INNOVATION Magazine Summer 2025
Nichole Rouillac shares with IDSA's INNOVATION Magazine how the story of Nex Playground – a gaming system that reimagines how families interact with technology – is one of bold ideas, expert collaboration, and an exceptional design partnership.
Simply Fun
By Nichole Rouillac
Great products don’t emerge from a vacuum. They are the result of trust, shared vision, and an unwavering commitment to quality. The story of Nex Playground, a gaming system that reimagines how families interact with technology, is one of bold ideas, expert collaboration, and an exceptional design partnership.
As the industrial design partner for Nex, level helped connect Nex with an engineering partner who was instrumental in developing Playground, keeping the program on schedule and aligned with the quality standards essential to Nex’s brand. Together, level and Nex reimagined the play-at-home experience through a blend of thoughtful design and cutting-edge AI-powered gameplay, developing a breakthrough product that has sold over 200,000 units since its launch in December 2023.
Starting a Partnership
Nex began as a mobile-first company, developing motion-based games for smartphones. Their early success was built around a clear ethos: making gameplay simple, active, and fun. But despite their traction in the app space, Nex recognized a limitation: the small screen wasn’t delivering the full-body, shared experience they envisioned.
When Nex first approached level, they weren’t fully committed to building hardware. While they were exploring the idea, they knew the path would be challenging. Entering a crowded, competitive category dominated by gaming giants would require new capabilities, significant investment, and a lot of risk.
Recognizing the importance of industrial design in making this vision real, Nex’s leadership sought a partner who could bring a fresh perspective, technical expertise, and a deep understanding of their audience.
“When we first began looking for Industrial Design agencies, I was struck by level's execution quality and diverse perspective, which both aligned perfectly with our ethos and with Nex's target demographic. We chose level because they demonstrated an understanding of how much is at stake for companies at our stage,” Nex VP of Design Jorge Fino says. “Throughout the entire process, what I appreciated most was their willingness and commitment to push boundaries as if they were a part of our team.”
Nex’s team wasn’t sure what form the product would take. Would it clip onto a TV? Sit on a shelf? Work in compact apartments or sprawling living rooms?
Together with level, the teams explored form factors, user flows, living-room setups, and the emotional experience of play. Early concepts included devices that mounted to the top of TVs, but these didn’t feel true to Nex’s brand promise of being simple and fun. Using cardboard mockups and physical walkthroughs, level helped the team experience the difference between what they thought they wanted and what would actually feel intuitive and joyful in actual homes. The brand that had existed solely in the digital space was finally taking shape in the physical world.
Mockups were shared with investors and prospective manufacturing partners to drum up interest. And after a few months into the collaboration with level, Nex committed fully to building hardware. Soon after, it was showcased at GDC (Game Developers Conference), where attendees stood in line for hours to try the prototype.
Beyond the Console
For Nex Playground to succeed, it couldn’t just be another gaming console. It needed to feel joyful, approachable, and at home in a family’s living room. It had to spark curiosity, invite interaction, and bring people together, not blend into the background like so many traditional consoles.
Nex came to level with a rough prototype, enough to guide general component size and layout, but not yet optimized for industrial design. The internal architecture was still in flux: the size of the PCB, heat mitigation, and camera selection were all open-ended variables that could significantly impact the final form. At one point, level and Nex weren’t sure if the camera would be so large it would dominate the design.
While cubes weren’t common in the category, the idea of using a pure geometric shape felt right for Nex’s brand. But simplicity is often deceiving: Making the cube feel intentional, friendly, and elevated required careful balance. level guided Nex through a collaborative discovery process, showing inspiration boards, mockups, and references to nostalgic game icons like Rubik’s Cubes, Tetris, and the original GameCube. These visual cues weren’t just aesthetic; they resonated emotionally with the parents likely to purchase the product. The design needed to excite both the kids who would play it and the parents who would bring it home.
Ultimately, level landed on a form that honored the joy and nostalgia of ‘80s-era gaming but felt modern, compact, and premium. The cube format also had another advantage: It was inherently scalable and neutral, able to work in small apartments or sprawling family rooms, a critical consideration for a product meant for diverse home environments.
