A Look Inside LEGO’s Digital Design Toolbox

In addition to this important work, Senior Design Strategist Pia Breum Corlin led the creation of the LEGO Group’s own Digital Design Principles for Kids, which help shape every digital product the company creates. She and her team also developed one of the cooler design tools I’ve ever seen: a physical toolkit that leads designers through the process, helping them design for well-being and a diverse play experience. I caught up with her to learn more about the company’s approach to digital thriving, how M&Ms can help fuel the design process, and much more. 

Michelle Lee: There are a lot of people who grew up with the LEGO brand, myself included, and we know it primarily as a company that makes toy bricks. But a lot of the work you’re doing has to do with digital play. Could you give an introduction to that work?

Pia Breum Corlin: At the LEGO Group, it's not just about games; it’s about redefining play entirely. For kids, there’s no real distinction between physical and digital play—they naturally blend the two. That’s why we focus on hybrid play, where the physical and digital worlds intersect. That way, we don’t end up having kids just sitting in front of a screen—we actually foster their creativity. 

Michelle Lee: What does that catalog of digital play look like?

Pia Breum Corlin: It’s actually quite big. It includes partnering with games, like with LEGO Fortnite, and also the LEGO Builder app, which is the digital version of the building instructions. We all know the paper version from our childhood. It's very structured, starting with opening bag number one. It feels like something you do on your own. But the digital instructions let you open different bags, and then build small parts of something, which you can then pass off to someone else. It’s more like a board game. So you can suddenly have a set as a family and build together.

Michelle Lee: That sounds incredible. I'd love to learn a little bit more about your role as a design strategist. What does it look like? And how did you get here?

Pia Breum Corlin: My journey to this role is anything but linear. I am trained as a civil engineer in industrial design. It’s a mix between engineering, a lot of math, and design—focused on that intersection between the product and who is using it. That’s where design strategy came in—it taught me that design is more than making things pretty and pixel-perfect, and really about catering to a need. 

I joined the LEGO Group about 10 years ago, and my real interest in play came when we started to create design principles to really understand what it is. I have a tendency to get deep into things that I design for—I really want to understand the user's needs and the behavior behind them. 

Michelle Lee: What led you to this path of wanting to focus on play and well-being within the LEGO Group?

Pia Breum Corlin: At the LEGO Group, everyone talks about digital well-being and thriving in everything we do. We don’t want to do any harm. We want kids to be in a better place after they use an app or product.

When we created LEGO Life, a social media app for LEGO fans, including kids, we wanted to have an internal language that designers could use to say, “Yes, we can do it from a legal perspective. But the big question is, should we? Does it fit into the ethics and well-being perspective that we are trying to promote?” So we created digital design principles that provide a really strong language for that. 

Michelle Lee: I’m curious to hear more about the core principles, and how they guide your approach.

Pia Breum Corlin: For me, the principles are about empowering children to navigate, engage, and create positive social connections that can support their well-being and personal growth.

The first is, “Let me explore,” which is about giving kids agency and autonomy.  “Show me the way” is a reminder to us to not be the police—kids have enough authority in their lives. It’s about helping kids feel supported and to learn something from what they’re doing. “Make me feel joyful” links into emotions, and the level of immersive play. “Support my right to play” taps into creativity from a well-being perspective. And the last one, “Speak my language,” is about identities, diversity, and inclusion.  

LEGO Life was one of the first apps that was designed with the “Show me the way” perspective. The concept was to give kids the skills and tools to navigate a digital space and social environment. How do you write comments? How do you not write comments? Instead of telling them, no, you cannot take pictures, we teach them how to create better pictures. We think of it kind of like a mama duck and baby duck. We’re leading the way, but always looking to see if they follow. 

We also had a non-player character in the app called Captain Safety who shared tips and advice about staying safe online, and who they can contact if something happens. 

Michelle Lee: I’m so glad you brought up LEGO Life, one of the first efforts to create a safe social space for kids. The camera is a really nice example of that—what are some other ways you navigated that tension between safety and freedom?

Pia Breum Corlin: We’re in close contact with the legal and safety teams, and they’re always involved in early analysis. But for us, it really comes down to not telling kids what to do, but showing them possibilities of how to do things. And of course, everything is moderated. But we’ve also discovered that kids are good at regulating each other. It’s one of the really good things about these communities—they learn, and they try to teach others how to get it right. 

Michelle Lee: I’m very interested in hearing about the work by the LEGO Group, the LEGO Foundation and UNICEF that led to Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC), an initiative to promote children’s well-being in a digital world. How does your work tie to that? And how does that link to the LEGO Digital Design Principles for Kids toolkit?

Pia Breum Corlin: RITEC is a three-year project between the LEGO Group, the LEGO Foundation, and UNICEF. It began with research with children across the globe, and culminated in the RITEC Design Toolbox. It’s a framework to help designers create digital experiences that promote positive wellbeing. We have been so lucky to be a part of it.

We actually wrote our design principles before RITEC started. But when I saw their work for the first time, I said, “We need to find a way to get all that information into something tangible and practical, so the designers don’t have to read a 200-page report.” And that led to the LEGO toolkit. 

Michelle Lee: I love that. There are so many people who are bringing digital thriving into the conversation, but they're not necessarily putting it into a form that's easily accessible by designers. 

Pia Breum Corlin: Our toolkit is tangible—a box you can unfold. When you open it, you see our five principles laid out in a matrix so you can see how each links back to the different pieces of RITEC as well as strategic choices designers can make in each experience they create . For example, a game that’s low agency, high guidance is about learning to follow rules, which is a pretty good skill to have as a child. But from a play perspective, it can get quite boring. So we need to have different types of play in the portfolio.

Before we even start thinking about any features, we activate the principles by asking ourselves, “What type of play are we designing?” As a team, we’ll agree on, for example, a play experience that is medium in agency, but flexible depending on the kids’ skill level, so they can grow. It needs to be low in playfulness because we need it to be calm and relaxed. We want low creation, meaning that we want them to use what is already available—like a coloring book, or a set you can add your own bricks to. Social connection is low (playing solo) to medium (playing with a few friends). 

Michelle Lee: Once the principles are clear, where do you go from here? How do you then design the features of the experience?

Pia Breum Corlin: That's where my role stops, and the designers’ role begins. They rely very much on the design principles and the prompt questions that we included inside the box. It's made to spark curiosity, not to be a checklist. Because there's no right and wrong answer to these things. 

Michelle Lee: Can designers outside of LEGO access the kit?

Pia Breum Corlin: Originally, it was designed for internal use. We were finally allowed to talk about it publicly last year, and there’s been huge demand for it. But it’s an expensive box, and we hold an in-person training for it. No slides, set in a children’s room, decorated with toys and posters. To get participants in the right mindset, we hand out M&Ms: a red one at the start, when they have to play like children. And then we pause and give them a blue M&M when they have to become adults again. I’m hoping to work on how we could share it externally next year.   

Michelle Lee: I can’t wait until more people have access to this! In the meantime, do you have any advice for parents or designers navigating the digital age? 

Pia Breum Corlin: Go play with kids. As parents, we have a tendency to have feelings about what’s right and wrong in the digital space. Instead, play with kids to understand what they think is so fun. See what you can learn from them, and earn their trust. 

We know the data is really bad. Kids are getting mean messages and pictures they shouldn’t online. But if we are there playing with them, and they know we support the things they like, I believe they will be more likely to tell us if bad things happen there. 

The same advice goes for designers. If you're designing for kids, go out and play alongside them. You will learn so much.

Trying to solve your own challenges with digital thriving? Get in touch. We’d love to help.