Turning a forest-park visit into an adventure.
Tērvete is one of Latvia's most-visited nature parks: six thematic zones and the fairytale world of Anna Brigadere, spread across 1,200 ha with a single map for all of it. Visitors were getting lost, and the story was never reaching them. A wayfinding and service design concept that uses the fairytale itself as the navigation system.
A park with deep cultural roots and a wayfinding problem.
Dabas Parks Tērvete is a 1,200 ha forest park in Latvia, built around the fairytale world of writer Anna Brigadere (1861–1933) and the woodcraft tradition that has shaped it since its first trails opened in 1958. Now under Latvijas Valsts Meži (LVM), it welcomed a record 166,715 visitors in 2025, and LVM wants it to become Latvia's number one family destination and its leading forest experience for international audiences.
The hackathon brief asked teams to redesign the park's wayfinding and small architectural forms, with five explicit objectives: improve navigation, encourage return visits, attract international audiences, create new revenue streams, and expand beyond families and school groups. One constraint shaped everything: the park sits in a Natura 2000 protected area with 72 protected species, so heavy physical intervention was off the table. The opportunity was in the service layer.
Client
Dabas Parks Tērvete · LVM
Year
2026 · Hackathon
My role
Service Designer & UX Researcher · Originated the personalised trail system and the artist residency concept
Team
Catherine Martin, Sara Sanwal, Fanny Verástegui (Team Gnomes)
Deliverables
166,715
visitors in 2025, a record and one of Latvia's most popular parks
1,200 ha
total park area, with 200 ha paid-access across six thematic zones
Natura 2000
protected designation, with 72 protected species on site
52%
of visitors are families or preschool children, the segment LVM wants to grow beyond
People love Tērvete, but they get lost and miss the story.
The park itself was not the problem. The experience of moving through it was.
Sources
Findings · what visitors told us
"The map is not good. It was really hard to orientate."
Visitor review, Tērvete
"Lots of walking, good for something to do with kids, but lame for couples."
Visitor review, Tērvete
"I don't know about the author or the fairy tales."
Latvian-speaking repeat visitor, Tērvete
The pattern
Six worlds, each with its own characters and stories…
Lost, not led
Visitors couldn't tell what they were walking toward, or why.
A story scattered
Even a Latvian-speaking repeat visitor left without knowing Anna Brigadere or her fairy tales.
Audiences unreached
52% of visitors are families or preschoolers, yet nothing was designed for adults, couples, or international guests.
Four decisions that shaped the work
Service layer, not construction
Natura 2000 took heavy physical intervention off the table on day one, so we committed to redesigning the service around the forest, not the forest itself.
Trust the traces
With two days, public reviews and LVM's audience data were the research base. We treated the three patterns they revealed as the real brief.
Story as system
We reframed the question from "how do we make a better map" to "how do we make the story do the navigating".
Judge against the brief
Every element was pressure-checked against LVM's five stated objectives, the same test the jury would apply.
How might we transform a visit to Tērvete into an adventure that is easy to navigate, culturally meaningful, and worth repeating?
From pattern to decision
Lost, not led
One map for 1,200 ha left visitors without direction or purpose.
A story scattered
The fairytale sat in fragments across the park, told only in Latvian.
Audiences unreached
Designed for families, with nothing for adults, couples, or internationals, and no reason to return.
Personalise the route
A kiosk-generated trail matched to each visitor's time, group, and interests: service infrastructure instead of the physical construction that Natura 2000 ruled out.
Make the story the wayfinding
Anna Brigadere's narrative arc becomes the navigation logic: each stop a chapter, each cue language-neutral, so the tale finally gets told to everyone.
Design versions, not adaptations
Adventure and Nature Lovers trails plus collectible mechanics give new audiences their own experience, and deliberately leave something unfinished for next time.
A personalised trail where the story does the wayfinding.
Instead of a better map, I proposed replacing the logic entirely: a kiosk at the entrance generates a route built around your time, your group, and your interests. The Anna Brigadere fairytale becomes the thread that connects the zones and makes the walk feel purposeful rather than arbitrary, while a layer of collectibles gives you a reason to finish the route and a reason to come back.
