Participants take on an internship at Wonderworks, a fictional company producing robotic toy animals called Wonderkin. Across production, office and kitchen settings, familiar work activities become opportunities to practise managing competing demands. Difficulty adapts to performance, with a training design that aims to match ability and extend the challenge over time. The aim is to connect this practice with the changing demands of everyday life at home and at work.
The workspace
Inside the tasks
System design
Attention for everyday demands
Set shifting and divided attention. Activities are practised individually before being combined into increasingly complex tasks. Switching between task sets and sharing attention across concurrent activities are designed to reflect everyday demands, such as preparing a meal while keeping track of another commitment.
Adaptive challenge. The training is designed to match and extend a participant’s ability. Increasing complexity and additional demands aim to create manageable overload: opportunities to notice when demands exceed capacity, recover focus and practise strategies for continuing.
Supported practice, everyday carryover. Designed for clinically supervised sessions and independent practice, Wonderworks gives clinicians insight into live activity and controls to support feedback and skill reinforcement. Homework and real-life examples connect session practice with activities at home and at work.
Distraction as a design principle. Planned distractions draw on the team’s research experience with attention in realistic virtual environments. The aim is to practise managing interruptions and returning to a task, connecting training with situations such as resuming a household activity after a conversation or amid persistent background distractions.
Next steps