Ruth's Shop

Overview

Ruth’s Shop is a personal learning game designed for elementary school students as part of a year-long educational curriculum. Students join a delivery cyclist on a mission to distribute packages from Ruth’s store to homes across town — solving math problems at every stop along the route.

The game teaches multiplication and division through a narrative-driven adventure. Each delivery requires students to solve equations, with the route visualized as a winding road through an illustrated autumn town. The warm, inviting art direction — golden yellows, cozy storefronts, and friendly characters — makes math feel like an adventure rather than a chore.

My Role

I was responsible for the full design lifecycle of this project — from creative concept through final screen design. Working alongside pedagogy experts (the client’s educational representatives), I shaped both the learning experience and the visual language of the game.

Creative concept & story development. Before a single screen was built, I developed the game’s narrative framework: the story of a delivery cyclist making her way through an illustrated autumn town, stopping at each house to solve math challenges. This narrative flow — the way a player steps through the experience, the emotional arc from start to finish — was established early as the foundation everything else would build on.

Art direction. I worked with illustrator Aviel Basil to bring the world to life. Rather than handing over a brief and waiting, I directed each asset closely — specifying mood, palette, character posture, scene composition, and level of detail. The warm golden tones, the cozy storefronts, the friendly characters: every visual choice was deliberate and guided by me.

Screen design & UX flow. I designed all the game screens in Figma — the welcome screen, difficulty selection, the gameplay loop, feedback states, and the completion celebration. The interface needed to work for young learners who may not be fully literate, so every interaction relies on clear visual cues: a progress counter, a points system, and animated feedback for correct answers. Muki the parrot guides students through each challenge with speech bubbles and encouraging messages.

Pedagogy collaboration. Throughout the project I worked closely with our pedagogy team to ensure the educational standards were met at every stage. The difficulty progression, the problem types, the feedback language — all were reviewed and refined together with the pedagogical experts to align with curriculum goals.

Difficulty & Level Selection

A key design choice was giving the player control over their own level of difficulty. Before entering the main gameplay loop, students choose their difficulty setting from a dedicated selection screen, where the challenge level is framed as a choice rather than an assignment. This preserves learner agency and supports differentiated instruction in the classroom.

Key Screens

The game features several distinct interaction types: route-based navigation where students choose which house to deliver to next, math problem screens with multiple-choice answers, a scoring system that tracks points across deliveries, and a celebratory completion screen (“כל הכבוד!”) that reinforces positive learning outcomes.