COMPANY: Last Gameboard
ROLE: Contract Industrial and UI designer
SCOPE: Redesigning product for mass production, packaging design, UI design

In 2021 I was hired by Last Gameboard to help them prepare their hardware and software for the initial release of their physical product. The Last Gameboard vision was a digital gaming platform that could run a multitude of tabletop games. It can register gaming pieces on the screen surface, as well as multiple finger and hand gestures. They had crowdfunded their product through Kickstarter, but needed to get the device ready for production.

During this time I worked closely with Jennifer, the Head of Design, as well as the CEOs, hardware engineers and manufacturing contacts at the factory in China. Initially I was hired to help with the UI design of their Android based touch app which runs various single and multiplayer board games. I created iconography, microinteractions and managed the digital asset library.

The CEOs realized that I had a lot of experience with designing products for manufacturing and I was asked to help to redesign their physical chassis. The prototype was CNC aluminum and the final product would need to be injection molded plastic to make manufacturing feasable. This required extensive modification of the chassis to account for Because of my industrial design experience, I was able to step into this role and save the company time and money finding and hiring another designer.

I worked with the manufacturing team overseas to completely reimagine and model the chassis. The new model included mounting provisions for hardware, cooling fans and airflow vents. We also made sure to use as few parts, and each part had as few undercuts, which would require slide mechanisms in the molds.

I was able to leverage my packaging design skills at Gameboard when Jennifer and I designed a multi use packaging experience. Inside a shipping ready outer box was a play-mat that folded around the Gameboard hardware, this created an unforgettable unboxing experience, as well as provided a beautiful play-mat to place the Gameboard on while playing games with friends.

A low cost pizza box style packaging solution for beta testers that could be quickly manufactured and shipped was designed by me, since backers were waiting for their Gameboards, and production was running slowly due to the chip shortage at the time.

During my time with Last Gameboard I helped them save money and time by leveraging my skills as a “Jane of all trades” designer. I stepped into UI design, industrial design, CMF and packaging design roles with ease. This helped the team push tackle challenges as we pushed towards production of a very complex product.