Real design challenges remained, though. Where do you place a wide-angle camera and vents without breaking the magic of the form? How do you prevent it from looking cold or overly techy? How do you preserve the cube’s purity while still accommodating all the functionality required?
One of the most debated elements was the camera privacy cover. Nex had made this nonnegotiable: it was essential to their brand promise around safety and transparency, especially in family spaces. But early on, the idea of a mechanical camera cover felt awkward, adding complexity and risking a cold, “tech device” vibe that clashed with the character and charm level was building.
During a sketch review, level proposed an idea: What if the cover became a magnetic “monocle”? Suddenly, the functional feature became a character-defining detail. The camera became an “eye,” the LED became a “wink,” and the simple addition of the monocle brought the entire front of the product to life. It was playful, intuitive, and instantly beloved by both teams. What had started as a necessary compromise had become an ownable brand signature.
From color selection to proportions to part lines, every element was scrutinized. The vertical striping and subtle breaks in the cube form were inspired by Rubik’s Cubes, giving it a tactile quality that felt both familiar and fresh.
Throughout the process, level walked Nex through the “why” behind every decision, helping the team see and feel the experience from a user’s perspective. The goal was never to impose a design, but to co-create a product that felt inevitable once you saw it, like it couldn’t have been anything else. Ultimately, Nex Playground was designed to be:
Compact and unobtrusive (72mm x 72mm x 72mm) to fit seamlessly into any home;
Joyful and inviting, with a color palette that signals energy while complementing home décor;
Intuitive for all ages, requiring no complex setup or accessories;
Privacy-conscious, with a physical “monocle” camera cover that’s both fun and functional
While the AI-powered motion tracking was groundbreaking, the hardware design was just as essential to delivering a seamless, emotionally resonant experience. Nex Playground needed to feel playful yet sophisticated, bold enough to catch your eye, yet refined enough to belong in any living room.
Collaboration Beyond Ideation
Many startups involve industrial design only in the early ideation phase. Nex took a different approach, recognizing that sustained collaboration was key. From the earliest prototypes through design for manufacturing (DFM), level worked closely with Nex to make sure that every design decision could be executed with precision at scale. This process involved intensive conversations between level, Nex, and their engineering and manufacturing teams.
level helped Nex identify and onboard a mechanical engineer from their trusted network. Having engineering representation aligned with our design team was essential to staying on schedule and translating the design with fidelity.
With a tight timeline, level and Nex worked together to solve key questions early:
How could we minimize complexity while maximizing character?
What tradeoffs existed between the camera components Nex needed and the physical space constraints?
How could we preserve the playful aesthetic while also satisfying thermal requirements, part tolerances, and manufacturability?
At each step, level evaluated materials, assembly sequences, tooling implications, and how the design would scale. Even the smallest details, like the parting lines, color matching, and vent layout, required iteration and tight coordination between design and engineering. “A tremendous amount of commitment was required to achieve our desired design intent,” Nex’s Fino says.
The partnership went beyond design files and Zoom calls. level’s principal designer, David Roseberry, traveled to China twice, once alongside Nex leadership and later on his own, to oversee production directly on the factory floor. Being there in person enabled rapid decision-making that would have taken weeks if done remotely. With so many materials, vendors, and supply-chain partners on the ground in Asia, level’s team could source, test, and validate options on-site, often the same day.
“Being on the ground in China with Nex’s team was essential,” Roseberry says. “It strengthened trust, enabled real-time problem-solving, and kept production on track.”
The result? A product that stayed true to its design vision, executed at a high level of quality, and delivered on its promise.
From Vision to Award-Winning Success
The collaborative trust between Nex and level transformed a bold concept into a blockbuster gaming system, earning a Gold IDEA Award for Design Excellence and over 15 other prestigious design awards.
Beyond that, Nex Playground has redefined play at home, creating a new category of active gaming and setting a new standard for how families engage with technology. It has transformed living spaces, encouraging families to move, dance, and share energy while spreading joy. The best products are the result of bold vision, thoughtful design, and strong partnerships. When trust, expertise, and innovation come together, incredible things happen.
—Nichole Rouillac
