Writing
A decade of essays, articles, and research on learning, AI, and what happens when you put real tools in front of real people.
The Most Important AI Skill Isn't Prompting. It's Asking for Help.
Almost every student knows how to get AI to finish their homework. Almost none know how to ask it to teach them. The difference isn't a better prompt — it's a better learner.
Read article →Selected Writing
Why AI Abstinence Policies Are Backfiring
Blanket school bans on AI are failing — students use it anyway. The more important conversation is about when AI helps thinking and when it replaces it.
Essay · 2025
5 Ways Books Can Empower Play — LEGO Case Study
A year of design research with struggling readers in Denver Public Schools. The key finding: books only matter to kids when reading is essential to the play itself.
Case Study · 2023
Why Kids Work Hard at Fortnite, Not Frog and Toad
Game mechanics motivate children in ways traditional reading never could. What that gap reveals about how we design learning experiences.
Article · 2023
The Death of Curiosity
Companies say they value innovation — but reject vulnerability, own the answer instead of the question, and stay too busy fighting fires. The SXSW talk and essay that named the pattern.
Essay · 2019
Why Personalized Learning Keeps Failing
Adaptive systems promise individualized education but consistently underdeliver. A design research perspective on why the model keeps breaking down.
Essay · 2019
The 5 Reasons Remote Classrooms Fail
Four years of research with Title 1 students reveals the structural reasons why online learning breaks down — and why it's not the teacher's fault.
Essay · 2020
Question Based Reading
How Wonder Stories uses inquiry-based learning — embedded questions, bite-sized text, and immediate feedback — to help children build reading confidence.
Article · 2020
Like the Help Button, Khanmigo Will Fail to Help My Underrepresented Students
AI tutoring tools assume students will ask for help. The kids who need it most never do — and designing around that assumption changes everything.
Essay · 2023
3 Pillars of Teacher Adoption for Edtech
Three months of research with Classcraft revealed why teachers sign up for edtech and never use it. The fix isn't better features — it's designing for Thursday afternoon.
Essay · 2023
Five Years Building Wonder.io With the Kids Who Needed It Most
Over five years, 70+ versions, and hundreds of hours with Boys & Girls Club students. What eye tracking and emotion sensors taught us about reluctant readers.
Case Study · 2021
How a Tennis Ball Increased Lowe's Vacuum Sales by 9%
Lowe's had 14 vacuums and customers who couldn't choose. A fake store, stress sensors, and one unexpected insight about suction led to 150+ design changes.
Case Study · 2020
Level Up: Building an AI Writing Coach That Doesn't Do the Writing
We built a free Google Docs add-on that gives students personalized writing feedback without writing for them. The hard problem was keeping AI in the right role.
Case Study · 2023
These Kids Aren't Lazy. They're Anxious.
Middle schoolers were randomly clicking through diagnostic tests. Eye tracking and stress sensors revealed it wasn't apathy — and the messaging designed to help was making it worse.
Case Study · 2021
The Neuroscience of Struggling Readers
Why children who struggle with reading often need harder books, not easier ones — and what the neuroscience behind frustration and challenge reveals.
Essay · 2018
LEGO Technic: When Better Instructions Made Everything Worse
LEGO Technic redesigned their digital building instructions — cleaner animations, clearer steps. Kids were more stressed than ever. What the stress sensors revealed.
Case Study · 2022
Empowering Parents as Teachers
Ask a mother if she wants to help her child read and she'll say yes. Give her a teaching app and it will likely never be used. The app worked; the parents didn't use it — two different problems.
Case Study · 2019
From "I Won't Read a Paragraph" to "Can We Play Again?"
Boys & Girls Club students refused to read a single paragraph. After iterating on the reading experience — coin systems, bite-sized reveals, Wonder Questions — the same kids were asking to go again.
Case Study · 2021
Understanding the Digital Math Experience
19 children, eye tracking glasses, and MOXO sensors. The prototype worked in the classroom — alone at a screen, children fell apart. Classroom pedagogy doesn't transfer to solo digital learning.
