SMART VIEW: A serious game supporting spatial orientation of subjects with cognitive impairments

The paper presents SMART VIEW a serious game developed with the aim of helping young people with moderate cognitive disabilities acquire those spatial abilities that are key prerequisites to autonomous mobility. The game was conceived for cognitively impaired teenagers; it proposes exercises supporting the acquisition and consolidation of competences related to space awareness and self-perception in the space; such skills are necessary to develop the sense of spatial orientation, which is critical for the target population. SMART VIEW makes use of Touch Screen tables so to allow easier access to the game content and augmented interaction. Particular attention has been devoted to the game interface design, so to make it free from cognitive barriers and fully accessible to the target population. Contents are as close as possible to reality and the educational strategy entails slow and gradual increase of the game complexity, so to properly sustain the users' cognitive effort. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.