Jeff Bartell Design

Research / UX / UI / Strategy / Visual Design

The Arthur digital ream and I were tasked with re-designing the Arthur brand website for WGBH and PBS Kids. We took a mobile-first approach with the goal of delivering a responsive and refreshed homepage, games page, and video page. 

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Art Direction / UX / UI / Illustration / Visual Design / Music Production

Arthur’s Big App is a large gaming app I designed for the Arthur brand, one of the longest running and most popular children’s cartoon programs of all time. The app is essentially a series of about half a dozen mini-games relying on mobile-friendly

mechanics like tapping and swiping, aimed at kids ages 5-8. I sketched an enormous number of premises and game ideas;

landing on a music game, a smoothie making game, a freeze tag game, an outfit matching game, and a library book sorting game. The quick, arcade style interactions are meant to be quickly

understood and played against a timer, giving players a chance to beat their best score, collect a set of characters, and come back for more. I found in testing this app that children tend to

responded to the simplest, and easiest to learn to interactions overall; so my team reiterated until we had a good balance of playable while still challenging in a game format. I was involved as the lead designer on this app from the

earliest brainstorms until the final delivery. I handled visual design, concepts, illustration, UX/UI, and provided music/ sound effects work.

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Visual Design / UX / UI / Illustration

Ruff Ruffman is a popular kids brand and the people of the Connecticut Department of Transportation were excited about using the characters to promote distracted driving awareness. I was tasked with designing a responsive game about distracted driving utilizing emojis as a children's engagement point.

Play this responsive game here.

Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

Arthur Delivers is a html5 game I designed as an opportunity for the Arthur brand to live inside of the PBS Kids Virtual World site called Kart Kingdom.

Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A board game based experience in the Arthur universe, where the player helps the characters design a public park space.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A halloween-themed game built around resource management in the Arthur universe.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

An emotion-based game with a complex puzzle path curriculum featuring an adorable imaginary friend character from a featured Arthur episode.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A vocabulary-centric design game in the Arthur world, centered around one of the favorite settings from the show.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A point and click adventure game centered around the characters of D.W. and Bud in the Arthur Universe.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A pattern-matching game set within the extended universe of Arthur, as his beloved pet dog finds himself in an out-of-this-world adventure. The game is complete with psychedelic imagery, inspired by Peter Max.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

An outdoor science curriculum-based game set around Buster and D.W. characters from the Arthur brand collecting animals in an enigmatic nighttime maze setting.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A game to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Arthur animated series television program. Users are invited to play their way through 20 mini-games based on some of the series’ most iconic objects, characters, and moments.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A mini-golf inspired game for the Arthur universe. I created a load of custom illustrations and game mechanics for this fun project.

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Monkeying Around is a set of experimental apps I designed with a team at WGBH to teach computational thinking concepts to pre-school aged children (roughly 3-5 yrs old).

The goal was to bring the coding concepts of debugging, modularity, and sequencing to this young age group through a series of fun and engaging games featuring characters from a yet-to-be-released kids cartoon show called, Monkeying Around. The three separate apps of this project rely on fun mechanics and gameplay that appeal to children in our target demographic.

The debugging-centric app features a road that must be repaired using simple to complex shapes properly fit in order for the character to reach their destination. A dance game highlights modularity by having the player create dance routines using user-generated modules. And finally our sequencing app asks the player to pick up characters on a map in the correct order as they reach their destination goal.

We’ve found kids engaged heavily with the characters and narrative in testing and that the games break down the problems into small chunks to overcome the challenge.

I was in charge of visual design, illustration, UX/UI, and design research for this in-progress project.

Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A vocabulary curriculum-based html5 game with a fun digging mechanic and adorable puppy characters for the Martha Speaks brand.

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Illustration / Visual Design / UX / UI / Concepts

I was tasked with designing a suite of games utilizing cutting edge computer vision camera interactions for the PBS Kids' brand Martha Speaks.

