Last year, we launched the Billion Girls CoLab to create space for girls to share their vision and catalyze a network of actors to bring it to life. After working with and learning from leaders in the sexual and reproductive health sector, we realized the most important people were missing from the conversation: girls. Who you bring into the room is who you end up designing for.

So we started to experiment with new ways of, not only bringing girls into the conversation, but also having them guide it. We spent a day convening 30 partner organizations, designers, and adolescent girls to build a series of prototypes that would address adolescent girl health and wellness. Play and making unlocked new possibilities for adults to listen to girls and for girls to imagine a different future, ultimately helping to shift power dynamics.

Let’s try a quick exercise. Picture two people playing. What does their body language look like? Are they seeing eye to eye? Do they look a little awkward? If so, do they care? There are so many unspoken rules when we engage in play: we suspend disbelief, we seamlessly take on new characters, and even lose our self awareness. During the Billion Girls make-a-thon we saw how these dynamics also lent themselves to building empathy, processing complex emotions, and imagining a future without constraints.

Play Incubates Empathy

In some instances, public and school toilet facilities in Kenya are not girl friendly—and the lack of privacy, safety, options for disposal of menstrual products, and running water can keep girls from going to school or work comfortably. One of the biggest reasons is the under representation of women in toilet construction, design, and engineering. So we invited one of the teams to build a prototype that would build empathy for those who don’t menstruate.

The team transformed a room with wall-to-wall windows into a make believe bathroom, where boys and men could experience public toilets from a girl’s perspective. They called it the Macho Choo, or “visible toilet”—a place that lacked bins and running water, and that was completely exposed. People standing outside giggled and pointed as participants inside felt the embarrassment and inconvenience that many girls face when using non girl-friendly latrines. It was a playful prototype to build for some, but a visceral experience that created a lasting impression on others.

Play helps us process and express complexity.

Early in the day, we had an adult-facilitated brainstorm about sex education that was meet with uncomfortable silence; however, when we transitioned into the prototyping with craft supplies, the tone completely changed. One girl cut a scarlet paper in the shape of a vagina to her group’s delight. Before long, the entire group was cutting colored paper into vaginas of different shapes and sizes for an exhibit in the vagina museum they built and called it House of Nunu, slang for “House of Vaginas.” This museum also featured a display of life size contraceptive methods, confessional booths for private questions about sex, exhibits to demystify female pleasure, and a fallopian tube rowboat trip to learn about fertility.

It was evident that girls craved safe spaces and learning moments with a dash of whimsy. As adults facilitating those early sessions, we were dangerously close to taking their initial discomfort as a false assumption that girls wouldn’t want a space like this. Playful making allowed girls to explore notoriously cringe-y topics with ease, make sense of their experiences, and express what they want on their own terms.

Play frees the imagination to dream beyond constraints.

In response to the question ‘How would you like contraception products to be delivered in the future?’, one team designed the Diva Drone. Their drone service delivered small packages, composed of three layers: the first two layers acted as decoys that protected the privacy of their rightful owner and the last layer held the contraceptive method. This single artifact expressed a clear vision for a future where privacy, safety, and security are in the hands of girls. Here, play offered girls and program designers a blank slate to work from, free from the typical technological constraints or a notion of what is possible today.

Playful making puts the motivation and the interest of girls first, and encourages designers and organizations to explore alongside them, fundamentally shifting the power in program design. At the Billion Girls CoLab, we’re inspired by the role playful making with girls will have in shaping better products, services, and experiences for girls health.