DEVELOPMENTAL DIAGNOSTICS: CASE FILES

DESIGNER’S STATEMENT

This game started as the continuation to the question of how to make the facts students were learning memorable and present them in a way students would feel like they knew how to approach a new situation? How could we make showing their knowledge and practice or Real Word? What would it look like if students ended an introductory early childhood course by actually doing the work, not just demonstrating that they’d read about it? Case File Investigations is my answer — a proof-of-concept prototype built to show faculty and subject matter experts what’s possible when game design and clinical training are designed together from the start, rather than content being retrofitted into an interaction after the fact.

I designed it because I wanted students to feel what it’s like to walk into a room where the answer is already there, waiting. Where cultural context isn’t a module — it’s a note on a refrigerator in Tagalog that you have to notice. Where the goldfish judges you, gently, for checking the same drawer four times. The families in this game are specific people with specific lives because early childhood counseling is specific work. Mateo Reyes-Santos is not a case study. He’s an eighteen-month-old who builds with wooden blocks and makes his Lola laugh. The counselors who will serve him deserve training that takes that seriously.

What I also know, having built this: the game is only half the work. The other half is the infrastructure that gets it into students’ hands.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Overview Item	Description
Deliverable	Articulate Storyline 360 | Escape Room / Case File Investigation Game
Audience	Graduate counseling students — Early Childhood Development course
Context	Created as a proposal example for a Subject Matter Expert exploring interactive ways to make learning memorable and real world
Game Companion	Dr. Finley – office goldfish, 3-tier hint system (gentle → cryptic → snarky)
Scenarios	6 early childhood scenarios
Mechanic	Explore a counselor’s office, gather clues, crack a 3-digit code unlock the case diagnosis to complete level 1. Three levels to your first promotion.
Platform	Articulate Storyline 360 (HTML5)
Tools Used	Storyline 360 | Midjourney | Adobe: Photohop, After Effects, Media Encoder, Premiere Pro | Claude Anthropic for Case Sugesstions | Hedra AI | Speechma
Status	Case 1 in final development | Cases 2-3 in design | Fully playable Case 1 available
Role	Instructional Designer, Game Designer, Visual Designer, Prompt Engineer

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Challenge

Early childhood counseling students can memorize developmental theories. They can pass quizzes on Piaget and Vygotsky. What they struggle to do — until they’re sitting across from a real family — is synthesize. To walk into a room, read the environment, notice what’s not being said, and form a clinical picture from scattered, partial, sometimes contradictory information. That synthesis skill is what separates a student who knows the content from a practitioner who can use it.

The Solution

Unlock the Situation places students in a furnished counselor’s office before a client arrives. A family has sent a pre-session video. There’s a client file in the desk drawer. A calendar on the wall. Books on the shelf. A note on the refrigerator in a language they might not recognize. And Dr. Finley — the office goldfish — watching everything with knowing, slightly judgmental eyes.

To unlock the case and advance, students must find three hidden digits scattered across the office and piece together the diagnostic picture they encode. The code isn’t random: it represents the clinical insight itself. In Case 1, the code is 1-8-3. Eighteen months. Three languages. The whole case in two numbers — and the moment students enter it, they understand why those numbers matter.

The code mechanic isn’t just a game device — it’s a learning design decision. The answer IS the insight.

IMPACT/OUTCOMES

• Students practice clinical synthesis — integrating video, file, environmental, and cultural cues into a coherent picture
• Multilingual and multicultural household dynamics are embedded as discoverable content, not lecture points
• Three-tier hint system (Dr. Finley) supports productive struggle without removing the challenge
• Case 1 models the complete assessment framework students will carry into practicum
• End-of-semester placement creates a capstone application experience tied to course CLOs

Case 1 – The Reyes-Santos Family

Mateo Christian Reyes-Santos. 18 months old. Cookeville, Tennessee. His parents, Grace and Christian, have sent a pre-session video because they’re worried: Mateo isn’t talking the way other kids his age seem to be. He points. He gestures. He babbles happily. He understands everything. He just isn’t producing words.