1 · Plan your visit at the kiosk
Pick a language and answer a few questions: who you are with, how much time you have, how far you want to walk, and what draws you to the park. You leave with a route, printed or on your phone, along with your first collectible.
2 · Follow a trail shaped for you
Routes are built around your time, energy, and interests and cover different thematic zones of the park, from the Fairy Tale Forest to the Old Pine Park.
3 · Collect the story as you go
Postcard cutouts, kasane-oshi stamps, and scavenger hunts turn the walk into something you participate in rather than just observe. Each gives you a reason to keep going and a reason to return.
A four-part journey home.
The Sprīdītis trail traces Anna Brigadere's fairytale through four moments in the park, using the narrative arc itself as the wayfinding logic. Each stop is a chapter; the path between them is the thread that was always missing from the park's existing signage and map.
It starts at Sprīdītis's door
The trail opens at the storybook house, a known landmark that sets the tone and gives every visitor, regardless of language, the same clear starting point in the fairytale.
Route to Gnome Town
Visitors meet the gnome woodworkers, the craftsmen of Tērvete's forest world. The Gnome Forest is the most popular zone with children, and placing it second keeps early momentum while grounding the woodcraft heritage.
Into the Fairy Forest
The heart of Anna Brigadere's world: the Forest Mother, the Forest King, the Witch, and Stingy. Interactive storytelling and hands-on activities bring each character to life without requiring prior knowledge of the story or the Latvian language.
The finale: Mājās
The loop returns you home. A wooden slide carries you to a framed mirror that reflects you and your family back. Built on the peak-end rule: the moral of the fairytale is felt rather than explained, and no Latvian is required to understand it.
Small mechanics that make people come back.
Three lightweight layers sit on top of the trail system, each designed to answer LVM's objectives around repeat visits and international audiences. Each works without language, and each leaves something unfinished on the first visit.
Postcard cutouts
Cards frame the real wooden statues inside a fairytale scene, turning every character into a photo opportunity. The woodcraft heritage gets the spotlight; visitors take the story home.
Kasane-oshi stamps
Stamps at each trail stage combine into a single souvenir image only completed by walking the full route. The incomplete set is the reason to return.
Scavenger hunts
Story-based quests built around statues, artefacts, and the park's natural details. A gamified layer that works for families on a first visit and adults revisiting alone.
An artist residency that turns the quiet months into a cultural season.
The brief asked for new revenue streams, and LVM's ambition to be Europe's leading forest experience destination can't run on a single-season footfall model. I proposed the Anna Brigadere artist residency: artists live and work in the park from autumn to spring, and their open studios, workshops, and showcases become the reason to visit when the trails go quiet.
The problem · a one-season park
The insight
The park's assets aren't seasonal. Only its visiting model is.
The answer · the Anna Brigadere Residency
For visitors
A living park in every season: open studios, make-and-take workshops, artist talks, and an end-of-season showcase.
For LVM
Revenue independent of summer footfall, and a new position as patron of Latvian creative heritage rather than only a forestry operator.
For artists
An open European call across woodcraft, writing, illustration, land art, and design. Four tracks, detailed below.
Judged the way the jury judged it: against the brief.
A two-day concept can't honestly claim visitor metrics, so we measured the work against the five objectives LVM set in the brief, the same criteria that won it the hackathon.
Improve navigation
Encourage return visits
Attract international audiences
Create new revenue streams
Expand beyond families
Reflection
The constraint did the best design work
Natura 2000 ruled out building our way to a better experience. That pressure pushed us toward the service layer, the lighter, cheaper, and ultimately more interesting answer.
Story structure is infrastructure
My journalism background usually shapes how I present work. Here it shaped the work itself: a narrative arc turned out to be a legitimate wayfinding system.
What I would test next
The concept won on paper. The honest next step is a prototype of the kiosk flow and a one-zone stamp-trail pilot, tested with the adults and international visitors the park most wants to reach.
The forest was already full of stories. The design just had to make them findable.
Designed with Sara Sanwal and Fanny Verástegui as Team Gnomes, in response to the SDSI 2026 Hackathon brief from Latvijas Valsts Meži.