Welcome to my portfolio. I’m Natalie Lyon, and I specialize in making games for kids. I am the Interactive Technology Manager at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, where I produce and provide oversight of the design, production, development, project management, implementation, and maintenance of the games, creative media, and learning technology in the exhibits.
Previously, I worked as an Instructional Technologist for Indiana University for over three years, making custom games and tech tools and managing outside and LMS tools for hybrid and online courses, and also taught in the Computer Science Department. Before that, I earned an M.S. in Digital Media from Drexel University. As a game developer/researcher, I participated in the design of several behavioral therapy games for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. For my thesis, I created a framework for using digital learning games to teach speech skills to children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, and created a related two-player cooperative mobile game for learning speech skills like expressive and receptive prosody. I also have a B.A. in linguistics at Dartmouth College. In between, I spent a year working in my hometown at the Indianapolis Public Library Learning Curve creating games programming for kids to promote technological literacy.
Whether for work or fun, I’ve always been interested in the intersection of games, art, science, and technology, and how we can learn all of them. Through my time as a lab assistant in a Dartmouth Cognitive Neuroscience laboratory examining animacy and the Uncanny Valley effect, I got a glimpse into how the human brain handles all of that at once. I worked in labs at Eli Lilly and IUPUI at a young age on projects that sparked my scientific curiosity. I also got the chance to work with developmentally disabled children the summer after high school and have had an interest in teaching ever since, so I continued to be a tutor through college.
While in Philadelphia, I worked on projects involving 3D animation (including for full domes), game design, virtual reality, and speech and language learning, while also working at the Univesity of Pennsylvania in the Weigle Information Commons at Van Pelt library. Over there, I got to teach workshops on design and ed-tech topics, and I also work on some web, video, and design projects for the library while helping out with teaching, events, and managing the space.
My resume is available here: Resume