Consulting Services

Design Consulting

As a "designer-at-large" I can provide insight, guidance, support, advice, critique, and feedback on your design at any point in the design process, and have helped many people move their projects from idea to completion.

During the early ideation stages of a project, I can help you:

• support initial ideation and prototyping

• avoid common pitfalls and dead ends

• manage scope creep

• set realistic timelines and expectations based on your budget and team size

• establish best-practices for communication

• build testing and analytics into your project from Day 1

• rapidly prototype design alternatives and "fail fast"

When you bring me into an existing project, I can help you:

• identify and resolve issues with user/player experience

• improve engagement, flow, and moment-to-moment experience

• organize and analyze testing processes and maximize the benefit of user feedback

• identify pain points in your design practices and development pipeline

Research Consulting

As an independent scholar and researcher my expertise is in mixed-methods and critical research design and analysis. My many years of conducting and supervising research are at your disposal. My research consulting services include helping you:

• determine and implement the appropriate research design and methodology for your project

• identify ethical issues around human subjects research and help prepare your study design for institutional review board (IRB) approval if needed

I am also available to provide expert guidance and insight into areas of scholarship and research that I have specific expertise in, including:

• Digital Games and Narrative | Identity, Agency, and Transformation in Mediated Experiences | Method Acting, Performance Studies, and Theatrical Play | Game Design | Design Fiction & Futurecasting | Human Computer Interaction | Ubiquitous Computing | Design for Accessibility | Tangible and Embedded/Embodied Interaction | Maker/ DiY Culture and Personal Fabrication | Games for Learning, and Serious Games | Design for Civic Engagement and Social Change | Pervasive Games and Larp | Paper Prototyping and Game Jams | Nonverbal Communication and Gesture | Virtual/Mixed/Alternate Reality Design | Mutual Aid and Community Engagement

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

While my priority is to support and care for marginalized individuals, I am also able to work with companies, academic institutions, and nonprofits to support marginalized employees, clients, and community members. I've worked with large and small institutions to develop, implement, and evaluate inclusive policies, especially around issues of LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, neurodiversity, and accessibility. I can provide:

• policy and process development for trans and queer inclusivity

• institutional practices and infrastructures to support disabled and neurodivergent individuals

If you are an institution that has received complaints or public backlash due to actual or perceived harm that your practices are causing to marginalized individuals, I can work with you to identify the underlying issue and devise an approach that both alleviates harm to vulnerable people and also helps restore trust in your institution. My methods include:

• ethnographic explorations of workplace cultures and grounded recommendations to improve conditions

• policy enforcement and implementation evaluations and improvements

• public relations consulting on harm mitigation, mediation, and trust restoration

NOTE: I only provide this service to institutions with a sincere interest in prioritizing harm reduction to marginalized members of their community. Reputational repair is often part of that, but it cannot occur without an investment in caring for affected communities and individuals.

Disability Advocacy

I also work with individuals seeking disability and accommodations within their workplace. I've helped clients research and understand relevant legal protections, common accommodations, and sources of support, training, and advocacy within their organizations and available to them via public and private advocacy programs. I will work with you to devise a personalized approach that helps set you up for success, regardless of your disability, by helping you advocate for your needs in ways that reinforce your value within your organization. This includes providing support with letter writing, helping you prep for meetings and difficult conversations with your colleagues and institutional leadership, reviewing job application materials, and helping prepare slides and scripts for presentations and interviews. I excel at helping marginalized individuals make a strong case to their institutions for why their perspective and experience makes them an asset to the business instead of a burden.

Sensitivity Reading

I work with authors, designers, filmmakers, developers, and content creators to identify and mitigate possible harms that their writing could inadvertently cause distress in LGBTQIA+ and disabled readers/viewers/players. As a sensitivity reader I will review your project from the perspective of a member of the potentially impacted communities. Specifically I can read your manuscript for:

• Instances of transphobia and representation of transgender women and transfeminine people

  Instances of homophobia and representations of lesbians, bisexual women, and women in same sex relationships

• Instances of ablism and representations of Autism, ADHD, Diabetes, and chronic pain

• Instances of toxic monogamy and representations of Ethical Nonmonogamy, Relationship Anarchy, and Polyamory

• Instances of religious intolerance and representations of Reconstructionist Judaism, and Neopaganism

• Representations of trauma, PTSD, and CPTSD specifically arising from any of the above categories