Craig Ferguson

Skills

Python/Django

Unity3D

C#

HTML5/CSS/LESS

MySQL

Research/Data Design

Product Design

UI/UX Design

Game Design

Habit Formation Psychology

Photoshop

Animation/Spine

Mario Kart

Tetris 99

Active Projects

The Guardians: Unite the Realms is a game that rewards you for doing anything that's meaningful to you. Designed to help people who are suffering from depression, The Guardians uses a technique known as behavioral activation to break players out of reinforcing depressive episodes using the power of in-game rewards.

I am the game designer, game director, animation, writer, art director, and developer for The Guardians. It is the product of three years of dedicated research, studies, development, and iteration to perfect the art of motivating people through in-game rewards. Of course, I couldn't have done it without my amazing fellow researchers, wonderful artists, and of course, Roz Picard for having faith in me and this project.

The Guardians has already helped thousands of people, and if you know of anyone who could use a little extra motivation, I urge you to send them a link. (The app will always be free and will never have any ads, so what do you have to lose?!)

With the success of The Guardians: Unite the Realms, I'm hard at work on a sequel that will expand on the first, add more mechanics and content, and explore the far off realm of Paradise Island! Collect more pets, unlock exciting new activities, help the Guardians of the island, and more importantly, help yourself live a better life!

I urge you to visit the website to sign up for the newsletter and be notified when it launches!

Professional Experience

As the platforms engineer I worked with students to create the platform and software required for their research. In all projects I designed the user experience and interface, implemented all aspects, and deployed and managed all servers and apps.

Guardians Project

I created the Guardians Project to help everyone with those daily habits we all know we should be doing, but still don't do (going to bed on time, eating healthier, exercising, etc.) The Guardians is a series of mobile games I designed that would provide in-game rewards not for watching ads or paying money, but for doing real life beneficial activities. In this project I was the game designer, director, writer, art director, and developer for all mobile games and platforms. We published showing the proof of concept and eventually released The Guardians: Unite the Realms on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which has helped nearly ten thousand people and counting!

Miscellaneous Project Highlights

StoryScape Story Creation Overview A platform that let children create their own custom animated and interactive storybooks, which was used as a therapy for children with autism
Story Keepers Example Pitch Deck A children's toy and attached storytelling platform, and developed the product, app, and a pitch deck
QuantifyMe Project Overview An Android app that let users create their own self studies to determine what habits are best for them
Tonguely Example Screenshot An Android app that collects pictures and videos of tongues to determine stress levels
SPRING Project Page A custom shape sorter toy that uses custom rewards to encourage play
Dialog Project Page A website that connects to AI chatbots to let users chat with and evaluate various chatbots

Helped Spot dance for baseball games in Japan and for a viral music video, and refactored/fixed Spot's dance software to be able to be sold and used by clients.

I created and designed a brand new internal analytics application to keep track of subscribers and analyses of their custom subscription system. I also performed maintenance on their old e-commerce site, bringing it into the 21st century with modern front end technologies.

I designed and created the website to sell monthly snack box subscriptions, as well as the backend for subscription management, tracking, and billing. I also created an ecommerce site designed specifically for plush toys, but that was never officially launched. I also was in charge of hiring and training our first engineer hire, who took over after I left.

I created new Job Board project in Python, and led initiative that caused the entire site to be reimplemented from PHP to Django, because real frameworks are better than old, janky custom ones.

I was on a team of four to create a cloud management system to manage and monitor cloud systems, including AWS and others that no longer exist. I also mplemented the backend for a fingerprint scanning system for a national gym chain, among other contracting work.