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"HOW CAN I CREATE A MEANINGFUL GAME, TOOL, OR EXPERIENCE FOR TEENS?"
At iThrive Games, we help you answer this question.
Our team of adolescent development and mental health experts builds on 30+ years of combined instructional and game design experience to lead the design of compelling and accessible games, tools, and programs that nurture teens’ genius by folding in social and emotional skill-building—a practice proven to nourish their mental health and advance their learning.
WE ENLIST EMPATHY AS A CORE DESIGN MECHANIC WHEN CREATING IMPACTFUL EXPERIENCES WITH AND FOR TEENS.
As adolescent development experts, we use our deep understanding of teens' social and emotional needs and the science behind how they learn best to help our clients reach and engage them in transformative, wellness-supporting ways, creating:
GAMES
that turn programming, theory, nonprofit missions, and research into impactful play
LEARNING EXPERIENCES
that are intellectually stimulating and emotionally nurturing
ED TECH TOOLS
that are tailored to teens' developmental strengths to deepen learning
TEEN PROGRAMS
that use game design to support systems thinking, creativity, and career readiness
EXHIBITIONS
that integrate tech
and social and emotional learning to spark
curiosity
OUR CO-DESIGN MODEL WITH TEENS IS CARE IN ACTION.
The collaborative design approach we bring to our clients and partners pulls together the genius of developers, thought leaders, industry experts, and, most importantly, teens themselves.
Our co-design model is a strengths-based UX research method devised with teen mental health and learning experts. It revolutionizes the typical focus group with strategies that create a supportive context for discovery where teens feel safe, seen, and heard in relation to the issues they care about. With each design session, we continue to build on our nuanced understandings of what young people want and need. This insight and our expertise steer the design process, ensuring what we create together is accessible and impacts young people positively.
“Game design’s definitely given me confidence in what I think I can do, but it also helped me think about how I could build off of other people’s ideas in order to reach one progressive goal.”
TEEN, 16
“After this, I think about how games change us.”
TEEN, 16
“I realize now the change I can have on the world.”
TEEN, 17