Taking students outside the classrooms. Location-based mobile games in education

The contribution aims at corroborating location-based mobile games as models for the integration of digital technologies in the educational field. They demonstrated to be valid alternatives to formal education in the applied research project: Play Design!, which addressed to high school students, interested in design-related matters, and intends to valorise the Italian design culture, transforming Milan into the stage of a double-sided story. Design is here highlighted both as a cultural heritage and a discipline, inducing the development of two different games sharing a common didactic aim: D.Hunt and D.Learn. The first one is a mobile treasure hunt illustrating the excellences of the creative production of the country, and the renowned protagonists and places of Italy- and Milan-based design: a cultural background to be preserved and valorised. The second one, instead, is a role-play, cooperative and competitive game which depicts the city as a hub for schools and universities, where design is considered a subject for didactic courses, a combination of theories and practices to be transmitted and implemented. Then, the two mobile, location-based serious games exploit this copious and multifaceted material for evident learning purposes, joining the examples of informal education to increasingly follow in future technology developments.