Case Study · 2019
Adding Rewards to Digital Lessons
The avatar system was perfectly designed. Students didn't care about it at all. They wanted acknowledgment tied to academic achievement — not cosmetic rewards disconnected from learning.
Case Study · 2020
Gamification + Learning with Education.com
Travelling the US testing software in homes, 15 paper prototype games, and one core finding: most educational games are designed to be completed, not returned to. The rubric that changed that.
Case Study · 2018
A Rubric for Making Engaging Educational Games
Most educational games fail because designers assume kids will accept games they themselves wouldn't play. The 5 foundational pieces that decide whether a game works — or gets abandoned after two minutes.
Research · 2023In the Press
Improving the Emotional Experience of Kids with Autism
How wearable emotion sensors can help children with autism and ADHD communicate their emotional experience during therapy.
The 74An Antidote to Plagiarism
A new app uses AI to help students think critically — rather than write for them.
SXSWEduHow Youth Use GenAI: Time to Rethink Plagiarism
Recorded session on how young people use generative AI and what it means for education.
Popular ScienceCan We Make Ourselves More Empathetic?
How biometric sensors and design research are changing what it means to truly understand another person's experience.
ScholasticMotivating Children to Show Up to Reading
What design research reveals about getting reluctant readers genuinely engaged — not just compliant.
PatchWonder Stories: Proven to Engage Child Readers Like Digital Games
How an interactive mystery app keeps children reading four times longer than traditional books.
MIT NewsWearable Device Reveals Consumer Emotions
Coverage of mPath and the MOXO sensor — measuring stress, frustration, and engagement in real environments.
Wired JapanThe Science of Emotion
How measuring physiological arousal in real environments is redefining empathy in product design.
WiredHow Sensors That Test Our Stress Could Revolutionize Product Design
Stress-sensing wearables and their application to design research and product development.
InformationWeekCan Data Teach Us Empathy?
How combining sensors, data, and design thinking gives organizations genuine empathy for user experience.
LiveScienceHow Wearable Tech Could Improve Your Mental Health
How devices tracking physiological data could identify anxiety triggers and support mental health.
HuffPostThe Quantified Spouse Movement
Coverage of biometric tracking in everyday life, including work on measuring emotional experience.
Metropolis MagazineSelect 10: Up-and-Coming Designers
mPath named among the top ten up-and-coming design practices.
Core77Interactive Sessions on Understanding Data and Human Behavior
Elliott's presentation on understanding data at the IIT Design Research Conference.
Academic Work
Conference papers, journal articles, and dissertation research.
Wireless Measurement of Sympathetic Arousal During Therapy
Frontiers in Neuroscience. EDA sensors measuring physiological arousal in children during occupational therapy.
Journal Article · 2020Motivating Struggling Readers
ELO Conference. Why some children disengage from reading — and what design can do about it.
Conference Paper · 2021Effective Feedback Depends on Emotional Weight
AERA 2018. The emotional context around feedback determines whether students use it or ignore it.
Conference Paper · 2018Beyond Consent: 6 Ways of Bringing Equity into Neuroscience
What responsible research looks like when measuring physiological responses in historically excluded communities.
Essay · 2019Thick Psychophysiology for Empathic Design
Doctoral dissertation. Using physiological measurement as a tool for building genuine empathy in the design process.
Dissertation · 2014Digital Math Has a Guessing Crisis
Most digital math tools reward guessing over thinking. Why that matters, and what it would take to fix it.
Essay · 2019What Parents Want in an Educational App
What testing prototypes with real families revealed. The answer is almost never what edtech companies are building.
Essay · 20197 Ways to Help Kids Feel Like They Are Learning
The gap between learning something and feeling like you learned it — and why it shapes whether kids keep going.
Essay · 2018The 6 Steps to Infusing Literature with Engaging Questions
A practical framework for embedding critical thinking into reading, developed through years of work with struggling readers.
Essay · 2018