Playing Design. Mobile Serious Games to Valorize Design Culture in the Urban Space

The paper frames, describes and analyses the Play Design! Project, a set of mobile location-based urban games to divulge and teach design culture. Aim of the project was to promote the culture of design among high school students through the use of mobile gaming, providing an informal and enjoying way of learning, valorizing and contextualizing Italian and Milanese design across the city. Design is here intended as heritage to be recognized and valorized in the center of Milan providing not only information on iconic industrial design products, showrooms and studios but also contextualizing them into the historical evolution of the Italian design.