Although Augmented Reality (AR) technology has entered many market and knowledge domains such as games and leisure activities, it remains rather limited in digital heritage. After studying the potentiality of using modern AR elements in a museum context, this paper proposes the use of additional game and educational elements in the core AR application in order to enhance the overall on-the-spot museum visitor’s experience. An agile AR application design methodology was followed by taking into account the needs of small-to-medium sized real-world museums. Moreover, a heuristic evaluation protocol was applied by a group of experts in order to test the proof-of-concept AR application, in which some novel elements were proposed such as the AR quiz game. The main findings indicate that enhanced AR experiences in museum settings can make a nice fit with the user environment, physical and perceptual abilities, known metaphors, and user position and motion in 3D space. Moreover, AR services can be provided under a minimum distraction and physical effort. As a conclusion, AR technologies are mature enough to be standardized for museum usage, while the audience seems to be ready to take advantage of the related enhanced museum experiences to maximize both user satisfaction and learning outcomes.

Serious Games (SGs) have been widely adopted in cultural settings and museums, especially the last five years. It is expected that SG can link directly the museum content with target user groups and can fulfill their educational needs. This paper aims to present a systematic mapping study on modern museum gaming technologies and applications. More specifically, focus is given on the use of Serious Games (SGs) by the visitors during exhibition navigation and exploration of museum's cultural and educational content. Major analysis criteria and review findings include game goals, purpose of use, scope, user acceptance and educational effectiveness. A pool of 48 quality literature publications were set under examination. It was found that most solutions were game-based than play-based and that both genres had educational benefits on offer. Also, the frequency of relevant publications per year was increasing from year 2009 up to 2015. Regarding scope, studied applications were split almost equally among education, culture and arts, while the overwhelming majority were targeted to the general public and not teachers, students or parents specifically. Those findings are of particular importance for museum curators, digital cultural content creators, pedagogical engineers and museum interface designers.

Aging is a physical procedure for people and nature. Our aging world is expanding because of the life span extension. Aging has a crucial relationship with our body composition (muscles, bones, and adipose tissue), which is characterized by an increase in fat mass and a gradual decrease in muscle mass and strength and bone density. These alterations affect physical performance and impact quality of life enhancing the risk for non-communicable diseases, immobilization, and disability. As far we know, osteoarthritis of lower limbs, sarcopenic obesity, and muscle mass and/or strength loss are treated separately. However, bones, muscles, adipose tissue, and aging appear to have an interconnection through a dialogue as they talk to each other. Health disorders are coming into the surface when this relationship is disrupted. The aim of our study is to search deeper into this interconnection, so that when adipose tissue increases, we have to take a look into the condition of muscle mass, bone, and connective tissue and vice versa, through the assessment of physical performance. Consequently, the triad muscle-bone-adipose tissue disorders by aging should be treated as a single entity.

'PlayLOGO 3D' is a LOGO-like environment to implement Game Based Learning activities especially designed for children aged 6-13 years who learn the very basic instances related to programming. Its educational effectiveness is expected to be shown after school students get involved in formal programming lessons using LOGO or other languages. It is emphasized that students need an introductory level for programming based on their intuitive knowledge before getting involved with algorithmic concepts using formal programming tools. This paper outlines an approach for: A) Using a subset of LOGO language in a 3D environment, B) Propose an alternative method for pre-programming education and C) Design a Serious Games application to address all of the above. Usability evaluation results are discussed in later sections. While the enduser evaluation is still in progress, the Expert Review Method was used for initial evaluation based on a set of heuristics for game usability, game play and educational effectiveness.