Interface design for serious game visual strategies: The case study of 'Imago Bononiae'

Under the V-Must project, 'Imago Bononiae' (2013) stands as a real example of how to build-up a reliable and efficient experimentation caring about the quality and effectiveness of a gesture-based Virtual Museum application in relation with game design patterns. This paper focuses indeed on the user-centric gesture design and progressive gestural skills (rewards) that user can acquire in order to gain an engaging experience and a massive comprehension of large urban contexts mediated by visual strategies, while enabling spatial and volumetric comparisons. Structured as a serious game, the project foresaw a user experience evaluation carried out in occasion of Digital Heritage Expo, held in Marseille in november 2013. During the event, 'Imago Bononiae' was studied to understand more on the interaction's aspects that take place between system and user. The visual design features that mostly connote the main interface and that, consequently, influence the behavior of users have been studied, like visibility, reliability and memorability. The affordance of the whole system has been then observed. Results presented show that 'Imago Bononiae' has proved to be suitable for the large audience given its facilitated usability and the well-structured game strategy.