Emmy nomination for Interactive Media
PBS Kids’ Design Squad needed a game that taught systems thinking to kids 8-12 by letting them experiment and fail, rather than following prescribed steps.
I built a hydroponic farming game around three interdependent variables: plants, fish, and water, connected through pipes the player arranges. Misjudge the balance and the system fails: overwatering, undersupplying nutrients, starving the fish. The core design problem was feedback. Rather than flagging the broken connection directly, the game identifies the most severe and most recurring failure and nudges the player toward it, without stating the fix outright.
Through playtesting with the target age group, we cut the simulation down to three variables kids could reason about, rather than a more realistic but harder-to-parse system. Shipped as part of Design Squad’s interactive suite, which received an Emmy nomination for Interactive Media.
