Saturday 5 October, during the Open Day of the Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) in Barcelona, ​​Genigma met the general public for the first time and put itself to the test. In fact, more than 150 people of all ages and professions, intrigued by our project, have chosen to sit at our table and try the first digital prototype of the game.

Our interaction with the public was marked by a succession of 10-15 minute sessions, during which the scientific team (Marc Marti-Renom and Juan Rodriguez) illustrated the project and the biological problem that the game addresses. We then actively involved citizenship in test sessions of the beta version of the game on tablets. These sessions saw four teams compete against each other that have solved the puzzle in three levels of increasing difficulty (easy, medium and difficult) on a small fragment of the genome in a cancer cell. The aim was to obtain the solution associated with the highest score that provided the “best possible sequence”.

During the test, we observed the movements of the players on the tablets to understand the different strategies used to obtain the best score. For us researchers it was amazing to see how much attention such a diverse audience has listened to and adhered to our proposal; how much curiosity it showed, asking us thousands of questions and how much enthusiasm he communicated, as soon as people entered in harmony with the dynamics of the game.

With subsequent interviews, we also wanted to capture the participants’ gaming experience, their interest in the project and the interest in the science behind the game. We are now analyzing all this information to continue to improve the prototype of the game and to make the Genigma project even more appealing and engaging.

Therefore thank you very much to all the participants! If you could not come, don’t worry: soon there will be other opportunities to collaborate #staytuned and follow our Twitter and Facebook profiles.