Each of the Design Assignments is setup to intentionally focus on a different kind of learning mechanism to help you get a sense for what kinds of game mechanics make sense for which kinds of learning you're trying to evoke. This first assignment will focus on a fluency building domain and have you go through the first few stages of educational game design. You will practice the practical skills of ideation, paper prototyping and playtesting and to get your feet wet doing actual game design aligned to an educational goal.

Your goal will be to generate 10 different digital game ideas as lo-fi prototypes. You will playtest at least 2 of them. At the end of this, we want you to have two fully playable paper prototypes, with game mechanics aligned to the learning goals, playable with low-fi/paper materials (and a human proctor playing the part of the computer if necessary). We are interested in a fully-playable core game loop that works for this educational goal and audience, and don’t care much (at all) about how the materials look or level of polish.

To streamline things, everyone will design a game for the same instructional domain: English Phonics and Decoding for Middle Grade students. This domain is being provided by an external client, Elaine Fath (efath@andrew.cmu.edu), who is the lead game designer at CMU's Center for Transformational Play.

Instructional Domain: English Phonics and Decoding for Middle Grades

This assignment will focus on developing a game that aids middle-grade students (ages 10-14) who are reading below grade level. Specifically, this should be for students struggling with the ability to look at the smallest units comprising spoken language–known as phonemes– and understand their letter-sound relationship, which is a skill known as decoding.

Decoding

From Reading Rockets: “Phonemes are the smallest units comprising spoken language. Phonemes combine to form syllables and words. For example, the word ‘mat’ has three phonemes: /m/ /a/ /t/. There are 44 phonemes in the English language, including sounds represented by letter combinations such as /th/. Acquiring phonemic awareness is important because it is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills.”

Within the broader domain of phonemic awareness, we ask that you focus on a set of the phonemes from: Open Up Resources, with the idea that your game could serve as the template for a game covering a larger set of phonemes. The example lesson plan uses a word study strategy, which is an alternative to traditional spelling instruction. It is based on learning word patterns rather than memorizing unconnected words. Your game won't necessarily replicate the protocol shown exactly in the plan but it should cover the same content.

We'd like you to make a game that focuses on these 3 phonemes and word patterns:

Phoneme	Pattern	Example Words
/i/ (short i)	i	bill, quick, think, trick
/igh/ (long i)	iCe (i-consonant-e)	drive, hide, side, thrive
/ir/	ir	birth, first, skirt, thirst
More Challenging Words		advice, refill, skirmish, spider

Demographic Appeal

One challenge that arises for remedial practice in this domain is that most early phonics and decoding practice materials that exist are targeted at much younger preschool populations. This thematic pattern can make middle-grade students (ages 10-14) who need additional practice with remedial practice feel condescended to by existing materials.

Consider for example the following lessons. They are all excellent decoding lessons but try to view them from the perspective of a 10-14 year-old:

Considering motivation and what appeals to players of different ages can help in considering how to address this problem. Quantic Foundry’s Types of Play gives some information about what is most appealing for different demographics. So can comparing and contrasting existing games that are targeted at different demographics on sights like PBSKids (note the Age selector in the upper left) or BrainPOP (note the grade dropdown at the top) can also help with competitive analysis of relevant themes.

Specific Prompt

Design an educational game that:

Teaches the i, iCe (i-consonant-e) and ir phonics patterns, for the /i/, /igh/, and /ir/ phonemes
Would appeal to middle-grade (10-14 year-olds) players who may be turned off by traditional child focused phonics lessons
Has a core gameplay loop that could be expanded to a wider set of phonics concepts

Steps

Background Research on Educational Goals - read up on the challenges of decoding and phonics. Document your findings as they impacted your process.
Background Research on the Target Demographic - Do some background research into the target demographic and what kinds of experience appeal to them.
Brainstorm Design Ideas - Ideate on a list of at least 10 game ideas that satisfy the target prompt. Consider the Game Elements Framework (MDA), Learning Principles relevant to Memory and Fluency, and other ideas we've talked about in class. Document your brainstorming process.
Create Prototypes - Select 2 of your ideas and create low-fidelity playable prototypes of them. These should be demonstrative of the core gameplay loop and allow for players to play with the consequence of any relevant branches in the loop (linear Figma-style click through prototypes would not be sufficient). Diagram out the gameplay loop of each prototype as well.
Playtesting - Find a group of playtesters and try out your prototypes. Be sure to take notes on who your playtesters were, whether or not you played with them, how long the session took, and any feedback you got during or after the test.

