Cognitive Design & Innovation Studio
At PLAYSTRUCK, we study how people experience things, where connection happens, and where it breaks down. Then we solve for it — with our clients, and through Playtools™ of our own.
Everything we do comes back to the same belief: play is one of the most powerful ways humans practice imagining, adapting, creating, communicating, and connecting.
That belief shapes what we make ourselves, and what we make possible with others.
People Don't Live...
In Boxes.
And nothing around us exists in isolation.
People don't arrive as personas. We bring our roles, relationships, abilities, needs, and whatever else is happening in that particular moment.
We experience the world the same way — not as isolated products, places, or interactions, but as connected experiences where one thing keeps shaping another.
When we understand more of the person and more of what surrounds them, we can design experiences that work better within the complexity of real life.
That takes more than one way of thinking.
Our team is made of multihyphenates. We bring different disciplines and different ways of seeing to the same problem, because each reveals something another might miss.
That is Multiminded Design™ — our proprietary practice for designing for the complexity within people and the connected systems around them.
Working For and With The Best
Alumni of the world’s most innovative places and spaces.
A collective 40+ years shaping experiences at top-tier organizations.
Who You'll Be
Working With
Christina Kaputsos
Founder | Head of Creative Strategy & Product
Christina is an award winning creative and product leader with 16+ years building products, experiences, multimodal ecosystems, and curriculum across education, technology, and wellbeing. Her work is grounded in behavioral and psychology-informed design and focuses on how products and environments shape how people learn, connect, and engage across ages.
Her background spans product architecture and user experience strategy, along with illustration, interactive and game-based experience design, brand strategy, curriculum design, and R&D-led product development. She has built assessment and experience evaluation systems for Fortune 500 companies, startups, educational institutions, nonprofits, and government initiatives — including work for Capital One, the Federal Aviation Administration and Make-A-Wish — across both domestic and international contexts.
She founded PLAYSTRUCK to bring together storytelling, behavioral insight, and systems thinking into products and experiences that support connection, curiosity, and everyday wellbeing.
Why Play?
"Play is how we uncover who we are, connect more deeply with others, and imagine better ways to live, learn, heal, and lead."
BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) | Design Thinking – Cornell |
UX Certification | Member of SBWI / POP / WIT / BOA
Sandra Diana Cantú
Co-Founder | Head of Growth & Engagement
Sandra is a brand strategist, storyteller, and performer with over two decades of experience creating meaningful connections across digital spaces, learning platforms, and community-driven environments. She has led organic growth, community development, and educational media initiatives for big brands and small startups alike. Her work blends narrative design, voice, and engagement strategy to help ideas resonate with people of all ages.
Sandra began her community-centric career in partnership with Disney for their Virtual Magic Kingdom. She went on to serve as the first Global Community Manager of Sulake’s flagship property, heading a team of 70 across five countries. At EdTech startup codeSpark, Sandra built the Branding, Customer Service, and Community teams from the ground up, and lent her voice talents to their marketing ads and over half a dozen in-app characters.
As co-founder of PLAYSTRUCK, Sandra leads growth, engagement, and the emotional voice of the brand, shaping how experiences are introduced, shared, and felt. Her background in performance and character development informs her approach to building environments that invite participation, imagination, and connection.
Why Play?
"Play gives us permission to write our own stories."
AMDA NYC Music Theatre Program | Proud SAG-AFTRA Member
Core Team
PLAYSTRUCK brings together minds across design, research, psychology, cognitive science, technology, strategy, art, story, play and engagement.
Our team and collaborators span disciplines because the work does too — bringing deep real-world experience, academic rigor and different ways of seeing to what we build.
Multihyphenate by nature. Multiminded by design.
Mamatha Chary, PhD
Research Design
Muhammad Shahzad
Engineering
Marni Sandler
Process & Trends
Allison Salvati
Marketing, Partnerships & PR
Brian Hess
Art & Interactive
Seth Thygesen
Production & Animation
More Human.
More Connected.
Through what we make ourselves and what we build with others, we're creating more opportunities to think, create, adapt, and connect — with ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us