Welcome to the repo for the 2020 Hackathon project Learn, Build, Repeat: The Taco Experience!
- The walkthrough demo built with Framer
- The playable Unity game
- The Unity Project (zipped)
- The Video
- The Slides
We believe that the one piece that is missing from Microsoft's skilling initiative is a collaborative place for customers to practice what they are learning on Learn and Learn TV and through our events. That's why we created Learn, Build, Repeat: The Taco Experience. The Taco Experience is really just one example of a game narrative that we're using to demonstrate our vision.
Imagine an e-sport-like event where customers join teams from around the world to collaboratively write code in their browsers to solve problems. They can choose the language that they are learning or most comfortable in, and their individual level. Teams will then be given a set of challenges to solve - each person solving their own challenge - that will be compiled together to reach the ultimate goal (in this example: to build tacos).
To prepare for this event, customers will complete Learn modules and watch Learn TV segments with experts explaining the technical aspects and approaches to solving problems.
During the event, a Microsoft host will engage with customers, providing feedback, all through a live-streamed experience so others can watch and learn too.
After the event, customers can tune in to live streams where the Microsoft host will go over some of the techniques used and what the best technique of the day was.
The goal is to give customers a place to practice what they are learning, learn from others, and become comfortable with failing in the pursuit of knowledge - Let's get some growth mindset going!
Our team consists of career changers, near-tech professionals, and folks who care about education. Our goal was to leverage what we have collectively done in the past, including research in effective ways to teach and learn computer science concepts, to fill a gap in the customers journey within Microsoft's skilling initiatives. We wanted to create an experience that brought the customer WITH us, not just provided something TO them.
There are many aspects to what this product would ultimately be:
- Learn modules that support the kinds of challenges presented in the game. A lot of existing modules will be leveraged here.
- Learn TV segments to prep for specific events. A lot of existing expertise shared on Learn TV will be leveraged here.
- A 2D, in-browser gaming experience where customers are presented with random challenges and can write code in a .NET Interactive interface. This gaming experience would be used for individual challenges as well as a multi-player game where each person connects to one part of the "room" and solves their challenges, but their solutions are sent up to a 3D game.
- A 3D MR game that is live streamed where a Microsoft Host walks around and "visits" various players, gives tips, and demonstrates the fun graphics of the solutions being written.
- A series of live streams afterwards to discuss what went well and what resources could help folks learn about what the players were able to accomplish.
| Avatar | Name |
|---|---|
 |
Sarah Guthals |
 |
Jenn Jinhong |
 |
Cassie Breviu |
 |
Morgan Mitchell |
 |
Jayme Singleton |
 |
Christina Warren |
 |
Em Walker |
 |
Skyler Hartle |
|
Adria Martin |
- Narrative
- What assets we need in the video
- What we want to convey
Team:
- Christina Warren
- Adria Martin
- Using Framer
- Clickabale, but not functional
- Used mostly for the video
Team:
- Cassie Breviu
- Jenn Jinhong
- Skyler Hartle
- Christina Warren
- Em Lazer-Walker
- Adria Martin
- Unity
- Something people can actually play
- Not super pretty
- Kind of functional (can be magical)
Team:
- Sarah Guthals
- Cassie Breviu
- Em Lazer-Walker
The goal here is to create an end to end experience that starts and ends in Learn. You could imagine that you aren't allowed to sign up for an event unless you have completed certain Learn modules or done enough practice or something (with scaffolding and easy-entry ones of course)
- A Learn landing page with Learning Paths that support these "games"
- A webpage where learners can practice "fast" coding (just practice writing, learning, getting feedback)
- The game will be a 3D escape room that will be walkable with MR
- Players will just be on their computer at home on a browser
- Players will choose a coding language they want to write in
- Players will be given challenges based on the room
- Players will write code and will be insetivised to "push" their code live even when it isn't complete to get feedback from the host
- When Players feel they have the code complete they can test the code to encourage testing
- At the timer, all Players code are run one final time all at once and we see if they collectively escaped
- While Players are writing code, the Host will "walk" around the world and will be able to see the code that the Players are writing (if they pushed it)
- The Host will give feedback and will also provide commentary
- An even further stretch is that there are two teams in two rooms that are similar to see who can get out first. Instead of a timer they have to all decide they are "ready"
- After the game there can be interviews and a debrief with the Players (optional)
- After the game there is a live stream where the Host will walk through the different solutions that the Players did and other ones that are similar
We could do something very simple to show this off for Hackathon.
