🌿 Nicole Lazzaro 🕊️ Email & Phone Number

1, Us

Unlocking human potential and changing the world through play. Nicole Lazzaro is the Founder and President of XEODesign, Inc. She has 30 years of expertise in XR and Player Experience Design for mass-market games and other interactive entertainment products. Clients including Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Sega, PlayFirst, The Cartoon Network, LeapFrog, Mattel, Monolith, Xfire, D.I.C.E, Leap Frog, The Learning Company, Broderbund, Roxio, and Maxis. She has a degree in Psychology from Stanford University where she also studied film making and computer programming.Since founding XEODesign in 1992 Nicole's design and research has improved over 1 billion player experiences, including several popular franchises for casual audiences such as three of the Myst Series, Diner Dash, GoPets, Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover, Mavis Beacon teaches Typing, Jeopardy Online, as well as creativity coaching for the designers of The Sims.

Sf Bay Area, Ca, Us

XEOPlay makes games that unlock human potential and improve quality of life through play.XEO (zēō) The thrilling feeling of discovery.Designed the first iPhone game with Joe Hewitt at iPhoneDevCamp.Produced full app store version as an iPad Launch title TiltWorld.comUnscramble the OracleFollow the White Rabbit

San Francisco , California, Us

UX Design Lead for YouCan Virtual Worlds. Set the design and strategic vision for the UX. Advised on the unique value proposition, brand differentiation, strategic partnerships, growth hacking, and marketing strategy. Interim COO to focus and organize team to deliver virtual events.

Framingham, Massachusetts, Us

Created an original Audio First AR adventure game for BOSE AR and Playcrafting. Lead a team of 4 to create a choose your own adventure you play walking around the block. Created the original interactive spatial audio game. Lead the UX design including interactive audio menus. Gave GDC 2020 talk on the unique design introducing the concept of an Auxel: spatial audio pixels and how to use them to debug and improve spatial audio experiences.

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Frequent lecturer at the leading conference for game developers. Most notably launched the 4 Keys to Fun in 2004. Talks over the years included the opportunity for social gaming on Facebook, iPhone's soon dominance of mobile gaming, Free to play games. Also, gave the first talk on rapid prototyping.

San Francisco, California, Us

Lead XEODesign's team to create an XR haptic demo for Miraisens' cutting edge haptic technology that delivers surface textures and directional force. Lead team to deliver haptics experience showcasing the unique surfaces and directional force for numerous games and enterprise. Worked with Miraisens' development team to offer feedback on technology and UX.

Design Workshops for Facebook Horizon Team on reducing toxicity through game design for this revolutionary collaborative virtual world for the masses.

El Segundo, California, Us

Designed and ran multiple studies for leading mobile titles for Nexon Mobile and Gloops which was acquired by Nexon.

San Mateo, Ca, Us

Dash and Dot RobotsXEOPlayShopHelped Play-i's design team get their creative juices flowing to dream up new cool music and story telling ideas for Wonder Workshop's (formerly Play-i) awesome robots Dash and Dot. http://blog.play-i.com/designing-play-experiences-bo-yana/Helped team imagine play experiences through playing games, running imagination exercises, and taught prototyping and other design techniques. Prototyped with Wonder Workshop's creative lead new directions for teaching programming and story telling gameplay. Paper prototypes made the ideas for play experiences concrete and sharable to allow the Wonder Workshop team to cover more creative ground.The new prototypes exceeded everyone’s expectations and broke new ground for Dash and Dot’s music and story telling play. The final presentations blew everyone away. Together we generated more ideas that the CEO even thought possible. Another XEOPlayShop™ victory for the power of play!Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

Vancouver, British Columbia, Ca

Dragons of Atlantis: Heirs of the Dragon (Mobile)Helped Kabam port the UI their free to play web hit Dragons of Atlantis 15 million players to mobile. Recommended ways to streamlines the mobile interface to reduce the number of dialogs and optimize the UI for iPad.Lead team to create signature low fidelity interactive paper, electronic and video prototypes to improve the navigation and optimize it for the iPad. Through weekly video calls with Kabam China we reviewed new designs and brainstormed new concepts to organize and improve the UI.As a result, the new UI reduced the number of taps required for combat by over 50%, created more of the interactions players expect on the iPad, and increased the fun factor for playing The design streamlined the flow, uncluttered the UI, and provided inspiration for a new look and feel. Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Wrote white paper on Game to Deliver Public Service, as well as presented to their innovation team on how games can increase engagement with IBM's customers.

Saint-Mandé, Île-De-France, Fr

New York, New York, Us

BlogHer.orgLed team to redesign the most popular blogging portals for women. Suggested game mechanics to increase engagement.Also presented for Blog Her's Entrepreneur's forum for two years.

