A Phenomenological Examination of Virtual Game Developers\u27 Experiences Using Jacob\u27s Ladder Pre-Production Design Tactic

Edutainment refers to curriculum and instruction designed with a clear educational purpose, including multi-faceted virtual learning game design. Tools such as the Jacob\u27s Ladder pre-production design tactic have been developed to ensure that voices of both engineers and educators are heard. However, it is unclear how development team members experience and perceive their collaborative work while designing a virtual game using such tactics. This phenomenological study examined the experiences of agile software team members using Jacob\u27s Ladder pre-production design as an interdisciplinary collaboration tool while designing a virtual learning game. Seven design team members (3 educators and 4 engineers) participated in semi-structured interviews and transcripts were analyzed via an inductive coding process that led to the development of key themes. Findings indicated that using Jacob\u27s Ladder design tactic influenced the experience of the team by keeping the team focused on common goals and learner needs, organizing the team work, supporting interdisciplinary collaboration, and promoting shared understandings of the software platform limitations. Individuals played various roles, appreciated diverse views, recognized prior experience and idea sharing, and felt the design tactic supported flexibility for interdisciplinary collaboration. By linking integration strategies to interdisciplinary collaboration, findings from this study may be used by organizational leaders to consider best practices in team building for virtual learning game design, which will further support the development of effective games and growth of the edutainment industry

Meet Amadeo: a proposal

A aposta nas indústrias criativas e culturais é cada vez mais importante para um desenvolvimento económico sustentável, combinando aspetos económicos, culturais, socias e tecnológicos. É também importante perceber como instituições seculares como os museus se tem adaptado aos novos tempos e aproveitado as novas tecnologias e novas formas de exposição em seu benefício, como o Edutainment. Através da revisão de literatura e entrevistas a entidades que trabalham na área, foi proposto fazer uma análise ao Edutainment e como é que este é usado em contexto museológico. Decorrente desta análise os seus resultados foram aplicados à proposta de transferir o modelo da exposição Edutainment e imersiva Meet Vincent, idealizada pelo Museu Van Gogh de Amesterdão, para a realidade portuguesa. Com realidade portuguesa, quer-se dizer pegar no essencial da exposição imersiva criada na Holanda e aplicá-la à vida e obra de Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, o pintor escolhido para o projeto. Diferente de outras exposições imersivas, tanto a exposição Meet Vincent como a proposta feita doravante prezam por partilhar o homem por detrás do pintor e a forma como a sua vivência terá influenciado a sua arte. Exposições imersivas não são novidades, mas acredita-se que o diferencial de transportar a audiência até aos anos 10 do século XX, ao dia a dia de Amadeo possa tornar a proposta de conhecer Amadeo de Souza Cardoso bem-sucedida.The focus on creative and cultural industries is increasingly important for a sustainable economic development, combining economic, cultural, social and technological aspects. It is also important to understand how secular institutions like museums have adapted to the new times and taken advantage of new technologies and new exhibition formats in their benefit, like Edutainment. Through literature review and interviews with entities that work in the area, we analysed Edutainment and how it is used in the museological context. The results of this analysis were applied to the proposal we present: transferring the Edutainment model and immersive exhibition Meet Vincent, created by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, to the Portuguese reality. By Portuguese reality, we mean taking the essentials of the immersive exhibition created in the Netherlands and applying them to the life and work of Amadeo de Souza Cardoso, the painter chosen for the project. Unlike other immersive exhibitions, both the Meet Vincent exhibition and the proposal made hereafter aim to share the man behind the painter and the way in which his life experience influenced his art. Immersive exhibitions are not new, but it is believed that the differential of transporting the audience to the 10's of the 20th century, to Amadeo's daily life can make the proposal of meeting Amadeo de Souza Cardoso successful

A framework study on the use of immersive XR technologies in the cultural heritage domain

Most cultural promotion and dissemination are nowadays performed through the digitization of heritage sites and museums, a necessary requirement to meet the new needs of the public. Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR) have the potential to improve the experience quality and educational effect of these sites by stimulating users’ senses in a more natural and vivid way. In this respect, head-mounted display (HMD) devices allow visitors to enhance the experience of cultural sites by digitizing information and integrating additional virtual cues about cultural artifacts, resulting in a more immersive experience that engages the visitor both physically and emotionally. This study contributes to the development and incorporation of AR, MR, and VR applications in the cultural heritage domain by providing an overview of relevant studies utilizing fully immersive systems, such as headsets and CAVE systems, emphasizing the advantages that they bring when compared to handheld devices. We propose a framework study to identify the key features of headset-based Extended Reality (XR) technologies used in the cultural heritage domain that boost immersion, sense of presence, and agency. Furthermore, we highlight core characteristics that favor the adoption of these systems over more traditional solutions (e.g., handheld devices), as well as unsolved issues that must be addressed to improve the guests’ experience and the appreciation of the cultural heritage. An extensive search of Google Scholar, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Wiley Online Library databases was conducted, including papers published from January 2018 to September 2022. To improve review reporting, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were used. Sixty-five papers met the inclusion criteria and were classified depending on the study’s purpose: education, entertainment, edutainment, touristic guidance systems, accessibility, visitor profiling, and management. Immersive cultural heritage systems allow visitors to feel completely immersed and present in the virtual environment, providing a stimulating and educational cultural experience that can improve the quality and learning purposes of cultural visits. Nonetheless, the analyzed studies revealed some limitations that must be faced to give a further impulse to the adoption of these technologies in the cultural heritage domain

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion