Social Clues is the brainchild of husband and wife team Karen Okrent M.S. CCC-SLP and Jeremy Bernstein, USC MBA Candidate 2014. Karen, a Speech Language Pathologist, works daily with students with autism and developmental disabilities teaching pragmatics and communication skills. Jeremy, a marketing and creative-industry focused MBA candidate, previously worked in animation and advertising in addition to directing a special-needs social activities program.

 

While devising lesson-plans for some of Karen’s students, Karen and Jeremy realized the behavior modeling and role-playing prevalently used by therapists had potential for a tremendous video game that could utilize the autistic population’s growing affinity for interactive media and help educate. The two laid the groundwork for the game, a narrative, characters, a roadmap for communication, key testable materials, metrics for analysis, etc. and from there Jeremy approached the USC Games program about development. Social Clues was well received by the department and soon thereafter selected for the coveted Advanced Games Program.

 

Today the team is comprised of ~30 individuals, from artists to designers to engineers, all working to bring Social Clues to life. Learn more about the other Social Clues team members here: TEAM PAGE.