Kellian Adams Pletcher is the mastermind behind Green Door Labs, which builds location-based, transmedia games for museums and non-profits. Kids and adults alike use smartphones, pencil and paper, and other tools to learn the stories behind art, what life was like on the Oregon Trail, how to use a library, and more. Green Door Labs’ experiences leverage existing resources and platforms to make the design of fun, interactive experience accessible to any organization, no matter what the budget. From her international experience as an educator in China to working with one of the first mobile payment apps, Kellian brings a wealth of experience and passion to these pursuits.
In this interview, Kellian and I talk about the value of gamification to learning; the company’s roots in social location-based gaming platform SCVNGR, which became LevelUp; the replay value and portability of games designed for specific locations; the advantages of Green Door Labs’ own platform, Edventure Builder, to Inform and Twine; how Green Door Labs compares and contrasts to live experiences such as escape rooms or augmented reality games like Pokémon GO; how to get adults to cosplay when they think dress-up is for kids; and Club Drosselmeyer, her interactive swing club with live actors and puzzles.
Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Green Door Labs
- Kellian on Twitter
- The Edventure Builder
- Edventure Builder’s museum games, including Oregon Trail
- Jason Scott tweets about The Oregon Trail’s popularity
- Portland Museum of Art’s PMA Go
- LevelUp by SCVNGR
- “Boston Startups: How Entrepreneurship Trickles Down” by John Valentine
- The way we think about charity is dead wrong, a TED Talk by Dan Pallotta
- Club Drosselmeyer
- The Green Door by O. Henry
Podcast: Download (Duration: 58:10 — 27.5MB) | Embed
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