Spellbook Repair
Mobile (Android)

CelleC Games
Shipped May 2019

I was heavily involved in Spell Book Repair during its concept phase, but did not remain on the project for developent since my internship with the studio ended. I collaborated with teammates to define learning objectives and the target audience through UX research, then to design its story concept, core gameplay modes, and mobile touch-based user interface.

I pitched the idea of rewarding players for completing levels by progressing the story with goofy and fun spell animations, in additon to the magic ink system which drains as letters are traced to make the game more challenging, provide a metric for rating performance, and reinforce the story context.

I created this flowchart to communicate the logic driving both the spelling and tracing gameplay modes from the Game Design Document for reference even after I left the project. In its design I wanted to ensure that players were given appropriate feedback regarding the state of the system and their performance, independent of the rating system. The spelling mode is technically shown here, but the tracing mode works the same way, except that the solution only has one missing letter instead of several.

I conducted user research to provide the development team with insight regarding their target audience, primarily children in the United States between Kindergarten and 5th grade, roughly aged 5 to 11, as well as their parents. As a result of this research, I created 2 user personas, 1 representing Kindergarteners and 1 representing 3rd graders. I was working on another to represent 5th graders, but did not finish prior to leaving the studio. These documents were shared with the team so that they could put a face to the game's players while evaluating design decisions.

Shown here is the user persona for Kindergarteners, as well as its references (reverse side). During my research I focused on what motivated and frustrated children at each age, and based on data averages I theorized a snapshot of their home lives and gameplay habits, their goals, and most relevant for a game designed to improve literacy skills, some of their reading experiences. The generalizability of these personas is limited, given that we lacked first-hand data such as surveys and user testing metrics.