudes, and biases about and towards the other sex for the years to come
Biography
Santiago is an emerging Toy designer/Product designer who aims to create truly meaningful and sustainable toys for this new technologically inclined generation of children. Empathetic by nature, Santiago yearns to learn and understand what it takes to achieve truly meaningful/impactful design and apply that knowledge to the world of Toy design.