MuseUs: Case study of a pervasive cultural heritage serious game

This article describes a case study on MuseUs, a pervasive serious game for use in museums, running as a smartphone app. During the museum visit, players are invited to create their own exposition and are guided by the application in doing so. The aim is to provide a learning effect during a visit to a museum exhibition. Central to the MuseUs experience is that it does not necessitate a predefined path trough the museum and that it does not draw the attention away from the exposition itself. Also, the application stimulates the visitor to look at cultural heritage elements in a different way, permitting the construction of personal narratives while creating a personal exposition. Using a methodology derived from action research, we present recommendations for the design of similar applications and conclude by proposing a high-level architecture for pervasive serious games applied to cultural heritage.

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