In the second half year of academic year 2016/2017 the Virtual Reality Experience Minor at the University of Applied Sciences took place. With an interdisciplinary team consisting of students of Multimedia Design, ICT, Civil Engineering and Fashion Branding, Unicef asked us to create a VR application that would gather more awareness among (young) millenials.
Unicef pitched the following research question:
How can we reach a younger target group through VR/AR/Gamification and make them contribute to our mission?
They also gave us a list of core values:
* Personal
* Interactive
* Experience/Emotion
* Online/Shareable
* Fundraising
With these as a starting point we researched and learned a lot about VR, what to take into account in terms of interaction, we learned how to use Unity for creating VR environments, Maya for creating 3D objects and much more. We developed a concept that revolves around the core values Unicef proposed by creating a playful and positive art style portraying refugees and their story.
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The main theme for the concept we chose in agreement with Unicef was education, giving the user a chance to help the refugees develop their educational skills so they won’t get a big disadvantage because of their situation. Hence we created the hashtag #NoLostGeneration for the branding.
Personal
To focus on the personal aspect we created the main game. It is based around creating a package for the refugees in the camp. There are several rounds with three different items, and you can only pick one. This forces the user the choose between the three items which causes a dilemma moment.
The user could pick the items they resonate with the most personally, or the item they want to give the refugees the most.
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The main game, the user has to choose one of three items and put them into the box next to them
Interactive
We used the Leap Motion controller for creating the interaction with the virtual object. With this controller you can use your bare hands to touch and pick up items. We choose this option because we found it to be the most intuitive for the user (they don’t have to first learn the layout of a controller and then learn what each button does).
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Source: Prototypr