Portfolio

My Role

Led client communication and project coordination, including weekly meetings, site visits, demos, budgeting, procurement, scheduling, and task management. I acted as a bridge between the client and development team, translating experience goals into actionable project needs.

Designed interactive narratives around the Heinz History Center's learning objectives, translating historical content into experiences that encouraged exploration, personal connection, and storytelling rather than passive information consumption.

Playtesting prototype setup.

The Design Challenge

The Heinz History Center wanted to create an experience that could make Western Pennsylvania's amusement park history memorable, social, and emotionally resonant across generations.

The challenge was to move visitors beyond passive historical viewing and invite them to actively participate in the story, while fitting the experience into one of three exhibition themes:

Innovation Land · Thrill Factory · Story World

🤔 Client Needs

shared experiences
memorable
multi-generational
emotional connection
transform passive viewing into active participation
fit into one of their three planned sections (innovation land, thrill factory, story world)

🧠 Player/Guest Needs

fun, thrilling to learn
feel inspired to preserve memories
curious
proud of connections to Western PA heritage
for kids, potential career paths designing amusement parks

💡 Team Goals

fits in the realm of digital + physical
not super heavy on animation or fabrication

We landed on a physical installation where guests walk up to a table with a terrain of an amusement park with four missing pieces of different shapes. The table has recognisable 3D printed amusement park attractions that have bases in the same shapes as these empty slots. These figures have different colours, and when all four pieces from the same colour are placed on the board, we unlock different rewards like colour, animation, and narrative.

Production

Budgeting and purchase orders and task management.

Budget and purchases document.

Estimated budget, purchases, and equipment checked out.

Scheduling and task management.
Our final organizational board by my co-producer Cayla Kennedy.
Post-it notes that mark the start and end of each task, with dependencies being stuck to eachother. When the takss are complete, the two halves of the note come together.

Client Communication

Conducted weekly meetings with clients and coordinated site visits, demos, playtests, and project needs and experience goals.

Meeting agenda and notes sample.

Playtesting

Organized playtests with multiple audiences - school groups, multigenerational family groups, and CMU students. Coordinated with faculty, staff, and client to acquire the right audiences and space setup. Onboarded guests to these experiences, provided context, took observation-based notes, and conducted interviews about user behaviour. Analysed this data for discussions with team, faculty advisors, and clients, and worked with team to find the bets directions for new iterations.

Playtesting.

Playtest interviews and feedback collection.

Retrospective

Created during a producer roundtable retrospective workshop run by Stef Harbuck and Charles Johnson.

KEEP: Which of your methods or processes worked particularly well?

Physical, on-wall organization board
Talking to teammates individually to find out how things are going, especially if dynamics seem off

STOP: Which of your methods or processes were difficult or frustrating to use?

Initial ideation process - individual Miro ideation and later discussion
Online scrum boards
Getting the team all together for 25 hours a week with conflicting electives and individual worktime preferences

START: How would you do things differently next time?

Ask questions early on if the team dynamics feel off
Ideate TOGETHER. Exercises to get ideas out there, reinterpret them, tear them apart, etc.

What was the most gratifying or professionally satisying part of the project?

Regaining our client's trust after initial misalignment. Going beyond with ideation methods and how to communicate demos.
The team coming together before major milestones, taking on additional roles, reorganization.
Being able to get everyone to open up, and solving issues as we converse.

Takeaways

Being someone who is not just approachable, but also reliable to solve problems - the team kept personal issues to themselves because they thought talking about it would tear the team apart.
Be quick to pivot if one method does not work (project management tools, communication methods, ideation or brainstorming processes).
Deadlines and communication does not have to just be weekly.

Reflection

As a first-time producer on a project this long, as well as my first time handling client interactions, I learnt a lot in my role.

One of the most challenging moments was handling internal team dynamics and conflicts within the team, and realising how I could have detected them sooner.

Client relations was another major learning point, especially in taking in client needs and making sure they are understood well by the team, and handling rebuilding relations after misaligned expectations early on.