Virtual Road World

The potential for Virtual Reality to enable intuitive learning on risk based subjects for children is now being realised and we are very proud that we have been able to work with Catherine Purcell from USW and the Road Safety Trust in the development of an innovative tool to help young people learn about road safety.

Designed by Catherine Purcell alongside members of the USW innovation learning team this project also benefited and was informed by a feedback process that worked closely with children from local schools. Armed with this we developed a bespoke mobile compatible app for children to learn about road safety.

The learning game features a full virtual world populated by AI driven NPCs and Cars in which children are able to move around, using pavements and crossing points to walk safely. Their behaviour is scored to reflect the decisions they make, loosing points for crossing roads unsafely or getting too close to cars. The environment and characters have been custom modelled and styled with a simple minecraft inspired appearance whist customisable characters ensure that the children felt both connected and engaged with it. Alongside a public version that is now live on the app store we also developed a research version that gathers fully anonymised data allowing for the research team to measure and assess children's progress whilst using the game.

You can read about the project on the USW website here
See the reveal trailer we created here
See a behind the scenes video of the animated characters here
You can download the app here