“Sail with Columbus”: un progetto di tangible narrative applicato al patrimonio nautico ligure

The thesis presents the creation process and the evaluation outcomes of “Sail with Columbus”, an interactive and tangible storytelling project. The project goal is to show to small groups, especially families, that visit the Nautical Heritage Museum in Genoa, how people sailed in the Medieval age. Acconding to the Tangible Narrative approach, “Sail with Columbus” aims to reach this goal through the interaction between participants and several ancient navigation tools, equipped with sensors and communication capabilities. The technological infrastructure combined with Tangible Narratives approach is used to create a storytelling project, which allows to investigate further theoretical issues of Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs). The main research question addressed is the combination of different kinds of TUIs to create an engaging interactive story for the users. The findings from the thesis suggest that the alternation between diegetic and non-diegetic TUIs during the storyline works well to create an engaging interactive story characterized by a good pace.