Experience design + learning / 2024
Good Germs
A multisensory STEM game that invites children to meet the microorganisms helping their bodies work.
Experience + game designer
Children ages 6 to 12
Multisensory installation
12 participants
Children are often taught to understand germs only as something dirty or dangerous. Good Germs reframes the microbial world through the digestive system, showing how communities of microorganisms live inside us, respond to what we eat, and contribute to health.
The questionHow might an invisible and often frightening scientific subject become a physical game children can understand through touch, movement, smell, and play?
Use the body as the map.
A large human figure turns the digestive tract into a visible journey from eating to digestion and waste. The experience combines short facts with a clear spatial sequence so children can connect the idea of a microbiome to a body they already recognize.
Pick a food. Feed the body. Change the path.
Children choose a ball of food, decide whether it is helpful or less helpful, and feed it into the installation. They then move different germ characters through the digestive system to see how food choices can change what happens inside the body. The loop is deliberately simple so they can try again and compare outcomes.
Replace fear with curiosity.
Colorful tactile pieces make different microorganisms easy to distinguish, while facts and sensory prompts connect the game to real experiences such as food, taste, and smell. Children can handle, discuss, and even take a germ character with them, extending the learning beyond the wall.
A science lesson became a vivid, shared experience.
By combining a recognizable body, repeatable game mechanics, tactile characters, and surprising facts, Good Germs helped children understand that the microbial world is complex and essential, not simply threatening.