The platform uses the metaphor of an imaginary planet to represent the journey students take to understand, experiment, define, develop and deliver solutions for a design project. The planet platform includes 4 fictitious Continents. Each of these continents represent the 4 phases of the Design Thinking methodology (i.e., ‘Discover’, ‘Define’, ‘Develop’, ‘Deliver’) of the ‘Double Diamond’ model developed by the British Design Council.

Student teams are invited to engage in a co-creative process through the semantics of Continents (phases), Countries (concepts), and Cities (tools) on an e-learning environment (Fig. 1).

Each Continent (phases) includes:

• Countries that represent concepts, which educators want students to learn (e.g., empathy, sustainability, entrepreneurship), and
• Cities that represent practical tools students use in order to learn those concepts (e.g., ‘day in the life’ or online games).

The learning process is based on the principle of game-based learning and constructionism. Constructionist learning theory holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are active participants in making tangible objects. In this sense, constructionism is also connected with experiential learning and learning-by-doing. Game-based learning can be regarded as a useful way to let students experience things first-hand and learning-by-playing.

A key resource for the planet platform is an original open-source, authoring system for the creation of digital games called 'Choices with Consequences' or ‘ChoiCo’ games. These games are based on the idea of an avatar navigating amongst the diverse consequences of making choices in situations characterized by complex socio-scientific issues. For example, the demo game ‘Sustainable Textiles’ deals with the issue of making sustainable choices in smart-textile engineering.

Educators and students can play:

• existing ‘expert’ games, or/and
• new didactically ‘engineered’ games as a variation of an ‘expert’ game by changing specific parameters, and/or
• ‘half-baked’ games (i.e., games with intentional “bugs” to its original content and rules), aiming to challenge the players to modify or to extend it. While learners question, modify and improve a 'half-baked' game, they express and construct new knowledge about the game's underlying concept (e.g., empathy, entrepreneurship, etc).

Other than the different types of Choico games, students get to practice on mainstream design tools (e.g., ‘Day in the Life’, matrices, charts, SWOT) that are typically used in the design process, as well as, a number of MOOCs or other IT tools as a means of mastering the Design Thinking methodology.