What Grace and Christian don’t explain in the video — because it’s simply the texture of their home — is that Lola lives with them. That Lola speaks primarily Tagalog. That Mateo babbles back at her in something that is unmistakably a response. That the note on the refrigerator is written in a language the counselor-student has to look twice at. That “8 words” in an 18-month-old trilingual household is not the same clinical picture as 8 words in a monolingual one.

The students who catch all of this will enter code 1-8-3 and understand, in a way no quiz can produce, why adjusted baseline expectations exist.

The Clues

• VIDEO (Digit 1): A calendar visible behind Grace and Christian — Thursday circled, ‘Counselor appt — Suite 1.’ The digit is 1. Nothing calls attention to it.
• INTAKE FORM in desk drawer (Digit 2): Parents write ‘Maybe 8?’ words. Buried in a sentence. The digit is 8.
• BOOKSHELF (Digit 3): A sticky note in the counselor’s handwriting — ‘vocab explosion typically begins month 18-24. Watch for 3 languages.’ The digit is 3.
• EASTER EGGS: Lola’s birthday on the family calendar. A Tagalog grocery list on the fridge (‘Bumili ng gatas at tinapay’ — buy milk and bread). Dr. Finley, watching.

The Tagalog fridge note is a masterclass in embedded cultural competency design. Students who recognize it, or who look it up, learn something. Students who miss it miss a diagnostic clue. No lecture required.

Dr. Finley – The Hint System

Dr. Finley is the office goldfish. He has opinions. The hint system escalates in three tiers based on how long a student has been stuck or how many times they’ve checked the same location:

• Tier 1 (Gentle): ‘Hmm. Have you looked at everything in this room? I notice things from here. It’s a gift, really.’
• Tier 2 (Cryptic): ‘The answer swims just beneath the surface. Much like myself.’
• Tier 3 (Snarky): ‘You’ve checked that drawer four times. The drawer hasn’t changed. I, however, am losing faith.’

Game Architecture – All Three Cases

Case	Title	Client	Clinical Focus	Status
1	The Trilingual Late Talker	Mateo, 18 months – Reyes-Santos family	Adjusted language milestones, multilingual household, cultural competency	In Final Review for beta testing
2	The Toddler in Transition	2.5 year-old with tanturms, hitting, food refusal	Developmental norms, family stress, strengths-based assessment	In Development
3	Two Homes, One Child	Pre-K child, parnts divorcing, school behavior changes	Attachment, routine disruption, co-parenting dynamics, regression	Planned

DESIGN DECISIONS

Decision 1: Office Growth Mechanic

The counselor’s office changes between cases. Case 1 is a newer practice — sparse, morning light, a few books on the shelf. Case 2 is lived-in, midday warmth, more files, a plant that’s actually thriving. Case 3 is an established expert’s space — full bookshelf, credentials on the wall, golden afternoon light. The room itself is a metaphor: as students unlock each case, they’re also becoming the counselor whose office this will one day be.

Decision 2: Discovery Over Delivery

Every piece of clinical information in this game is discovered, not delivered. The multilingual household isn’t introduced in a narration track or a text box — it’s on the fridge, in Tagalog, next to a grocery list, the way it would be in a real home visit. Students who notice it, wonder about it, or look it up learn something that transfers. Students who miss it miss a diagnostic clue. The design trusts the learner to be curious.

Decision 3: The Code Is the Dignosis

The three-digit unlock code is not a game mechanic bolted onto learning content. It IS the learning content. Code 1-8-3 encodes the clinical picture: 18 months, 3 languages. Students who crack it without being told what it means will have a genuine ‘ohhhh’ moment. That moment — the synthesis clicking into place — is the learning outcome. Everything else in the game is scaffolding toward it.

