Pettigrew Lab is a family-run product studio. We experiment, learn, and ship one working product into the world every single month.
Websites, Apps, and Experiments
Everything the Lab has shipped, is shipping, or is still arguing about. Grab the ball and give it a spin. Tap one to see what it is.
Data to AI
Five-minute lessons on how AI works, starting with the data on your phone. Now on iPhone, iPad and Android, and the first lesson runs in your browser.
Product Management
Five-minute lessons on how products get decided, tested and shipped, with real stories from Netflix, Google and Adobe. Now on iPhone, iPad and Android.
How Computers Work
What’s inside the box, and how to fix it when it’s slow. Five-minute lessons on RAM, the processor, the GPU, the internet and more, while four friends fix an old laptop. Three toys playable now, and the app is on iPhone, iPad and Android.
Your Data Rights
A plain-English course on what companies collect about you, what they’re allowed to do with it, and what you can do back. On iPhone, iPad and Android.
Star Signs
A horoscope app that keeps telling the truth: the real stars in your sign, how far apart they are, and where to find them tonight. On iPhone, iPad and Android, with eight modules playable right on the page.
POTUS KO
A presidents game that makes U.S. history stick. Right answers train your fighter, what you learn about each president tells you how to beat them, and every win goes in your binder.
Stranded on Principle
A phone game about how planes fly. Build a flying machine from the ideas of history’s inventors, test it off a cliff, and get everyone off the island before the storm.
Side by Play
Learning games a parent and a 3 to 6 year old play together at bedtime: counting, letters, a states and capitals game, and feelings. No ads, one price. On iPhone, iPad and Android.
Ping! The Internet Game
A game for kids about how the internet works. Build a packet, ride it down the cables past routers, and get your message to a friend’s house.
Hack the Past
A history game for teens. Fall through an 1871 history chart with a phone at 23% and no signal, then work out each place with what you find there.
Ant to Everest
A card game for kids about how big things really are. Every card costs its size, so a giraffe costs more than a ladybug and the Eiffel Tower costs a lot.
Once Upon a Snap
A free football game where legends, monsters and people from history play for your team, on a $15 salary cap.
Once Upon a Dunk
A free basketball game where legends, monsters and people from history play for your team, on a $15 salary cap.
Clear to Dock
A space traffic control game. Draw each ship into its dock and keep them apart.
Splash to the Moon
A jumping game. Dive deep, launch out, flip, land clean, and climb past the Moon.
Silicon Gate
Tower defense built from real circuits. Every tower is a real electronic part, and any two make a circuit.
Fictional FaceOff
A family story game. Pick a hero and an animal, pick where they fight, guess who wins, then read what happened. Sixty fighters and 21,240 stories, all on the phone.
Snack Lob
A slingshot game. Lob snacks to hungry plush monsters on eight worlds, each with its real gravity.
Factor Slicer
Times tables, with a sword. Swipe the numbers your blade goes into, and every cut says the fact back.
A-Mazing
A free maze generator. Draw something, type a word or paste a picture, and print a maze with one solution.
Bond Swap
A match-3 where the tiles are atoms. Swap them into real molecules, from water to chloroform.
Dust to Bloom
A card game about bringing a dead planet to life. You have eight days of air, and every card is something to build or something to pay with.
BotBrain
A robot fighting game for ages 10 to 14. Build a bot from junkyard parts, give it the rules it fights by, and watch it brawl.
Everyday apps
7 projects
PalmCue
Speech cue cards for toasts, talks and eulogies. Big cards you move without looking, and a silent pulse in your palm that keeps time.
That One Time
Write down the first line of a story when it happens. When the table goes quiet, it deals you one. Private, offline, $0.99.
Putter
A morning buffer. A warm clock, one scratchpad, and a single number: mornings in a row you didn’t get pulled away. On iPhone and Android, or run it in your browser.
Joyful
A private friendship journal. Milestones no calendar knows about, gift ideas and memories, encrypted on your phone. On iPhone and Android.
What My Phone Knows
Finds the trackers in your own apps and tells you what they can reach. Free on iPhone and Android. No account, and nothing it finds comes to us.
For work
3 projectsForecasts
1 project
Faith
3 projects
Not shipped yet
Open a pocket
The Monthly Mission
"We learn by building and shipping. Every 30 days, we take an idea from zero to something real and live. What’s the value? Can we build it? What should it look like? Could it make money... and does that even matter? Then we decide: keep going or move on to the next idea."
Joel, Cassandra, and the monsters.
About us
We’re the Pettigrews. Cassandra, me (Joel), and four kids we call the monsters. We lived in Florida for years and moved to Colorado last year for a new job. We miss Disney and the beaches, but we have loved the mountains.
I’m a product manager that has mostly focused on Data, Analytics, and UX. At home I like to experiment and build things, mostly because I want the kids to grow up that way: ask the question, go find out, build the thing yourself. Cassandra recently went back and finished a degree in software development while raising four kids, so this is genuinely something we are all involved in.
More about us
Joel Pettigrew
Principal product manager at Amazon, working on data and analytics. The resume has the rest.
Pitch an Idea
Have a problem that needs a simple, working solution? We're always looking for our next monthly mission.