Susan Maynor's Creative Quest

For me, this semester wasn't just about learning game mechanics or theory—it was about stepping into the tension between vision and collaboration, creativity and clarity, and a deeper understanding of what it means to design for real people, not just for a grade.  The most important thing I learned is that good learning games don't start with flashy features or content—they start with a purposeful system—a system that helps the player think, see, or try again differently. This clicked for me when we were designing  ReBoot , and I realized that the narrative metaphor—the glitching Spark School—wasn't just a creative frame. It was a mirror of real-life classrooms where surface-level learning has stalled and teachers need better tools. Designing a game like ReBoot taught me how deeply form and function must align. CT wasn't just what we were teaching—it had to be how players moved, solved, failed, and grew. I now see how feedback loops, mechanics, and story can all work to...

For our recent playtest with ReBoot: A Computational Thinking Quest , I had the opportunity to observe a second-year teacher, Emma, as she played through our prototype. Emma teaches elementary students and is right in the thick of designing lessons, solving classroom challenges, and growing in confidence with instructional strategies, making her a perfect fit for testing our game. Since ReBoot is designed to help pre-service and early-career teachers learn and practice computational thinking in a supportive, narrative-based environment, her perspective was exactly what we needed. We conducted the playtest synchronously, as I work with Emma. She played the game while I observed her clicks, pacing, and decision-making, then followed up with a structured reflection. The entire session lasted about 30 minutes, including playtime and debrief. Our focus during this playtest session was on instructional clarity, core mechanic usability, narrative engagement, and emotional experience — all t...

Design Process and Reflection:  Over the past six weeks, I've had the opportunity to collaborate with a team to design a game-based simulation that introduces pre-service teachers to computational thinking (CT) and helps them learn how to integrate CT strategies into different content areas. While the final product is still evolving, the process has challenged and grown me—as a designer, an educator, and a teammate. Our team launch was tentative. We shared our expertise and passions, but the process leaned heavily toward task delegation rather than collaboration. I found myself jumping in more than I anticipated or wanted—not to take over, but to jumpstart our thinking and generate forward momentum. As a coach, I know that sometimes you must show before you tell. After initial game ideas and client communication, I created a hybrid game concept document that synthesized multiple team ideas and addressed our client's goals: helping future teachers understand computational thinki...

Part One: Gathering Information Reflection Most importantly, I value purposeful play. In everything I do as a learning experience designer, I filter through the lens of “is it meaningful?” “ Is it purposeful?” “Is it designed with intention?” I value games that both entertain and challenge thinking and build problem-solving skills while supporting educational objectives and goals. I appreciate games that blend conceptual learning with critical, even creative thinking, providing opportunities to apply knowledge to real-world or simulated scenarios. Additionally, I value empathy-driven games, ones that encourage perspective-taking and compassion. For learning games, a clear purpose must align with the educational standards/specific learning outcomes. Again, purposeful play. It is also important that learning games provide opportunities to practice skills in a meaningful context, such as computational thinking (per our client), design thinking, or even character education (my brain may ha...