Dear Diary
Assessing social-emotional learning through suite of playful quests.
Overview
Dear Diary is a gamified assessment experience that supports social-emotional learning through interactive “quests.” Each quest guides students through reflection and decision-making using emotional and social scenarios.
The product was designed for middle and high school students, primarily Black and Latinx learners. The research behind the experience came from Assessment for Good with the goal of transforming assessment by providing data that’s both accurate and meaningful for teachers and students.
As the lead product designer, I worked on two of the Dear Diary quests:
Would You Rather — a digital card game about making personal choices
What Would You Do — an imaginative world where learners make decisions about social interactions
A key design challenge was balancing scientific validity with engagement. The gameplay couldn’t influence how students responded, but it still needed to feel playful and emotionally resonant. My job was to design systems of progress and feedback that felt rewarding without biasing results.Would You Rather Quest
Would You Rather
Would You Rather is a game about choices. Students play alongside EMi, a recurring character who acts as both guide and co-player.
Each round starts with two cards describing different choices. The student picks one, and the rejected card goes to EMi to decide whether to keep or reject EMi’s card. The next round begins with EMi picking between two new cards.
After each round, students see the cards they’ve collected forming a pattern, a simple feedback loop that shows progress and allows for reflection without feeling evaluative.
Key insight
During testing, students started forming opinions about EMi based on the cards EMi “picked.” This influenced their own decisions, so I redesigned the flow to hide EMi’s full set of cards and only show the one the player rejected. This small change kept gameplay neutral and scientifically valid.
Try it out:
What Would You Do
What Would You Do takes students through whimsical, imaginary worlds. In each scene, they encounter a social situation and choose how they’d react. After responding, EMi provides a short piece of feedback, a micro-intervention meant to help students reflect and improve their decision-making in real time.
Unlike traditional assessments that measure what students already know, this quest allows them to learn during the experience.
Students see progress visually as their avatar moves through different worlds. Completing more questions unlocks new environments, reinforcing a sense of growth and exploration.
Try it out:
Process
Each quest started with a deep review of the learning objectives, question content, and research constraints. I also collaborated with researchers to understand insights from co-creation workshops and technical limitations.
Once the learning goals were clear, I …
Developed the narrative and gameplay structure for each quest
Created user flows, wireframes, and clickable prototypes
Conducted user testing to validate engagement and neutrality
Finalized the end-to-end design for development handoff
