Sofia Romualdo

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.