Areas of Expertise
Experience Strategy
Experiential & Branded Narrative Development
Early-stage Creative Development
Interaction Design for LBE
Interdisciplinary Team Leadership
Philosophy
I believe in the potential of interactive entertainment to provide meaningful impact for the audience, lasting beyond the experience. When we engage with interactive experiences, we open up to new perspectives and ways of seeing the world—and ourselves. In harnessing this opportunity, I aim to evolve the stories we tell about ourselves.
Background
Over my career, I’ve worn many hats, often several at the same time—creative technologist, executive producer, account director, experience strategist, and briefly, mo-cap performer. Regardless of role, my work lives at the intersection of innovative storytelling and creative technology in live, immersive experiences.
Grounded in an audience-centric approach to experience design, I specialize in distilling strategic foundations and core narrative with partners, clients, and creative leads, developing a purposeful framework and north star for concept development. As the champion for that creative strategy, I lead teams to develop compelling experiences from a “blank page,” from initial concept through design and execution to installation and operation. With a penchant for creative problem solving within storytelling, experience design, and team management, I thrive in balancing competing interests to charter the best path forward, ultimately creating a meaningful experience for the audience that delivers on strategic objectives.
Satisfying both my inner theater kid and persistently curious mind, my joy and fulfillment comes from making intuitive, immersive experiences with like-minded collaborators through quality storytelling and creative strategy, a passion I've brought to start-ups, Fortune-500 companies, non-profits, and academia.
I hold a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon.
Specialties
- Managing interdisciplinary teams of creatives, designers, developers, and engineers
- Establishing experiential narratives and journeys through copious research, creative briefs, ideation facilitation, and team development
- Defining strategic frameworks and distilling insights to deliver audience impact.
Email
c.ichniowski [at] gmail.com