Itinerarium: co-designing a tangible journey through history

This paper presents the co-design process of Itinerarium, an educational game designed to engage children of primary school in learning history through interactive play. The research drives forward a co-design methodology articulated in different settings (an archaeology lab, a Fab Lab and a primary school), with the aim to embed the local practices and knowledge into creative outputs. The design case shows that cross-competence, collaborative teamwork, inspiring design contexts and collaborative making are quintessential to scaffold participants' knowledge and skills. However, in order to fully contribute to the design process, participants have to be involved at specific stages of design: domain experts are fundamental in an early design stage and during testing, whilst children are effective co-designers during middle stages when prototypes are available. Designers have the fundamental role of materialising ideas with aesthetic qualities and drive the co-creation process.