Why Instructional Design?

This field marries two things I love to do: Create original, engaging content, and  foster environments in which people can reach their full potential.  As a sweetener, I've also always loved to learn – widely and across as many fields as possible. Working closely with SMEs gives me a chance to expand my knowledge and apply my skills to new frontiers.

 

What has my career looked like so far?

For the last seven years, I've created dozens of hit games for Choices: Stories You Play. Alongside a team of talented writers, artists, and developers, we produced visual novels with meaningful choices and branching scenarios – not unlike the design of your standard learning course. 

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With all my success, why change course now?

I love my team and feel immense pride for what we've created together. However, the games industry operates at a breakneck pace. After seven years, I got honest with myself: It was unsustainable. While I was good at what I did, and while I enjoyed it, over the years our timelines shortened and our branding became more rigid. I reflected on my successes and realized while the numbers were impressive, the impact I'd once hoped to make on the industry was far out of my reach. I was creating good stories, but not real change. 

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What does "making an impact" mean to me?

When I first joined the industry as a freshly-graduated Master of Fine Arts, I had big dreams of helping carve out a new space in games. Pixelberry's earliest years were focused on developing rich stories paired with educational material. While our studio has since prioritized commercial success and entertainment, my passion for helping people learn and improve remained central to my professional ethos.

 

Once promoted to a senior position for Choices, I asked my leaders for the opportunity to clean up our documentation and streamline our creative processes. I developed training modules for my coworkers and benchmarked best practices for new hires. I took so much joy in seeing our employees gain skill and confidence, and especially in being the one to set them up for success throughout our development pipeline. When that joy began to eclipse the love I had for writing, I knew I needed a career where helping people learn became the main focus of my job.​