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Illustration / Design / UX / UI / Concepts

A html5 game with a simple interface for 3-5 year olds to play with music sequencing concepts. The brand is PEEP and The Big Wide World.

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I worked with a small team at WGBH to develop an educational VR experience for the classroom in partnership with Microsoft. We built a set of two paired apps: one VR and one desktop experience. Together, the apps create an immersive experience for middle school students to learn about water in the solar system.

My role on the project was the storyboarding and experience design for the VR user, as well as the paired app “mission control” interface. The team worked with assets provided by NASA to create semi-realistic terrains and locations for four locations in the solar system: Mars, Ceres, Europa, and Enceladus. Our team conceived the immersive VR experience in a collaborative, iterative workflow where we all contributed and refined ideas for game mechanics and flow together.

The Perfect Human 2010 is an interactive installation project I created at the Dynamic Media Institute. The goal was to remake and update Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth’s 1967 film, The Perfect Human as an interactive experience. I chose to re-shoot the film using actors with head-mounted cameras and added inner monologues in order to push the narrative mode to include first-person viewpoints for the characters. The final installation required 7 users to manually synchronize the separate pieces of content (main video, character POVs, monologue tracks, music soundtrack, narration) on 7 separate machines; an operation made cumbersome on purpose.

Notable results were that the syncing ritual constituted an unusual level of cooperation and performance not customarily required when engaging with most narrative material. Additionally, imperfect simultaneous playback moved in and out of several waves of feeling both harmonic and juxtaposed as the pieces of content complimented, overlapped, or piled on top of  one another.

I had the relatively unique opportunity to envision and execute this project in its entirety from concept to reality. I sketched and designed the overall experience, directed/edited/shot the footage, wrote new dialogue, and composed a soundtrack.

I prototyped a museum installation piece about union activist Joe Hill*, with my friend Zach in Spring of 2012. The piece featured an interface design meant to be hammered with great force.

The hitting of each nail turned off and on a series of stitched together music video clips. The video clips were then to be projected on an oversized, sculptural guitar. Our hope was that we would eventually be using nails infused with sensors to make the interaction as life-like as possible. However, for the prototype, we were encouraged by professor Brian Lucid to recycle some homemade pad sensors. They had been made by former Dynamic Media Institute student, Julia Griffey. She created the pad sensors for her project—a movement based children’s learning tool inspired by the game Dance Dance Revolution.

Griffey customized the pads to withstand the repeated and great force of the stomps. For the Joe Hill project, we needed sensors that could take that same level of repeated force and her custom pads were a great match for our hardware needs.

While user testing and shooting a proof-of- concept video for the project, our classmate Daniel Buckley took out his frustrations on the mallet and pad interface. At that particular time he was working to complete his own graduate thesis and had a high level of stress. He unloaded a great deal of force on the prototype, smacking the pads with all his might. His force was enough to permanently damage one of the very resilient sensors.

*Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Haaglund, was a martyr, songwriter, and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (libcom.org). Hill became famous for his powerful protest songs and execution by firing squad, punishment for his alleged murder of a former policeman (libcom). Hill remains a legendary folk hero with countless songs written about his heroic stance for union rights.

Visual Design / UX / UI

All In The Family is an interactive activity project developed for PBS Learning Media via WGBH, as a supplement to a teacher’s classroom curriculum examining Charles Darwin’s phylogenetic tree concept. Our team’s goal was to design a micro-site activity in which the students learn to assemble accurate evolutionary trees by comparing features of living organisms.

The students need to be able to compare the multiple data sets and diagrams in order to properly build the trees so I designed a reference toolkit as a companion to the task. Educators found students engaging more with this interactive activity than some phylogenetic tree builders that relied heavily on text.

I took on the role of visual design, user interface, and user experience designer for this project. 

I started an experience-centric design firm, called Skeptic, with some colleagues from graduate school. One of our projects was an audio-reactive lighting setup to enhance Cambridge, MA’s Middlesex Lounge’s ambiance.

Skeptic's audio-reactive light installation translated data collected from their respective environments into visual representations through an array of RGB LED's and a single Arduino board.

