Co-design platform for educational games
2025 · Bergen · 2 min read
Team Hallvard Lygre Hetlelid, Remi André Nygård, Silje Garmannslund Eide & Ole Sander Brudvik
Fredrik Breien's eLuna research Read more about the final solution Bachelor project report Test the prototype (Figma)
- Problem
- Educational games lean too hard on curriculum and lose engagement, or chase fun and teach little. Meanwhile the Norwegian Ministry of Education’s ambitions for digital practice stayed theoretical.
- Approach
- A co-design workshop led by eLuna’s creator, 18 qualitative interviews, Crazy 8’s, storyboarding and wireframing, then both a Figma and a coded prototype.
- Outcome
- A platform with two creation pathways, fully digital or pen & paper first, so teachers can run a workshop before formalising ideas. Tested with teacher students, information science students and SLATE.
A platform where teachers, developers and researchers design educational games together, built for SLATE, the Norwegian Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology, as my bachelor project.
The gap between policy and classroom
The problem is a familiar one. Educational games either lean so hard on the curriculum that nobody wants to play them, or chase fun and teach little. The students who struggle find them too hard, and the strongest students find them too easy.
The Norwegian Ministry of Education wants digital practice in schools to be knowledge-based, to support learning and motivation, and to be part of the school’s own plans rather than an addition to them. SLATE wanted something teachers could actually use. Nova Luna Studio is our answer: a platform where teachers, developers and researchers design educational games together.
Eighteen interviews and a workshop
Fredrik Breien, our customer and the creator of eLuna, the framework the platform’s visual language comes from, led the co-design workshop. Around it we observed, and ran 18 qualitative interviews with teachers, a researcher, a pedagogue and a developer.
18 qualitative interviews: 15 teachers, a researcher, a pedagogue and a developer.
Sketch, test, repeat
- No single reveal: the prototype was refined continuously as interviews and tests came in.
- Crazy 8’s, eight ideas in eight minutes each, to avoid settling on the first idea.
- Paper first, then Figma, then code. The Figma prototype explored the interface and the workshop flow; the coded prototype built the map-based canvas.
- eLuna’s own palette: the building blocks and the buttons that create them share colours, so they are told apart by shape, colour and function. The whole thing is meant to feel like a safe place to make mistakes.
- Tested with five teacher students at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, five information science students at the University of Bergen, and finally with SLATE.
Nova Luna Studio, in five parts
- Two ways in. Fully digital, or pen & paper first, so a teacher can run a workshop before anything is formalised.
- A collaborative canvas in eLuna’s visual language, for mapping stories, characters and challenges.
- XML/JSON export, the blueprint the developers build from.
- A demo game that updates as the developers push code, so classes can test it as it grows.
- A landing page with live notifications, project information and who is collaborating.
Get in toucholebrudvikjr@hotmail.com