Redwood City, Ca, Us

OriginField Research on Download Purchasing and MicrotransactionsHelped EA enter the lucrative digital download market with field research on what motivates online purchases. The XEOResearch report, based on in-home studies with all types of gamers, gave EA new insights about player purchase behavior. The purchasing personas burst conventional thinking. EA changed their roadmap for feature development for launch and afterwards.The SimsHelped Will Wright and team add emotions to The SimsTo catalyze creativity EA hired XEODesign on several occasions to hold XEO PlayShops™ for The Sims team to share our state of the art emotion design and creativity boosting techniques. The PlayShop for The Sims 2 team accelerated innovative idea-generation, creating 256 new and actionable ideas in 1-hour (a world record, as far as we know). The Sims, now in its 4th version, has sold over 175 million copies.Pogo.comConducted expert design reviews to increase retention and conversion rates for Pogo.com one of the first online game portals. Identified what caused players to leave and not return. The XEODesign Review created a simple strategic design solution for their entire game portfolio, resulting in 20-40% improvement in key engagement metrics. A follow-on XEO PlayShop taught proprietary ideation techniques for designing new player experiences.Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

San Francisco Bay Area, California, Us

Over 40 projects with PlayFirst to help them turn the smash hit of Diner Dash into a blockbusting franchise later acquired by Glu and now EA.Diner Dash, Wedding Dash, Chocolatier, and Dream ChroniclesPlayer Experience ResearchConducted over 40 player studies in our custom player lab. Gathered customer feedback on virtually every PC title from Diner Dash 2 on. We worked closely with PlayFirst's producers to identify factors that prevented play and those that reduced the fun factor. The steady input of customer feedback (almost one study a month) was a critical ingredient to growing Diner Dash into a best selling franchise. Played a crucial role in identifying what customers liked to help PlayFirst grow Diner Dash into a $40+ million franchise with over 1 billion downloads to date. This makes Diner Dash one of the most popular and recognizable gaming franchises of all time.Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Addressed critical usability issues, problem solved with teams, and offered workarounds to improve the player experience for a dozen LucasArts titles. Provided expert analysis on the player experience to help the team tune "The Force" for emerging platforms. Helped team overcome controller’s technical limits such as the Wii's 4 axis controller to deliver a player experience that felt like “The Force.” Titles include Star Wars Light Saber Duels for the Wii, Indiana Jones for the Wii (and PS2), Clone Wars for the DS, The Force Unleashed, Thrillville, and Battlefront III.Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

Los Angeles, Ca, Us

Edmonton, Alberta, Ca

A week after the iPhone released I designed the first iPhone game called Tilt. Joe Hewitt did the brilliant hack, and Colin Toomey did the art.http://joehewitt.com/2007/07/09/iphonedevcampNow the game is called Tilt World for iOS and players have used it to plant 6,000 trees on the island of Madagascar. http://TiltWorld.com Download link: http://bit.ly/TiltWorld

Eagle, Id, Us

Pleo the robotic dinosaurIdentified new ways for people to lengthen player engagement with Pleo the robotic dinosaur, for the creators of Furby.Researched customer reactions during in home longitudinal studies with online journals. Used this data to design and recommend new ways to have fun with Pleo. The field research identified new play patterns and strategic design opportunities for downloadable content, creating an entertainment platform as well as options for future entertainment robots. Conducted a XEO PlayShop with the team to illustrate new opportunities for engagement with a revised emotion model for the robots under development.Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

Burbank, Ca, Us

Bellevue, Wa, Us

San Jose, Ca, Us

Designed fun UI that were also all business for Roxio's flagship products Easy CD Creator v5-7 and Toast Titanium (Mac CD ROM burning software.)"It may be an oft-used cliché, but the best really has just got better. Titanium 5.0 has to be one of the most highly recommended products ever.” – MacWorld Review of Roxio’s Toast Titanium

Seattle, Wa, Us

Provided design and player research services for dozens of titles and toys for the LeapPad, Leapster, and other innovative hand-held platforms. In fact at the time of LeapFrog’s IPO XEODesign provided most of their formal player testing. We gathered critical data from kids that helped shape new technologies for the LeapPad and Leapster such as erasable markers, character recognition, and ultimately the Fly Pentop Computer.Improved the usability of the audio interface and the ergonomics of holding the pen. The challenge was how to prototype a player experience before the hardware was ready. XEODesign prototyped the Fly Pentop Computer’s audio user interface by duct taping a battery to a ballpoint pen and reading a script.Free white papers, infographics, and videos on how game emotion drives engagement http://xeodesign.com

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Contributed to IGDA White Paper on Casual Games.

Brandon, Manitoba, Ca

Spearheaded an alliance with the International Interactive Communications Society (IICS) to expand SFSU's Multimedia Studies Program course offering that was later copied by universities around the world. Solicited instructors. Approved curriculum and course instructors. Taught Intermediate Interface Design (30hrs), and Rapid Prototyping (14hrs), and HyperCard. Authored Interface Design Instructor's Guide.

Designed the first body grammer for camera games for an Interval Research startup called Electric Planet. This was 5 years before the Sony Eye Toy 2003 and 12 years before the Microsoft Kinect 2010.

San Diego, Ca, Us

Provided the first multiplayer user research study for Sony's Online game shows: Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, The Dating Game, and Trivial Pursuit. These multiplayer browser games matched players over the internet. Our research brought that experience to the designers by running simultaneous lab studies complete with player video.

Stadt Hamburg, De

Provided supplemental QA services including coding a downloadable patch for the Total Distortion CD ROM post-ship.

Amstelveen, Nl