Carrie Robinson
Experiments Prototypes Curiosity

Things I made
just because.

Not every tangent gets deployed.

See the projects
Independent projectsBuilt for the web

01 / Side projects

An interesting idea is usually
enough to get me started.

Small projects where research, information design, and product thinking get to play a little.

A commercial real estate career simulator Deal FlowNew Orleans Build a pipeline. Negotiate deals. Try to survive year one.
01Domain modeling / Game experiment

Trying to make a complex field more accessible

Commercial real estate is a very complex field. What started as a question about how to make commercial real estate more accessible to practitioners just getting started turned into a career simulator. Choose an asset class, build a pipeline, negotiate deals, manage cash, pursue education, and see whether your business survives its first year.

Deal Flow: the idea & the build

What I built

A browser-based Intro to Commercial Real Estate simulator that integrates association-related benefits and resources with beginner CRE terminology.

What I was exploring

Can you make a really complex topic fun, accessible and educational while also communicating a value proposition, in this case the tangible value of professional association membership?

What I learned

Well, it turns out I am neither a commercial real estate practitioner nor a game designer. The concept was interesting, but the actual product turned out to be not that fun or valuable. Building it gave me a much better appreciation for the difficulty of modeling a system accurately and designing an experience people will enjoy.

React · JavaScript · Game systems · Domain modeling · Interaction design · Testing · Claude Code · Codex

Play the game View the code
A scavenger hunt for brave humans Talking toStrangers Find a stranger. Talk and observe. Repeat 30x.
02Research translation / Web experiment

From behavioral study to interactive tool

I found a study about a week-long interpersonal scavenger hunt designed to reduce people's anxiety about talking to strangers. I thought the intervention sounded interesting, so I built my own lightweight web version.

Talking to Strangers: the idea & the build

The spark

Researchers Gillian Sandstrom, Erica Boothby, and Gus Cooney tested a scavenger-hunt intervention in which participants repeatedly found, approached, and talked to strangers. The repeated experience made participants less pessimistic about rejection and more confident in their conversational ability.

My version

I translated the basic premise into a React app with 30 task cards. Each card includes optional conversation starters, and players can mark whether they talked to or simply observed the person they found.

What I added

The app tracks completion, saves progress locally on the user's device, lets players add notes about what stood out, and gives the experience more structure and interactivity than a static list.

React · Interaction design · Claude Code

Read the study that inspired it
Play the scavenger hunt

More eventually

02 / Get in touch

Got an idea
worth chasing?

Want to talk about one of these, or about a project that connects communications, information, and digital work? I’d like to hear about it.

carrietrobinson@icloud.com