REACT Knowledge Exchange Hub

REACT Collaborative PhDs

Name:Sofia Romualdo
PhD thesis title: The Gameful Museum: Towards Understanding the Impact of Gameful Design on Visitors’ Experiences in Museums
Period of study: September 2015 – September 2018
Primary Supervisor: Professor Gabriella Giannachi, Professor of Performance and New Media and Director of the Centre for Intermedia, Department of English, University of Exeter
Secondary Supervisor:

Rick Lawrence, Digital Media Officer, Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery
Research information:

My research focuses on how gameful design – that is, design inspired by game elements and design, applied to non-game contexts – and the resulting game-like experiences have the potential to transform how museum visitors engage with a museum’s physical space. This investigated is supported by a collaborative doctoral award from REACT and Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM). The goal is to develop a framework that can be adapted by museums to inform the creation of rich, interactive, and gameful experiences that engage their audiences in a playful way. This framework will then be tested at the RAMM as part of my investigation, with the creation of diverse gameful experiences, such as museum-hosted game jams, gameful trails, and mixed reality game experiences.

As part of this investigation, I will study different kinds of gameful experiences in museums, from the use of full-fledged videogames as support and educational tools, to gamified platforms, to exhibitions built from the ground up to be game-like, to hybrid reality gameful experiences.
Links:

RAMM Website