Decision 4: Cultural Competency as Environment

Lola is never introduced. She walks through the background of the video. She says something soft in Tagalog. Mateo babbles back. Grace and Christian don’t translate or explain — because why would they? She’s family. The fridge note is in Tagalog because that’s what Lola writes. These details are environmental because cultural context IS environmental. The design models what culturally responsive practice looks like: you notice, you wonder, you ask.

Decision 5: Dr. Finley as Productive Struggle Partner

The three-tier hint system is calibrated to preserve the challenge while preventing frustration-based abandonment. Tier 1 hints are directional but not specific. Tier 2 is cryptic — pointing toward the type of clue without revealing it. Tier 3 is snarky because by that point, the student has genuinely missed something they’ve already seen, and gentle is no longer serving them. The escalation mirrors real clinical supervision: patience first, then redirection, then the moment where a good supervisor says ‘you already have everything you need here.’

WHAT MAKES THIS DIFFERENT

Most scenario-based eLearning presents a situation and asks students to choose from options A, B, C, or D. Unlock the Situation doesn’t present a situation. It presents an environment and asks students to construct the situation themselves. The difference is the difference between recognition and synthesis — and synthesis is what clinical practice actually requires.

The multilingual case wasn’t chosen arbitrarily. It was chosen because ‘late talker’ is one of the most common referrals in early childhood counseling, and one of the most commonly misread when the evaluator doesn’t account for multilingual baselines. A student who plays this game and cracks code 1-8-3 is less likely to pathologize a trilingual toddler in their first year of practice. That’s the outcome that matters.

THE REAL CHALLENGE – FROM DEV SHELL TO ACADEMIC SHELL

Building Unlock the Situation was the design challenge. Deploying it is the institutional one. At NMSU Global Campus, Articulate Storyline files are developed in a dedicated development shell in Canvas before being moved to the live academic shell where students actually enroll. This handoff — from development to deployment — is not automatic.

Without Blueprint (a Canvas feature that would automate content migration between shells), each deployment requires a manual process: the SCORM package must be re-uploaded to the academic shell, the assignment page must be reformatted, and any embedded media or external tool connections must be re-established and tested. For a standard reading or discussion post, this is a minor inconvenience. For a complex Storyline game with variables, triggers, branching, and SCORM reporting, it’s a significant lift — and one that currently has no designated owner.

Faculty are content experts, not LMS administrators. Asking a counseling professor to manage SCORM deployment is the wrong use of their expertise and a reliable way to ensure that well-designed interactive content never reaches students. The gap between ‘this exists’ and ‘students can access this’ is real, and it’s a systems problem, not a motivation problem.

This prototype is also a case for solving that problem — for designating deployment support, exploring Blueprint adoption, or building a repeatable handoff process that makes interactive content scalable rather than exceptional.

WHAT WAS BUILT

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Overview Item	Description
Authoring Tool	Articulate Storyline 360 — published to web, potentially Canvas LMS
Visual Assets	Illustrated / painterly — Midjourney-generated environments and characters
Video Assets	Midjourney character images. | Hedra AI for Desk Open, Dr. Finley, Family Video and talking sequences | Speechma for script narration | Background removal in After Effects rendered in Media Encoder | Components consolidate in Premiere Pro
Navigation	Point-and-click hotspot exploration | Layer-based clue reveals
Hint System	Variable-triggered 3-tier hint system (Dr. Finley) based on time and interaction count
Code Mechanic	3-digit keypad unlock — digits hidden across video, intake form, and bookshelf
Evidence Board	Student case notes panel — stamps digits as they’re found, synthesizes clues
Accessibility	Keyboard navigation supported | Alt text on all assets | WCAG-considered design
LMS Integration	SCORM-ready for Canvas LMS deployment at NMSU Global Campus

EXPLORE THE INTERACTION

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The case is open to explore – you might get stuck right at the end but it’s worth seeing the progress so far. The clues are waiting. Or check out it’s companion experience from the first week of class!

May 4, 2026