• Parents of 6-12 years olds are most interested in this idea. It is based on the participating rate, which may be biased by recruiting method; however, the overall responses showed a high interest over every kids’ age group.

• Over a half parents play games and mobile games are most popular type, which is my primary platform choice for this project.

• The average game time is 2-5 hours or less per week, which means my game should not require a serious time commitment, less than 1 hour would be appropriate.

• A cultural difference appears with regards to the game attraction, the Chinese version responses are basically the same - stress relief, whereas the English version shows more diversity such as challenge, alternative reality, and time with friends and families. This result requires me to design an educational game leaning towards commercial games’ entertaining quality, and relaxing and calming are the key feel.

• No negative impression about parents playing games. It’s pretty normal for this generation, and some even think parents playing games are cool and open-minded. It’s also a good bonding activity with kids. The bottom line is not to indulge in it and take too much time.

• Motivation, knowledge acquisition and skill development are the top 3 interests, which I should mainly focus on in my content selection.

• As to the 21st century skills, Media literacy, Flexibility, Initiative are the topics parents want to learn more and other options are less selected. My sample scenarios must cover these first.

• Parents are dominantly relying on how they were raised and their intuition to support their children, which might suggest a gradually increasing needs to keep pace with the faster and faster changes in the future.

• Social media and books are their primary means to learn more about these topics. And the knowledge transferability shows some space to improve.

• Positive changes in children and solving specific difficulties are important, but identifying learning opportunities, gaining more scientific methods and being able to select and adapt, they are also highly valued by parents. It basically means I need to hit them all.

• Over 75% participants want to play such a game to learn how to support children's learning. This results validate the problem I want to solve through a game.

• The must-haves include short play session, effective content, not too complicated to play but challenging, realistic scenarios for transferring to real-life practice, rewards and guidance, fun and interaction with children. I should consider all of them in my game design.

• The biggest concern is time vs effectiveness. So if it really works well and the first adopters recommend it, it will attract more people.

• The common contexts of use are parents’ spare time (eg. After children’s bedtime, on commute) and children's free time so that they can play together (eg. After dinner, homework). I need to take into account the accessibility (offline mode, night mode, motion requirements) and the feel (calming and relaxing, not too boring for parents and suitable for children)

According to the feedback from the second survey, parents read educational books and browse social media to learn how to support children’s learning. In order to examine the existing products serving for this purpose, I reviewed some books, social media/websites, and related games to identify the niche I will focus on.

Most parenting books and website resources focus on children's behavior, discipline, and parent-children relationship. They provide home activity ideas, direct solutions to the troubles and problems parents usually meet, tips and examples of parenting practice, age-specific learning materials and tools for kids. Books about how people learn are mainly targeting teachers and educators, some are targeting directly to the learners. Two books verify the needs of learning how to learn in the fast-changing era and adapting education to 21st-century kids. A bunch of books covers the topic of 21st-century skills such as social skills, emotional intelligence, creative problem solving, critical thinking, etc. The popularity also proves the emerging need for cultivating these critical skills for the new generation. However, do parents have so much time to read through all of them? Do they digest and convert the insights into their daily practice?

Social media contents are quick and easy to consume, but also easy to forget. Some are excerpts from larger pieces of work so that a lot of contexts are lost. They appeal to the public by the seemingly quick fix or simple direct cure but sacrifice the nuances of meeting children's idiosyncratic learning needs.

Existing games for parents are largely those parents can play with kids, not specifically aiming for any learning purpose. Some are to experience the stressful feelings of being a parent, some are to relive the childhood under nostalgic parenting stories.

Two main gaps are identified here. (1) In general parenting skillset, supporting children's learning didn't receive enough attention, compared to discipline and parent-children relationship. Family involvement and engagement in children's learning experience can play an important role in children's learning abilities development. It’s not only the responsibility of schools and professional educators or Children's natural development, but also the parents' and caregivers’ influences. (2) Current means of learning how to learn have some disadvantages for parents to engage, digest and transfer. Supporting children's learning is a laborious job, accompanying with confusion and anxiety. Parents deserve a better way to learn it.

The scope of this game includes the followings:

1. The tips for boosting motivation

• Self-determination

• Self-efficacy

• Structured goals

• Create a need to learn

• Rewards & reinforcement

2. The techniques of supporting knowledge acquisition

• Priming prior knowledge

• Chunking

• Building mental models and encoding with multiple paths

• Self-cue retrieval practice

• Distributed repetition

• Using analogies and contrasting cases for understanding

• Cognitive modeling

3. The guidance of developing skill proficiency

• Deliberate practice

• Constructive feedback

4. The support of forming habits

• Motivation + ability + activation

• Cultivating metacognition and self-regulated learning

5. The suggestion of creating learning environment

• Balance of efficiency-driven learning and innovation-driven learning

• Balance of knowledge in the head and knowledge in the world

• Identify the things kids are already doing and support them

6. The strategies of promoting 21st center skills

• Problem-solving & creativity

• Communication & collaboration

• Productivity & beating procrastination