I chose Heloisa Rocha Rincon’s thesis The Playground as a Co-design Lab: An Exploratory Case Study of Elementary School Kids’ Role in Co-design because it is very close to my own research topic. The thesis focuses on children not only as end users of playgrounds, but as active co-designers who can contribute directly to the design of their own play environments. This immediately caught my attention because I am also interested in how children can be included in the early stages of playground design and how interaction design can help with it. The author also frames the wider issue as a wicked problem, which made the connection to my own research even stronger.
What I found strongest about the thesis was the way the design process was translated into real workshop activities. The children did not simply answer questions about what they wanted. Instead, they moved through different stages, such as remembering previous outdoor play experiences, observing other children, creating characters with different needs, and finally designing future play environments. This made the process feel much more thoughtful and participatory. The empathy-building activity especially stood out to me, because the children were encouraged to observe how others played and to think beyond their own needs.
The project also felt innovative, not because co-design itself is new, but because of how existing participatory methods were adapted to children and playground design. Open-ended materials, storytelling, character building, observation, and physical prototyping all gave children different ways to communicate. This is very relevant to my own work because it confirms that children do not always need to express themselves through interviews or written answers. The thesis also connects co-design with the Reggio Emilia philosophy, which sees children as capable, curious, and active participants who communicate through many different “languages,” such as drawing, movement, building, and dramatic play.
Another thing I appreciated was the independence and ambition of the project. The author built a collaboration with a school, prepared and facilitated several workshops, documented the sessions, analysed the material, and later translated the research into a practical case study report. At the same time, this made me realize how demanding a similar process would be for my own thesis. The study produced a very large amount of material, including hours of recordings, hundreds of pages of transcripts, and many photographs. That made me think that if I organize workshops myself, working alone might not be realistic. I would probably need someone else to help with documentation so I can focus on facilitation and the children.
The overall structure of the thesis was clear and logical. It moved from theory into the research process, then into workshops, data analysis, findings, and finally the practical report. I found the workshop preparation and implementation especially easy to follow because the author included room layouts, activity structures, photographs, and detailed explanations. The communication of the process was therefore very strong.
However, the findings were not always as easy to read. There was a lot of valuable material, but also many tables, codes, dialogue excerpts, and individual examples. I sometimes had difficulty understanding which findings were the most important and which were more supportive examples. For me, this was one of the weaker parts of the thesis. The depth of the analysis is impressive, but stronger visual summaries or clearer prioritization could have made the results more accessible.
The scope of the work is also quite large for a master’s thesis. It combines theoretical research, school collaboration, workshops, observation, audio and video documentation, children’s artifacts, qualitative coding, thematic analysis, and a final communication output. I found this impressive, but also slightly overwhelming. It made me reflect on the scale of my own project and whether I need to reduce the scope in order to make it realistic.
This is especially relevant because I would also like to collaborate with a school and organize workshops with children. Since I plan to work in Austria, one of my main concerns is language. I am not yet sure whether my German is strong enough to facilitate a complex workshop with children in a natural and flexible way. Reading this thesis made me understand that these workshops require a lot of improvisation, communication, and trust, so language could become an important factor in my own research design.
In terms of writing and accuracy, I found the thesis generally understandable and carefully documented. The methods, recruitment process, workshop structure, and analysis are described in a detailed way. Still, I noticed occasional wording, grammar, and formatting inconsistencies. These did not affect my understanding, but a final editing round could have made the thesis feel more polished.
The literature was very useful for me personally. The author connects co-design with Sanders and Stappers, Reggio Emilia, outdoor play, participation, design research, childhood studies, and materials. Because the topic is so close to mine, the bibliography gives me many new authors and concepts to follow up on. It also helped me see how my own topic could be positioned more clearly within participatory design and design research.
One of the most interesting parts for me was the activity where children were asked to observe other children in the playground and take notes about how they moved, played, and interacted. I had already been thinking about playground observation, but this made me consider a different possibility: children themselves could become observers and researchers. I found this idea especially powerful because it combines empathy, participation, and design thinking in a very simple way.
The thesis also made me think more about cultural context. The author discusses how little time many children in the United States spend outdoors and how access to free outdoor play has decreased. This made me curious about how the situation compares with Europe, and especially German-speaking countries. Since I am already considering narrowing my research to this context, a comparison between cultural attitudes toward outdoor play, risk, and playground use could become an interesting part of my own research.
Overall, I found this thesis extremely relevant and useful. It gave me practical ideas, but more importantly, it helped me understand the complexity of actually working with children in a participatory design process. My biggest takeaway is that involving children is not simply about asking for their opinions. The designer has to create the right conditions for them to observe, imagine, communicate, and make decisions while also knowing when to step back.
