Our craft, in detail
How an idea is born
Every idea here follows the same path: five ordered stages in which story comes before play, play comes before decoration, and nothing launches until real children have tried it. This page explains what happens at each stage, and what you get to see at each one. If you would rather try it than read it, the idea reel on the home page walks the same path in half a minute.
The five stages
What happens at each stage?
The first job is to stop the idea escaping: it goes down on whatever paper is nearest, in the shortest form possible, with exactly one question attached — what do we want to change for the child? No feasibility, no platform, no budget in this session, because early judgement kills ideas at their weakest moment. An idea that cannot answer the question stays in the notebook without regret. One that can moves on to drawn paper.
The idea becomes drawn shots, then gets reviewed frame by frame with kind candor. The judgement lands on the work rather than its author, and on one specific shot rather than the whole direction. Some frames are crossed out and stay visible on the board, because knowing what was tried and failed is part of what the team knows. What survives the session is what the story can carry, not what pleased the most people in the room.
A playable build goes up with no colour, no sound and no final art. Its only job is to test the question there is no way around: is the play itself fun? Withholding decoration is deliberate, because attractive production makes reviewers forgiving and pushes the discovery of a flaw into the stage where fixing it is expensive. If the prototype fails here we return to the story and count it as a gain: the idea failed as paper, not in a child's hands.
Real children sit with the prototype, with their parents' consent, and their sentences are recorded exactly as spoken — unsoftened and uninterpreted, because rewriting a child's words in adult language strips out the useful part. One short remark can mean changing the size of an element or the kind of action a scene asks for. This is where real consultation separates from consultation for appearances: the child's mark stays in the file that ships.
After the notes comes the polish: pacing, sound, the size of elements, the way a session ends, and every small detail a child feels without naming. Then the world launches and its effect is measured against the goal it started from, rather than against the minutes a child spent inside it. The measure chosen at the beginning decides what gets improved afterwards, which is why it deserves an early conversation rather than a late one.
Four laws
What settles a decision when we disagree?
When a technical solution and a story pull in opposite directions, the story wins. Technology is a means of carrying meaning; if the meaning never reaches the child, nothing built on top of it counts, however well made.
A candid opinion is said in time and said kindly, and it is aimed at the work rather than its author. Politeness in review only postpones the problem to a point where fixing it costs everyone more.
The first version of any idea is ugly, so it gets a period in which final verdicts are held back. This protection is not indulgence; it is giving an idea enough time to be tested before it is judged.
Adult opinion about a children's experience is incomplete evidence. Nothing counts as finished until real children have tried it, their views have been heard honestly, and their effect shows in the version that ships.
Before we begin
Questions about working with us
Do we see the work before it is finished?
Yes, and that is a stated part of the method rather than an exception to it. You will see a storyboard with crossed-out frames, and a gray prototype with no decoration that you may dislike on its first day. Showing unfinished work is what keeps changing it cheap.
Who tests the work before launch?
Real children, with their parents' consent. Their notes are recorded as spoken and turned into design changes, and no piece of work counts as finished before this stage.
Which language are the experiences designed in?
Arabic first, and English too. "Arabic first" means the experience is written in Arabic from the storyboard onward, rather than translated into it once finished.
Have an idea at its first stage?
An idea does not need to be finished before you send it; our first stage exists precisely for unfinished ideas. Two lines are enough: who the children are, and what you hope changes.