- How does play fit into the context of innovation?
- How does that early curiosity (like baseball cards) and the way you grow up still shape how you work today?
- How do games like rock, paper, scissors show us that there is more we have in common than our differences?
- Are we wrong to think that play is just for children? What type of power can it hold in a professional, clinical, and even life-or-death context?
Welcome to Project Inclusion – where we explore groundbreaking ideas in impact. I’m Mindy Eng, and today, Fanny Krivoy and I are joined by Criswell Lappin, a design thinker, an innovator, and the creative genius behind how we can cut through the red tape to create better conversations and better health outcomes for underserved communities by bringing play into the clinic.
Criswell is a creative and strategic design leader with over 20 years of experience shaping innovative teams and collaboration systems. He’s guided design strategy for enterprise platforms, developed design systems, and mentored hundreds of designers, with clients ranging from Apple to St. Joseph’s Health. He’s led product design teams at companies like Bigtincan—one of Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies. And he also teaches design at Montclair State University and the Stevens Institute of Technology.
Today, we’ll dive into how play can be a catalyst for innovation and how even the most traditional settings like an exam room can benefit from using the mechanics of play and games to spark new conversation and build trust between very different communities.
Let’s dive right in!
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Fanny: Criswell, welcome to Project Inclusion—so nice to continue the conversation we started when you visited our NYU class. To begin, can you tell us about your background and what inspired you to focus on Design for Impact?
Criswell: Thanks, Mindy and Fanny, for having me—both now and at NYU. I’m a father of two teenage boys. I’m also a teacher and design consultant, and I play a little volleyball. I was born in Germany, moved to the U.S. as a baby, and grew up in the Southeast—which explains my long syllables. I went to RISD for grad school in the late ’90s and moved to New York in ’97 for about 20 years. I’ve always been drawn to future-facing design and have worked across different arenas.
On “impact,” I think about it in two ways. First is the literal point of impact—what people see and how they engage with it, then how it affects them. As a kid I collected baseball cards: the front was visual; the back was data. That’s a good metaphor for my work—create compelling front-end experiences and study the data behind them. The second meaning is empathy—understanding people and their conditions. I grew up with a younger brother who was disabled, which shaped my worldview: being patient, caregiving from near and far, and trying to help. Those two threads—craft and empathy—drive me.
Mindy: How did play become a focus in your work, and how does it set the stage for better conversations?
Criswell: In undergrad at Western Carolina University, I double-majored in design and art education. Later in New York I worked with the Institute of Play, founded by game designer Katie Salen. They embedded a game design studio in a NYC public school, growing from 6th grade up to a full 6–12 school. They pulled me in to expand ideas beyond the building. I wasn’t a game designer by training, but working with game and curriculum designers taught me about game strategy, reframing failure as iteration, informal vs. group learning, and more.
Since then, whether teaching (SVA, now Montclair State and Stevens Institute) or managing teams, I integrate game design strategy into workflows and workshops. I like hands-on sessions with everyday materials—paper clips, rubber bands, sticky notes—so people can combine “things that don’t go together” and discover new interactions. In business, you’re often merging processes or software that weren’t designed to fit. Play helps you change the environment to increase the odds of success.
Fanny: Why is play important in research and workshops? Maybe this is a good segue to your recent project at St. Joseph’s.
Criswell: Play gives people permission to approach problems differently. It’s less formal and lowers the stakes, so people try again without feeling threatened. I tell teams it will get loud and a little chaotic, and at the right stage that’s productive.
At St. Joseph’s Health, which is very clinical and analytical, finding an internal champion who embraced a different way of working was critical. That support made the program possible.
Fanny: Are some games better than others for this—competitive games with winners vs. games that build connection?
Criswell: I like to start with simple, familiar mechanics. I often open lectures by asking about Rock-Paper-Scissors—everyone knows it, but rules vary. We talk about those differences and then run a quick tournament. It energizes the room and resets the experience.
Another is musical chairs. We play it once, then modify one element—blindfolds, chairs flipped, pausing the music multiple times—and compare how the change affects comfort, engagement, and replayability.
At St. Joseph’s we tested familiar community games—Dominoes, Mancala, pickup sticks—modifying them to see how small tweaks changed the experience inside an exam room.
Mindy: How did that play into the project at St. Joseph’s? What was the original ask, and how did you integrate play?
Criswell: The brief actually included designing a game. The Center for Innovation’s director, Sean Ferry—my former colleague at Fahrenheit 212—had an internal champion, advanced practice nurse Stephanie Matthews. The ask: help pregnant women in Paterson, NJ, ask more clinical questions earlier in the nurse–patient relationship. Nurses reported that after sharing results and standard information, Q&A often fell flat—few questions came.
