Asia Pacifc Journal of Educators and Education, Vol. 35, No. 2, 39–56, 2020 © Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2020. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). UNBOXING THE DESIGN OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (ESL) LEARNING VIDEO GAME FOR INDIGENOUS LEARNERS: AN EMPATHIC DESIGN- BASED APPROACH Mohd Syazwan Wan Mahzan 1 *, Nor Aziah Alias 2 and Izaham Shah Ismail 2 1 Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Chiku 2, 18300 Gua Musang, Kelantan, Malaysia 2 Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 42300 Bandar Puncak Alam, Selangor, Malaysia *Corresponding author: mohdsyazwanwm@gmail.com Publication date: 23 December 2020 To cite this article: Mohd Syazwan Wan Mahzan, Nor Aziah Alias, & Izaham Shah Ismail. (2020). Unboxing the design of English as a second language (ESL) learning video game for indigenous learners: An empathic design-based approach. Asia Pacific Journal of Educators and Education, 35(2), 39–56. https://doi.org/10.21315/apjee2020.35.2.3 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.21315/apjee2020.35.2.3 Abstract: A learning application that can conjure meaningful learner experiences has always been the ultimate aim for any design and development initiative. Instructional designer longs for not only considerably rich inputs from expert members in design stage but those inputs ought to be sensitive to cognitive and emotional learner experiences, illuminating the core concept of empathic design which is deep reflection on how targeted learners impacted by the design would react when engaging with the proposed design solutions. This exploratory qualitative method study examined how subject matter experts empathised the cognitive and emotional experiences of the indigenous learners when they were designing a learning video game that aimed to heighten learning engagement in ESL classroom. A semi-structured interview with six experts was conducted. Once the proposed technology was ready for formative evaluation, one-to-one evaluation was conducted on three targeted learners to assess their usability experience. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the interview verbatim transcriptions and one-to-one evaluation qualitative notes. The design findings indicate that the experts transformed the learner cognitive and emotional experiences for the learning video game design in the form of seven design principles and the evaluation findings show that there is a congruence between the effectiveness of those principles and the learner usability experience. Keywords: Design principles, design solutions, cognitive experiences, emotional experiences, empathic design, indigenous learners