Mr Bloom's Nursery was a BBC CBeebies television series aimed at children aged two to five. The show followed Mr Bloom, a nurseryman who tended a vegetable garden alongside a cast of animated veggie characters. I was commissioned to lead the full digital extension of the show: a companion website and a suite of six original browser-based games, each designed to translate the warmth and educational values of the television series into an interactive format.
My role covered the complete scope of the project, from initial game concept and UX design through to final UI delivery and creative direction. This included directing the TV presenter and characters on set to capture bespoke footage and audio for use within the games, working closely with the BBC production team to ensure consistency with the show's tone, values and visual identity.
Game Design Approach
Each of the six games was designed from the ground up around a specific area of Early Years Foundation Stage learning, ensuring the play experience served a genuine developmental purpose rather than simply recreating show content in interactive form. The six EYFS areas addressed across the suite were: understanding the world, mathematics, expressive arts and design, communication and language, physical development, and personal, social and emotional development.
The game design brief was deliberately open-ended: no prescribed difficulty levels, no time limits, no wrong answers. Each game needed to function as a self-contained play experience for a child as young as two, without an adult present. Every interaction was therefore designed to be immediately legible, intrinsically rewarding and endlessly repeatable without losing its appeal.
Pedagogical Framework
The design was anchored in the three core pedagogical principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage: playing and exploring, active learning, and creating and thinking critically. Rather than structuring games around right and wrong answers, each experience was built to encourage investigation, persistence and the formation of ideas through doing.
Scaffolding was embedded through character behaviour rather than UI affordances. Mr Bloom and the veggie characters provided encouragement, modelled actions and responded to what children did, creating a sense of social interaction and guided learning without removing the child's agency over the experience.
Creative Direction
A significant part of the project involved directing the TV presenter and characters to capture content specifically for the digital games. This required translating the warm, unhurried pacing of the television show into short, loopable interactions suitable for a browser-based environment, while ensuring Mr Bloom's character remained consistent with what children already knew from the series.
Working within the BBC's editorial and compliance framework, all content was reviewed against CBeebies brand guidelines and age-appropriateness standards before delivery. Close collaboration with the BBC production and editorial teams throughout the project ensured the games felt genuinely connected to the show rather than a separate product built on its licence.
Outcomes
6
Original browser-based games, each addressing a distinct EYFS learning area
2–5
Target age range, spanning the full Early Years Foundation Stage
BBC
Delivered in partnership with the BBC CBeebies editorial and production teams
0
Fail states across all six games — every interaction designed to reward and encourage
