Designing Immersion in Art and Culture.

Designing Immersion in Art and Culture explores how immersive technologies are transforming artistic and cultural experiences, blending the physical and artificial worlds to create engaging environments. The book comprehensively reviews the current literature on immersion, unpacking key theoretical concepts and ideas. It moves beyond theory to explore public installations, demonstrating how technology is transforming everyday spaces into immersive experiences. A historical perspective follows, tracing the journey of immersive technologies from their early pioneers to contemporary applications. Throughout, diverse case studies illustrate the global impact of these technologies in art and culture, while interviews with experts provide a behind-the-scenes look at the creative processes that drive these innovations. The book also dives into the evolving relationship between users and immersive technologies, o!ering a deeper understanding of their interaction. In its final section, the book envisions future scenarios where technology becomes seamlessly embedded in both daily life and artistic expression, while reflecting on the roles and expertise needed to achieve these exciting advancements. This book may appeal to anyone interested in the intersection of technology, art, and culture, o!ering a glimpse into how immersive experiences could be designed and could shape the future of creative expression

AIXE. Building a scale to evaluate the UX of AI-infused products

Despite the diffusion of artifacts integrating AI systems, current UX evaluation methods are not yet prepared nor comprehensive enough to include the unique traits characterizing them. That is the main premise of the [removed for blind review] project, which developed a new method to assess AI-infused artifacts. The contribution traces all the research steps that have been necessary to build AIXE, a specific and comprehensive scale framed as a questionnaire with 33 items, and aimed to support the understanding of the core UX qualities of this spreading technology. Specifically, it presents the three main phases of the research, which include: (i) the exploration of the state-of-the-art of current UX methods and reflections about AI-infused objects, (ii) the identification of dimensions and descriptors (second and first order variables) to construct an attitude scale using mixed methods sharing a human-centered approach, and (iii) the validation of the scale with an exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis

Embedding Intelligence. Designerly reflections on AI-infused products

Artificial intelligence is more-or-less covertly entering our lives and houses, embedded into products and services that are acquiring novel roles and agency on users. Products such as virtual assistants represent the first wave of materializa- tion of artificial intelligence in the domestic realm and beyond. They are new interlocutors in an emerging redefined relationship between humans and computers. They are agents, with miscommunicated or unclear proper- ties, performing actions to reach human-set goals. They embed capabilities that industrial products never had. They can learn users’ preferences and accordingly adapt their responses, but they are also powerful means to shape people’s behavior and build new practices and habits. Nevertheless, the way these products are used is not fully exploiting their potential, and frequently they entail poor user experiences, relegating their role to gadgets or toys. Furthermore, AI-infused products need vast amounts of personal data to work accurately, and the gathering and processing of this data are often obscure to end-users. As well, how, whether, and when it is preferable to implement AI in products and services is still an open debate. This condition raises critical ethical issues about their usage and may dramatically impact users’ trust and, ultimately, the quality of user experience. The design discipline and the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) field are just beginning to explore the wicked relationship between Design and AI, looking for a definition of its borders, still blurred and ever-changing. The book approaches this issue from a human-centered standpoint, proposing designerly reflections on AI-infused products. It addresses one main guiding question: what are the design implications of embedding intelligence into everyday objects

Strategizing blockchain adoption in public cultural services: a comprehensive scoping review

Purpose: This paper explores the application of blockchain technology in the public cultural sector, where adoption remains limited despite its potential. The study identifies major use case scenarios and empirical examples of blockchain adoption in public sector cultural services through a scoping literature review. Design/methodology/approach: A scoping literature review was conducted to map research and conceptual approaches to blockchain technology in the public cultural sector, focusing on key use cases emerging and empirical examples. Findings: The review reveals that while blockchain has the potential to enhance public cultural services, its adoption is still in its early stages. Identified use cases include tokenization of cultural assets, digital rights management and decentralized funding models. Empirical examples in the public cultural sector are sparse, and the impact of the technology remains largely theoretical. Research limitations/implications: The study is limited by the scarcity of empirical data on blockchain adoption in public cultural services. Future research should focus on in-depth case studies and empirical analyses to understand the practical implications of blockchain in this sector. Practical implications: Public sector organizations offering cultural services may use these insights to guide blockchain adoption and implementation decisions. Social implications: Blockchain adoption in public cultural services has the potential to democratize access, enhance transparency and foster community engagement, contributing to a more inclusive and participatory cultural ecosystem. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the emerging discourse on blockchain in the public sector, focusing on the often-overlooked cultural services. It highlights the benefits and challenges of blockchain adoption in this sector, providing insights for future research and policy decisions

Interactive Players. LBMGs from a Design Perspective

Adopting a player-centered approach, this contribution delves into the relationship and interactions LBMGs activate among people (between players, and among players and non-players), with the device, and with the spaces wherein the play activity takes place. In consequence, it taps into three different levels of implications: social, technological and spatial. It reports on some empirical advances gathered from a three-years analysis on three BSc courses and a total amount of 44 Location Based Mobile Games deliberately designed for prompting challenging interactions between the digital world and physical elements in the real space. Taking advantage of the potentialities of being situated and technology-supported, they enhance and facilitate immersion and sense of agency within the game. What emerges is a novel interpretation of LBMGs players as “interactive agents”, engaged in meaningful interactions with other persons, with the space and with technology

Musei, fruizione culturale e tecnologie. Luoghi, persone, storie

The access to cultural heritage resources is a large-scale phenomenon which relates cultural institutions with a very diversified audience whose expectations are modifying. Digital technologies play a decisive role in this change: just think of the revolution brought by smartphones and tablets, which have the potentialities of desktop pc together with portability. The article focuses on these technologies, looking at mobile devices as tools that enable new relationships between visitors, places and stories, analyzing national and international experiences which propose an innovative use of such devices

Mobile technologies and cultural heritage. Towards a design approach.

The large-scale access to cultural resources, the current change in the audience expectations, together with an underuse of the potentialities offered by mobile technologies call for a rethinking of the role of mobile interpretation within cultural institutions. The book fits in the area of intersection between cultural heritage and mobile technology, dealing the topic from a design perspective. The main aim is indeed to provide designers and developers with a framework able to guide a conscious design of cultural mobile experiences, fully exploiting the potentials of these technologies with clear objectives and the awareness of the means to achieve them. Meaning making and social engagement in cultural institutions at large as well as the world of mobile gaming are addressed in the book in order to get insights and to provide the design framework with theoretical scaffolding. Case studies and prior findings from literature review inform the design framework that is described in detail. The book is addressed to the academic community but also to designers and practitioners involved in the implementation of mobile experiences for museums and cultural institutions

Cultural Heritage and Mobile Technologies. Towards a design framework.

The paper presents the results of a research aimed at providing designers and developers with tools able to guide a conscious design of cultural mobile experiences, fully exploiting the potentials of mobile technologies, with clear objectives and the awareness of the means to achieve them. The research fits into the field of mobile interpretation for GLAMs with a particular focus on mobile gaming and how it can foster learning, socialization and engagement. The paper describes the context in which the research is grafted, the methodology, the insights and proposes and discusses a design framework