Project Description

Forget boring toy catalogs – the Barbie Dream Floor introduces a new way for kids to explore toys by engaging with stories in interactive video. The experience features live-action footage of hundreds of Mattel toys and places kids into an imaginative, interactive online story where they have full narrative control (think Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, but with even more interactivity). 

This project reimagines the future of entertainment and advertisement. With 33 possible narrative paths, dozens of easter eggs, and an e-commerce experience for parents, we had the pleasure of leading the full-stack design efforts for this project, collaborating with some of the top creative partners around.

Crafting an interactive narrative of this scale isn’t easy and requires a range of inter-disciplinary skills. From the creative concept to working directly with talented writers in shaping the narrative with 100+ pages of interactive scripts, to collaborating with art directors, cinematographers, set designers and producers, to leading animators, visual designers, editors, and developers during post-production – this project allowed us to take narrative experience design to a whole new level. 

In addition to complex user flows, experience maps, and careful mediation across content, design, production, development, and stakeholders, our deliverables for the project included defining project scope and requirements, creating end-to-end wireframes, technical specs, dozens of google docs and spreadsheets, as well as interactive prototypes and animation samples. 

The Barbie Dream Floor is part of the larger “KidHQ” experience for Walmart, Mattel, and Buzzfeed.   

Sample Documentation