Collaboration

Individual work, as well as collaboration is permitted for this assignment. Everyone needs to turn in their own work, but in the submission comment collaborators must be listed. For all process portions, we expect a volume of work equal to the amount of collaboration, with the exception of prototyping. Collaboration can be done on some deliverables and not others.

For example, if two students collaborated, we would expect: 20 ideas, more than 1 playable prototype, and 4 playtests.

Deliverables

In order to scaffold the timeline for this project there are 2 deliverable check-ins. The first deliverable (Assignment 1A) will involve writing up your concrete insights from your background research and brainstorming 10 design ideas. The second deliverable (Assignment 1B) will be a report-out of prototyping and playtesting process of your 2 game ideas.

Assignment 1A

The general expectation for format for each stage of this assignment is flexible. There are many different formats for brainstorming and prototyping. Each deliverable has a suggested format but if you want to use some other platform or tool just reach out ahead of time. For Assignment 1A we suggest you turn in slide deck (using PowerPoint or Google Slides) that includes the following:

A slide describing your background research: A short (~1 paragraph) what insights did you take away from the less plan and other materials?
A slide describing the audience: A short (~1 paragraph) what insights you have about what might appeal to the target demographic? What game mechanics might be well suited to them? Reference games can help.
A slide describing your brainstorming process: A brief description of your general strategy to brainstorming. This could be as simple as a brief paragraph of how you thought about the task. You might also include any interesting insights you had along the way.
One slide for each of your (at least) 10 game ideas: Individual ideas can be structured using whichever format is appropriate for how you approach the process. The could be anything from a short paragraph, or bulleted list, to a hand drawn sketch or continuous Figma or Miro document. The only format requirement is that we can easily access it and identify distinct ideas. This list will be lightly graded for depth. For example, a pair of ideas like "X, then X but on a phone" would be considered shallow. You can (and probably should) have these kinds of ideas in the process but we are looking for at least 10 that have some real substance to them.

Assignment 1B

The goal for Assignment 1B is to present two playable, playtested games, a game loop diagram for each, and what insights you got from playtesting. For this assignment we recommend you turn in a single document with your descriptions and notes. If you have prototypes or other materials in different places you can link out to them from the doc itself. Please be sure any relevant sharing settings are set to "anyone with link". Please include the following:

Description and Gameplay Loops of 2 Prototypes: Descriptions of each of your prototypes, and some discussion (~1-2 paragraphs) of your approach in making each of them. Include a diagram for each game's core gameplay loop.
2 Low-fi Playable Prototypes: Hand in playable versions of each prototype. This can be physical paper prototypes or low-fi digital interactive as long as they are playable (potentially with the help of a human "game master"). You could also include Video Recordings of how the game works to demonstrate your prototypes.
Notes from your playtesting sessions: Describe each of your playtesting sessions. Be sure to include:
1. Who your playtesters were and any relevant background knowledge they might have had about your learning goal
2. How you conducted the playtest - include things like: What question were you trying to answer? Did you participate? How did you setup your prototype?
3. How the session went - We are not looking for a transcript, more like a narrative account of what happened. Include things like: Did it go smoothly? Were people confused by any aspect in particular? Did you have to ad lib something? Where there any surprises?
4. A set of insights you got about the prototype in question and what you would change.
A final reflection: Reflect on the overall process (~1 page). What would you have done differently? What was surprisingly hard or easy? What would be the next thing you would do if you were to continue the final prototype you have?