This paper proposes a framework for designing digital environments and illustrates this framework using the example of a video game (Alchemist). The increasing importance of digital environments for educational systems (e.g. for teaching and assessing twenty-first century skills) makes it necessary to have standards for their quality. These environments should enable an individual discussion of the learning content, give individual feedback for learners and consist of motivational elements. The framework consists of the steps "Analysis", "Design", "Development", "Quality Assurance" and "Evaluation & Implementation". Each of these steps is characterized by a defined milestone, which, together with a cycle between crucial and non-arbitrary steps, indicates a product and goal orientation for development that distinguishes the model from conventional approaches. This should significantly promote the actual completion of a first product and thus the implementation of a project idea, since otherwise development processes, in particular, are quickly stuck in several, sometimes small-step loops until the initial impulse is lost.