Designing Phygital Activities In a Smart Multisensorial Room: a Collaborative Cognitive Environment for Children with and without Disabilities

Technology integration in education has a great potential to transform learning paths, to overcome barriers and increase meaningful interactions among students, teachers, and the environment. Phygital learning is an emerging approach that balances the innovative technology-driven experience content with the traditional and physical one. In the context of Inclusive Education, this approach is particularly promising for enhancing the learning domains (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) of children with disabilities. Recognized as integrators in multidisciplinary teams, characterized by a broad vision on users’ needs and experience, and familiar with the creative problemsolving process, designers can have an active role in developing new learning activities. This paper describes the development of Magika, an interactive Multisensory Environment, that supports inclusive education via playful phygital (physical + digital) activities for children with and without disabilities. 30 specialists, among product and interior designers, electronic, materials and mechanical engineers, primary educators, therapist, and caregivers, were involved in a co-design process to define the educational and therapeutic objectives of phygital activities, according to the Italian primary school education system.