- Players connect to a webpage where they are issued coding challenges
- Players submit their code
- A 2D image of the "room" gets shown and if their code worked then the "Room updates" (a new image is shown)
- We only do one programming language
- The rest is narrative in our video
- Tips
- Other themes
- Start with coding basics, could also have:
- Data Science (use machine learning to solve problems)
- Networking
We thought about some themes, we were thinking maybe instead of "escape" we could also do "find all of the tacos".
The challenges could be something like "Go through the entire room and find all of the keys, unlock all locks, and if there is a taco, collect it." The code would be something like (this is not real code in any particular language, no judging....):
# Find Keys and Locks
lockLocations = [];
for(int x = 0; x < room.width; x++) {
for(int y = 0; y < room.height; y++) {
if(room[x][y].hasKey()) {
pocket.add(room[x][y].key())
}
else if(room[x][y].hasLock()) {
lockLocations.add((x,y));
}
}
}
for(int x = 0; x < lockLocations.length; x++) {
for(int y = 0; y < pockets.length; y++) {
if(pockets[y].isKey()){
if(room[lockLocations[x].getX][lockLocations[x].getY].unlockWith(pockets[y]).unlocks) {
if(room[lockLocations[x].getX][lockLocations[x].getY].hasTaco) {
pockets.add(room[lockLocations[x].getX][lockLocations[x].getY]);
pockets.remove(y);
}
}
}
}
}
tacoCount = 0;
for(int x = 0; x < pockets.length; x++) {
if(pockets[x].isTaco()) {
tacoCount++;
}
}
Host.message(tacoCount);
We would obviously want to be more creative and not just having them write code for no reason. We could have some APIs to make it easier to navigate the room and we could even have them do some actual calls to Azure (maybe they find a photo album and have to find how many images have dogs in them).
Make the Tacos:
- Collect Ingredients ()
- Like Scavenger Hunt
- Check if they're good (is the tomato ripe using Cognitive Services)
- Prepare Ingredients (Small programming concepts)
- Find the right tools
- Prepare them in the right way
- Assemble Ingredients
- Get an order (Unit Tests)
- Platting -> CSS
- You need people to want this (COMMUNICATION - USABILITY)
- Stretch
- Create Meals (side dishes)
- Unity
- BabylonJS
- Playfab
- Framer
- https://github.com/everestpipkin/tools-list
During our early July meeting we started discussing the desire to create an experience for more novice developers to learn new skills through a fun, collaborative experience.
Cassie mentioned that one challenge for customers coming to Learn looking to learn something brand new is that they are often met with a wall of text. She found CodeFights to be an engaging way to learn to code (at least in the past it was). For CodeFights:
- You chose the language you wanted to code in
- The goal was to figure out how you could have solved coding challenges better than you did the first time
- You also were given the opportunity to see how other people solved the same or similar problems.
Jenn mentioned "Escape the Code" which was like an escape room, but with code.
We thought we would double down on these ideas and basically build an Escape the Code game that would encompass Learn modules prior (as a practice or prep - Read the Manual type activity), then maybe a practice area (maybe using sometimes like .NET Interactive where you're given a simple challenge and asked to write the code to solve it and given feedvack), then you participate in a game with other people, and then maybe we have a video afterwards that comments on the code and other solutions (most efficient, fastest to write, etc) to show different ways of solving the same problem.
This fits really nicely into research Sarah has done in the past on effective learning practices (e.g. From competition to metacognition: designing diverse, sustainable educational games).
We also discussed being able to have no-code solutions for learners who want to explore other aspects.
We also discussed the importance of a metaphor (like an escape room). This is also based in research (e.g. CodeSpells: embodying the metaphor of wizardry for programming, and that it is important to choose something inclusive. Let's NOT choose "hacking" or something like that.
Finally, we discussed how this would create somewhat of a "glass-box" experience where folks could try out bits of code that is part of a larger solution without having to dive into all of it (also based in research: Of black and glass boxes: scaffolding for doing and learning.
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