8/28/2025
Human-Centered Design Meets Gaming in High School Summer Camp
Siebel Center for Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) collaborated with the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering Program (WYSE) through The Grainger College of Engineering to pilot a 1-week summer camp for high school students dedicated to combining Game Design with Human-Centered Design to create STEM focused games.
Human-Centered Game Design ran over the summer in 8-hour daily sessions for 20 high school students who resided in public housing when not at camp. The students ranged from freshmen to seniors, brought together by their shared passion for games and eagerness to learn design principles. Co-instructed by Dr. Brian Guerrero, Rodrigo Hidalgo, and Emma Eunbyul, the camp focused on approaching game design through a new lens by centering users and considering what audiences wanted, needed, and their limitations.
Throughout the week-long program, students collaborated in small groups, applying human-centered design methods to research, ideate, and prototype both physical and digital games. The curriculum emphasized empathy and user research, teaching participants to conduct interviews, observe player behavior, and iterate on their designs based on feedback. By the end of the camp, each team had developed game prototypes that demonstrated their understanding of player-focused design principles, preparing them with valuable skills for potential careers in game development, user experience design, and related fields.
Moving Beyond a Programming Centric Design Curriculum
The Challenge with Traditional Game Design Education
The main purpose of this curriculum was to move beyond the typical approach to teaching game design, where the majority of sessions must be spent developing programming and software knowledge before students can create something meaningful. To develop this course, we employed Human-Centered Design to learn more about what students were experiencing in existing game design courses at the high school and college levels. Learning more about what they enjoyed, what they disliked, and what gaps remained in their learning.
Additionally, we spoke with industry professionals to understand what content they wished they had learned during their academic years. What we discovered was that very little time was spent learning about the actual process of game design, with most focus placed on actively creating a game. Critical questions went unanswered: How do I conduct market research? How do I effectively brainstorm and plan different aspects of my game? How can I collaborate effectively with a team on game design? How do I conduct user research?
With these insights in mind, the curriculum was split into two distinct halves. During the first half, we introduced our Human-Centered Design framework and demonstrated how it relates to the game design process. Students applied this new knowledge by designing tabletop games meant to teach specific STEM topics to younger audiences. They chose topics such as astronomy, evolution, digital security, and ecosystem diversity.
During the second half of the camp, we shifted focus to video game development. Here, we acknowledged that students would arrive with vastly different levels of programming experience and varying exposure to different types of games. We used this as an opportunity to introduce students to classic game design, explore new genres of games, and work with a simple game engine that required no programming experience. We chose GBStudio, a free software that allows users to create working classic Game Boy games by combining existing scripts and selecting from different menu options, making game development accessible to all participants regardless of their technical background. We kept this half relatively lecture-free, allowing students to use the process they had learned earlier on their own. We found students were using the designing thinking tools unprompted, thinking about how they might use this as opportunity to teach their users.
Our Impact
The success of the Human-Centered Game Design camp was reflected in both external and internal evaluations. Surveys conducted by WYSE demonstrated that participants valued their experience at the camp.
Our own post-camp surveys revealed even deeper impacts on the students. Participants showed growth in confidence and knowledge, not only in game design principles and processes, but also in understanding the critical value of empathy throughout the design process. Students came to appreciate how considering user needs, limitations, and experiences could fundamentally improve their creative work.
This emphasis on empathy and human-centered thinking extends far beyond game development, providing students with transferable skills valuable in any collaborative or creative field. By learning to research, listen to, and design for others, these high school students developed both technical capabilities and the interpersonal awareness that industry professionals identified as crucial for success in their careers. The camp successfully demonstrated that game design education can be both accessible and meaningful when it prioritizes understanding people alongside technical skills.