The person who hears the problem builds the machine.

I'm Kristian — most people call me Fudge. Second Mouse Systems is my applied invention studio: one person, many workshops, no telephone game.

I work at the intersection of systems engineering, education, curriculum, invention, AI, software, hardware, fabrication, media, and human behavior — with a particular obsession for making complicated things understandable. Most of my working life has involved teaching people things while building the tools to teach them with, which is why curriculum design and learning systems sit at the center of this studio rather than off to the side.

The actual project often reveals itself during the conversation. I've learned to wait for it.

People arrive with a fog: a frustration, a half-formed idea, a pile of tools that don't talk to each other, or a thing that simply should exist and doesn't. My job is to listen until the real project shows up — it's usually not quite the one in the first sentence — then make it visible early, while it's still cheap to be wrong about.

The range is deliberate. Tiny personal problems and large platforms are the same practice at different scales, and I work the whole ladder. The crossover between disciplines is where many useful solutions originate: the trick that fixes a nonprofit's coordination problem often walks in from learning design; the answer to a fabrication puzzle arrives from software habits; the smart-room insight comes from curriculum. Staying comfortable across categories is the actual skill.

Practical facts: you speak directly with me, the person designing and building the solution. I make ideas visible early — usually a working prototype within days, not a document about a prototype within months. Small jobs are welcome and don't inherit big-job overhead. And scope and price get discussed before any work begins.