2025-2026
Creative Practices of Cosmakers
Coscreaticon is a card-based tool and game designed to support cosplay-makers in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia (AoNZAU). It emerged from research I conducted as part of my Master of UX Design at Victoria University of Wellington (Te Herenga Waka).
The BRIEF
How do cosmakers in Aotearoa and Australia experience cosmaking, and how might a design tool help?
The Approach
I took a three-phase approach to my research and design process, leveraging human-centred design methods.
I moved through four key research activities: a literature review to understand the global landscape, semi-structured interviews to hear directly from cosmakers, design workshops to validate insights and explore directions collaboratively, and usability testing to iteratively refine the design concept.
The REFRAME
How might we support cosmaking as a creative practice - not just as a process?
Going into this research, the working assumption shaped by literature and early conversations was that a core challenge for cosmakers in AoNZAU was access. Access to materials, tools, knowledge, and community was limited. Given our geographic distance from the most prominent cosplay stages in the world, that made sense. But my interviews helped me uncover some nuance.
What emerged was a tension within AoNZAU's cosmaking culture itself - between creative freedom and creative obligation. Cosmaking approaches and techniques often fall into a hierarchy, where techniques are often seen as a scale of progression rather than a spectrum of creativity. This, inadvertently, leads cosmakers to experience a tension around the "right" way to make their costumes. Cosmakers spoke about their skill gaps, creative stagnation, decision paralysis, and a quiet but persistent pressure to create their costumes in certain ways that were considered "advanced", "correct", or "expected".
I realised that beneath the problem of access was a deeper problem around how creativity was understood, experienced, and negotiated. That meant that I couldn't just design for cosmakers' creative process - I had to design for their creative practice. That meant designing for mindsets and community as much as techniques and information sharing.
The Solution
I designed Coscreaticon, which is a card-based tool and game for cosmakers.
Coscreaticon offers cosmakers different ways to think about, do, and celebrate their creativity. The deck includes four card types - Spark, Method, Reflection, and Story - and can be used alone or together, as a prompt or a game.
The deck is supported by a digital platform where cosmakers can create and contribute their own cards - placing the growth and direction of Coscreaticon into the hands of the community. Creativity is expansive and ever-growing; the cards should be too.
The Impact
A tangible tool and game that shifted perspectives, invited conversation, and reignited a sense of play within cosplay
My mid fidelity prototype was tested and refined with a small group of cosmakers during my research. Aside from the insights I gathered through usability testing, I also noticed something interesting - all my sessions ran over time. This wasn't because of poor time-keeping, but instead it was because participants were having too much fun to stop. The cards invited a real sense of play, collaborative ideation, general goofiness and assumption testing, and creative thinking. Although Coscreaticon requires real-world testing and further design iteration, my hope is that those interactions demonstrated a glimpse into the impact that this concept could have in the broader community.
Coscreaticon is currently seeking testers for further testing - the website is now live and accepting EOIs.
Outside of my research, Coscreaticon exhibited at the School of Design Innovation's Postgraduate Exhibition in August 2026, where a physical print run of the cards and video stream of the digital platform was displayed and available for public interaction. A link to the published thesis will be available in the coming months.
AWARDS & Recognition
I was recently interviewed by Design Assembly New Zealand about this work. You can read my feature, and a bit about my background and practice as a designer and researcher, on their website.
I was also awarded the inaugural Master of User Experience Design Research Scholarship to support this work.
