educational-and-childrens-game-experience

name	educational-and-childrens-game-experience
description	Use when a game for children or learners needs age-appropriate comprehension, scaffolding, learning-feedback separation, privacy/safety, stopping cues, guardian/teacher needs, accessible play, or non-exploitative engagement. Use onboarding-and-first-run-design for ordinary apps.
metadata	{"portable":true,"category":"15-game-visual-experience","compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

Educational and Children’s Game Experience Design

Design voluntary, age-appropriate play that supports a stated learning decision while keeping learning, enjoyment, safety, privacy and commercial evidence separate.

Use When

• Children are an intended or likely audience, or a game claims a learning outcome.
• Comprehension, scaffolding, tutorials, feedback, stopping, guardian/teacher support, safety, privacy or purchases/ads must adapt by age and context.
• Educational content must remain playable without turning the game into a quiz wrapper.

Do Not Use When

• The product is an ordinary adult app onboarding flow; use onboarding-and-first-run-design.
• The work is curriculum, pedagogy, clinical development or legal approval; require the accountable expert and use this skill only for game experience.
• The work is general HUD, art or game-feel craft without a child/learning concern; use the corresponding game specialist.
• Engagement telemetry is being used to claim learning; route to research design and require a learning measure.

Required Inputs

Artefact or context	Source	Required?	Why
Age range, contexts, languages, abilities and guardian/teacher role	Product/research	yes	Prevents an invented “child user”
Learning objective, prior knowledge, construct, limits and accountable expert	Education owner	required for learning claim	Defines what can be taught or assessed
Core loop, content, failure, stopping, social, privacy, ads and purchase model	Product/SRS	yes	Exposes safety and coercion risks
Consent-approved research plan and representative evidence	Research/ethics	required for observed claims	Protects children and limits inference

Workflow

1. Define cohorts by age/developmental context, language, ability, prior knowledge, play setting and guardian/teacher involvement. Stop if a single generic child cohort would change design or safety.
2. State the learning objective as observable performance, the evidence method, comparator/baseline, duration and transfer limit. Separate it from enjoyment, completion and retention.
3. Bind learning to the core verb: model, guided practice, feedback, variation, independent use and reflection. Keep instructions close to action and fade scaffolds only after demonstrated comprehension.
4. Design failure as recoverable information. Separate gameplay consequence, learning feedback, praise and assessment; avoid shame, public ranking, punitive grind and answer-pattern guessing.
5. Specify age-appropriate text, voice, icon, controller/touch, captions, sensory settings, reading support, pause/save/resume, stopping cues, guardian/teacher summaries and safe social boundaries.
6. Minimise data and social exposure. Treat ads, purchases, targeting, profiling and third-party SDKs as blocked until accountable privacy/legal/store review. Any permitted ad must be clearly identified, non-intrusive, age-appropriate, non-targeted as required, easy to close/decline and unable to interrupt play, learning, recovery or stopping.
7. Test comprehension, independent play, learning, delight, frustration, accessibility, stopping and guardian/teacher usefulness as separate questions under approved child-research safeguards. Record limitations and adverse signals.

Decision Rules

Condition	Action	Wrong-choice failure
Child succeeds only with an adult or persistent prompt	Keep/scaffold the support and test the intended independence level	Completion is misreported as comprehension
Engagement rises but learning, trust, stopping or wellbeing worsens	Reject or redesign the mechanic	Retention is treated as a child outcome
Error identifies misconception	Give actionable task-linked feedback and a safe retry	Praise, shame or generic correction teaches nothing
Ad, purchase, social or SDK child treatment is unresolved	Disable the surface and escalate to accountable review	Revenue or data collection outruns child safety
Cultural or educational authority is missing	Mark content provisional and block approval claims	A design team impersonates an expert or community

Capability Contract

Read access to age, learning, safety, privacy, culture and evidence artefacts is required. Planning and review are read-only by default. Do not recruit/contact children, collect data, run studies, publish, purchase, enable SDKs or claim educational/legal/cultural approval without explicit authority and accountable expert oversight.

Degraded Mode

Without expert-defined learning objectives or child-safe research, provide only a provisional experience and test plan. Without privacy/store/legal or guardian decisions, disable ads, purchases, social and third-party data paths. Without representative-child evidence, mark comprehension, learning, delight, wellbeing and stopping not assessed.

Anti-Patterns

• Quiz pasted onto unrelated play. Fix: make the learning construct part of the core verb and feedback loop.
• Completion equated with learning. Fix: specify the construct, measure, transfer limit and separate evidence.
• “Kid-friendly” as an age specification. Fix: define cohorts, prior knowledge, language, abilities and context.
• Endless rewards, streak loss or nagging. Fix: use voluntary mastery, clear session endings, pause/save and neutral return.
• Public shame, punitive failure or pay-to-win rescue. Fix: private actionable feedback, safe retry and fair non-paying paths.
• Child ads/SDKs enabled by default. Fix: fail closed until privacy, store, legal, content and device evidence passes.

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Evidence and acceptance condition
Age/cohort and learning-experience contract	Product, education and design	Cohorts, verb, scaffolds, feedback, evidence and limits are explicit
Child safety, privacy, stopping and commercial gate	Accountable owners and release	Data, social, ads, purchases, safeguards and disabled defaults are decided
Child/learning study and evidence matrix	Research, SRS and QA	Comprehension, learning, enjoyment, access, wellbeing and stopping remain separate

Examples

• examples/river-cue-learning-loop.md — a worked learning loop with scaffolding, safe failure, stopping, guardian evidence and an ad hold.

References

• references/child-learning-experience-contract.md — cohort, learning, scaffolding, safety, stopping, research and ad schemas.
• ../../05-ux-process-research-and-psychology/ux-research-and-usability-testing/SKILL.md — evidence and consent discipline.
• ../../00-cross-cutting-ops-qa-a11y/design-ethics-and-anti-dark-patterns/SKILL.md and ../../00-cross-cutting-ops-qa-a11y/inclusive-and-assistive-design/SKILL.md — ethics and inclusion owners.
• ../../../doctrine/design-doctrine.md and ../../../doctrine/references/wcag-2.2-criteria.md — shared quality/access floor.