We customized this piece to the space in which it was being installed, complementing the bar and the rest of the room.

Visual Design / UX / UI / Strategy / Information Architecture

Open Vault is an internal WGBH site that catalogues years of archive footage, photos, and essays of PBS programming. I was tasked with re-designing the site, originally from a predominately aesthetic standpoint, but found it more crucial to work from the ground up.

De-Stressalizer was the capstone project for my thesis work at Dynamic Media Institute, exploring the role that dynamic media tools can have in controlling stress and anxiety.

The goal was to build a game-based simulation machine that would replicate a stereotypically stressful day via screen / headphones and allow users to punch away their tension with a provided punching interface. I was able to user test the device in multiple locations with a variety of participants. Many users claimed that the punching interface allowed them to physically work out the stress the simulated scenarios created and even stress that they may have brought with them to the interaction.

Though the punchable mechanism was a highly reinforced unit, one participant pummeled the device with enough force to temporarily render it unusable. If nothing else, I learned there may be a demand for people to offload their aggression and stressful energy with physical opportunities beyond regular exercise.

My role on the project was in the concept design, research, sketching, video production and sound design. Colleague Stephanie Dudzic helped to program the Processing based software to drive the system and my father assisted with the final piece’s fabrication.

Interactive Bully is another conceptual, interactive installation project I created at the Dynamic Media Institute. I had the goal of designing a project about bravery and someone’s ability to stand up to an aggressive person for a someone who is having trouble doing that. What if there were a tool or experience that could help them achieve that? To go through the motions in a safe environment? Could the simulation make a difference? I ended up shooting video of myself to fill the role of a stereotypical bully character that would provide the proper menace and intimidation for the user. The interaction which is to be experienced when a participant walks up to a large screen, featured three levels or modes: Bully is highly aggressive,

Bully is backing down, and Bully is submissive. I developed the program to become less threatening the longer the user stood before the interface to give the sense of standing up to and overcoming the difficult interaction. Beyond concept, design, and writing I got help programming the Processing software to run the experience by Brian Lucid and additional video production help from Brandin Tumienski.

Panic Attack Relief System is another interactive installation project I created at the Dynamic Media Institute. This experimental design was in line with my thesis work there: the role experiential media projects can have in stress relief.

The goal was to build a machine to simulate a panic attack for users (an issue I have struggled with myself) in a controlled space and subsequently provide them with a trusted method for overcoming the intense experience. Namely, their own controlled breathing. I had the challenge of planting the finished piece into a closet for user testing and also to be part of a collective art show.

The users stepped in were met with a heat lamp as well as a blaring and uncomfortable sound-scape filling the space to create an anxious environment. They were instructed to blow on a large pinwheel in front of them; 10 rotations was the programmed amount to shut the machine down. Users found the experience properly distressing and most were soothed that the agency of their own breath ended the sequence. This project served as somewhat of an awareness piece for panic attacks and hopefully a thought provoking installation.

My role on this project was in the concept, experience design, and research. I got hardware and software programming assistance from my colleague, Alexander Reben.

Spy For A Day is a conceptual, alternate reality gaming project I designed as a platform for residents and tourists to engage with each other and their city. Part flash mob, part role-playing experience, and part trans media narrative, participants would begin engagement with the gaming structure through an IRL guerrilla marketing campaign partially playing on secret agent tropes of top secret files and manila envelopes.

They would eventually be met with more traditional on-boarding scheme within the app. The goal of the project is to provide the users with exciting and fun mission-based tasks to complete within a given time-frame to earn points and rankings. For example, “meet person A at this location and bring this briefcase to person A at this other location by 14:00”. Participants can choose their level of engagement and the amount of theater and role-playing they wish to bring to the experience.

As sole designer / envisioner of this project, my hope is to one day bring this project beyond the conceptual stage or morph some of its components into a companion piece of some sort. The system would rely heavily on a community of participants and an interest in building and maintaining a narrative community.