Journal · Field Notes

Stories from the
learning frontier.

Research, design notes, and dispatches from the team building the game layer for education.

Featured

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Research

Why 94% of learners return: the psychology of quest-driven education

A deep dive into the retention data behind SPARKLORE's quest system — and what it means for the future of online learning.

May 20, 2026 · 8 min read

[ Feature Image · 16:10 ]
Design

Designing Mission Control: the dashboard that makes learning feel like a game

How we built the analytics layer that 847K learners use to track their progression — and the design decisions that shaped it.

May 12, 2026 · 12 min read

All Articles

All Research Design Engineering
May 20, 2026

Why 94% of learners return: the psychology of quest-driven education

The retention data behind our quest system.

Research
May 12, 2026

Designing Mission Control

Building the dashboard 847K learners use to track progression.

Design
May 04, 2026

Scaling real-time leaderboards to 100K concurrent users

The WebSocket architecture behind live rankings.

Engineering
Apr 22, 2026

The art of the boss exam: writing tests that feel like achievements

How our content team designs certification challenges.

Design
Apr 10, 2026

From passive to active: what game design teaches us about learning retention

Cognitive science research applied to curriculum design.

Research
Mar 28, 2026

Building adaptive difficulty with reinforcement learning

How our quest system adjusts to each learner's pace.

Engineering