Zach Swerdzewski

Past work · Games for families

Disney Interactive Worlds

Playful for kids, legible for parents—systems that had to earn trust at scale.

Context
Disney Infinity, Club Penguin, Pixie Hollow—shared UX patterns, safety, and economy across titles.
Role
Sr. Experience Designer · Game UX Engineer
Timeline
2011 – 2012
Personal note

Disney was one of those rare roles where craft and care had to stay in balance. I was designing for kids, but also for parents, moderators, and learning teams who needed safe, clear systems behind the scenes.

Work spanned Club Penguin, Disney Infinity, and Pixie Hollow—from avatar and economy flows to parent-validated rewards and cross-device UX. The through-line was always simple: make it fun for kids, and trustworthy for families.

01

Foundations

Understanding the multi-game ecosystem

Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online world (2005–2017) with a wide range of games and social activities for kids.

  • Player archetypes — Defined workflows for kids, parents, moderators, and Disney Learning teams across console, mobile, and tablet.
  • Core loops — Mapped avatar creation, friends lists, in-game rewards, and microtransaction behaviors.
  • Safety systems — Integrated COPPA-aligned mechanics including permissions, blocking, and parent-validated rewards.
  • Device ergonomics — Adapted UX for children’s motor skills, account switching, and iPad landscape touch patterns.

Wireframes · social, safety, and game loops

Early flows for friends, moderation, inventory, quests, and avatar tools—how dense game UX stayed understandable for kids while still supporting ops and design reviews.

Adding or blocking friends

Blocking friends

Hover and touch states

Understanding actions

Dashboard and progress

Achievements and items

Using items

Pet avatar companions

Quests and radial menus

Site audits for features

Footer game actions menu

Customizing your avatar

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02

Systems design

Designing scalable game UX for kids

These systems had to repeat across games without fragmenting—identity, social graph, economy, and navigation all needed shared logic so kids weren’t relearning patterns title to title.

  • Avatar & identity — Designed simplified avatar creation and editing for players as young as six.
  • Social graph — Built flows for friends lists, safe chat, blocking, and moderated interactions.
  • Economy UX — Structured point conversion, microtransactions, achievements, badges, and inventory systems.
  • IA architecture — Created consolidated navigation models across games and parent-child touchpoints.
Child navigating ecosystem
Parent creating a child account
Child creating a character

Reference · Club Penguin trailer

Context for the era and tone—muted autoplay; unmute from the player if you want audio.

03

Education layer

Building parent-child reward flows

  • Learning incentives — Partnered with Disney Learning to design parent-validated rewards tied to math, spelling, and vocabulary mini-games.
  • Multi-device access — Delivered Kindle and iPad prototypes for parent approval and account management.
  • Progress visibility — Developed dashboard structures for child progress, unlocked rewards, and parent tasks.
  • Interaction pathways — Crafted ergonomic flows for parents reviewing tasks while kids navigated game worlds.

Information architecture · flows and structure

Cross-title flows for mini-games, actions, feature removal, avatar creation, and storage—how the portfolio hung together for parents, kids, and internal teams.

Mini games layout flow

Action flow

Removing features flow

Avatar creation

File storage groups

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04

Outcomes & delivery

Impact at scale, and what we shipped

Outcomes

Scale and safety at Disney—one of the largest kid-focused social footprints, and the product patterns (family UX, trust, gamification) I still design around today.

200M+ registered users — among the largest kid-safe online communities built.

  • Safe social for kids — a platform shaped around moderation, parent controls, and kid-safe communication.
  • Ecosystem contribution — helped support engagement models and parent–child interaction systems across Disney’s kid-focused digital stack.

That aligns directly with:

  • Family UX — flows that work for parents and kids in parallel.
  • Trust & safety — defaults, guardrails, and explainable controls.
  • Gamified systems — reward loops and progression without dark patterns.

Delivery

Cross-platform game UX specifications—production flows, IA packages, and handoff kits across Disney’s kids’ gaming portfolio.

  • High-fidelity screens — Production-ready flows for avatar workflows, social systems, and reward validation.
  • IA packages — Navigation trees, page templates, and modular UI components across titles.
  • Gameplay workflows — End-to-end UX specifications for console, tablet, and mobile.
  • Handoff kits — Annotated wireframes, flow maps, and references for engineering and game UI art.