Through interviews with patients and caregivers, we learned women felt more comfortable when they discovered shared experiences with their providers—IVF, past loss, housing insecurity, etc. But nurses didn’t typically share personal context early on. To spark two-way sharing, we tested simple mechanics. We tried sketching, modified dominoes (topics instead of dots), pickup sticks using exam room materials, and Mancala variations.
We landed on a simple “Would You Rather?” card game. Each card pairs two topics pulled from real clinical questions. Each person picks one and explains why. That prompts stories on both sides—about exercise, food, hopes for the baby—and often reveals common ground. The vibe in the room shifts.
We then ran a two-hour community workshop with local leaders, women from Paterson, and hospital staff. They played, modified the game, and shared experiences of pregnancy and birth as women of color in Paterson. The hospital has since printed a formal set and we’re shaping a beta to collect data and measure impact.
Fanny: Fascinating—we can’t wait to hear what you learn. In your facilitation work, has there been an outcome that surprised you and still sticks with you?
Criswell: This project stands out. Hearing weekly stories from nurses has been powerful. The word pairings allow nurses, doulas, or midwives to take conversations in clinical directions when appropriate—or simply build rapport, which also matters because these relationships continue throughout the pregnancy.
One midwife told me about a 19-year-old patient with a history of sexual abuse who refused a pelvic exam. The midwife asked Stephanie to bring the game in. A couple of minutes later, there was laughter. They were sharing stories about food—sauces for pasta. The mood changed. The patient then began asking about delivery options she hadn’t known about. Even impacting one person like that is deeply resonant.
Mindy: Play can transform relationships and help people see each other as human, even across differences. Reflecting on your work, what do you wish more people talked about or acted on?
Criswell: Informal learning from human interaction. Post-COVID, many teams hadn’t worked in offices. Observing body language and reactions in person—like how a nurse engages with a prototype—teaches you things screens can’t. I respect tech and AI, but I’m spending time on person-to-person observation again—what a friend jokingly called “Cardboard Dominoes”: making things by hand and watching how people interact. I even took a semester in grad school without a computer to see how it changed outcomes. I’m doing a bit of that now.
Fanny: The physicality seems crucial—being there, sensing the room’s energy, overhearing laughter. Even vicarious play can shift someone’s mood.
Criswell: Yes. And having allies is critical. Without Stephanie, we couldn’t have moved this forward with the same momentum. Her engagement is 80% of the success; otherwise you’re an outsider and progress stalls.
Fanny: It sounds like you’ve changed a lot of minds. When was the last time someone changed yours?
Criswell: The three people I live with—my wife and two sons—change my perspective constantly. My wife shares podcasts and resources, especially around teenage (male) mental health and screens. My older son finished high school, explored college, then pursued EMT training with the local ambulance unit. My younger son’s summer plans fell through, so he started an auto-detailing business. Watching them chart their own paths helps me step back and widen my perspective—like a micro-repeat of lessons from growing up with my brother.
Mindy: As a parent now, what’s the worst piece of advice you’ve heard?
Criswell: Not “worst,” but “pursue your passion” needs a caveat. A mentor, Roger Mader, stressed planning for multiple futures. Passion is great, but there isn’t only one path, and you don’t control all variables. Be flexible and approach it from multiple angles.
Fanny: What’s the last piece of advice you’ve given someone?
Criswell: I repeat four things to my kids, students, and teams:
1. Plan on multiple futures—especially in business.
2. Focus on what you can control—worrying about what you can’t leads nowhere.
3. Aim for 1% better—small weekly gains compound into transformation.
4. Prioritize who you work with over what you do—relationships lead to interesting work.
My current projects all came through my network, like Sean texting me about St. Joe’s because he knew my mission-driven focus.
Mindy: What’s next for you?
Criswell: Teaching at Montclair State and continuing and expanding the St. Joe’s project—now called Prefieris (Spanish for “Would You Rather,” reflecting that two-thirds of our audience speaks Spanish at home). I’m helping Harmony Labs evolve their brand to be more editorial and narrative, and I partner with small dev-led tech companies to scale their design systems, UI, and UX. On the personal side, I’m playing (terrible) golf with my younger son and dreaming about renting an RV to visit national parks and minor league ballparks.
Fanny: That all sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing your wisdom—we may turn some of those quotes into posters! Good luck on the golf course.
Criswell: Thanks, Fanny and Mindy—great to be here.
Thank you for joining Mindy and I, in this conversation with Criswell on how play and games can be used to break down barriers and bring communities together for better health outcomes. Find out more about Criswell’s work and how to reach him in our show notes.
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