Play Inventor @ LEGO Creative Play Lab

2026 · Work Experience · creative technology + play design internship

Exploring how creative tech innovates new forms of digital-physical play with the LEGO SMART Brick. Ideate and transform early concepts into play-testable prototypes in an R&D environment, using hands-on, iterative design process.

Outputs are under NDA.

Areas Explored: connected physical-digital play design+prototype, interactive soundscape, procedural audio, parts design, material explorations, AI for play, design for kids, gesture recognition & data processing, inclusive design.

About

Treating prototypes as playable questions and exploring how creative tech innovates new forms of digital-physical play with the LEGO SMART Brick. Outputs are under NDA.

  • Physical-Digital Rapid Prototyping — Pushing platforms past their intended limits: speculative R&D Translated open-ended briefs into dozens of functional prototypes across 3 missions for the SMART Brick ecosystem (Unity, Python, Mixed Reality, custom electronics). Quick interactions to understand feasibility in the early product stage.
  • Play Design & Ideation — Worked closely on unmet play needs (music/performance play, slow/soothing play) in the current portfolio, designed SMART Play features across established and unreleased LEGO IPs.
  • Unconventional audio & AI — Custom gestural detection algorithms mapped to real-time sound output, in-house synths hacked for creature speech synthesis, and multi-modal AI workflows that turn children’s humming into music.
  • Parts Design & Physical Fabrication — Designing and 3D-modeling custom structural components that conceal the SMART Brick inside a model, solving mainstream ergonomic and aesthetic challenges. Explored various 3D-printing techniques, from 3D-printed origami to biomimetic micro-robotics, and kinetic prosthetics.
  • User Testing & Human-centric Design — Ran 10+ playtesting and co-creation sessions with children aged 6–12, translating observational data into rapid design iterations.
  • Time — Sept 2025 - June 2026
  • Capabilities — Creative ideation, experience design, rapid prototyping for Physical-digital play, User testing
  • Tools — Unity(C#), python, javascript, mqtt, osc, websockets, electronics (raspberry pi), 3d printing, fusion 360

strawberrycongee — Jade (strawberrycongee) is a London based experimental game maker and creative technologist who works at the intersection of engineering, design and research with a focus on play and curiosity.