SOA Aids VR EXperience

Product innovation

Spread the message, not the disease

Challenge

Create an innovative experience that appeals to and engages high school students. Informing and educating them about the risks of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Outcome

A Virtual Reality (VR) project using immersive storytelling to promote safe sex and create a sense of urgency in our target audience surrounding STDs.

Impact

In less than a year a prototype evolved into a fully functional product and became an integral part of the national sex education program at Dutch high schools.

Nationwide
adoption in classrooms

Strategy

Talking about STDs can be embarrassing, especially for teenagers. To get the right message across, the messenger itself had to be appealing.

We prototyped early in the process and kept testing the versions among the target audience. This way we made sure we developed an engaging concept. We adopted new technologies and relevant storytelling to connect with the teenagers and built an innovative solution for the education program.

Creative

We saw VR as the ideal medium to show teenagers the potential size of their sexual network and the consequences of not practicing safe sex. Early prototypes were tested and improved, leading to a successful final product.

The VR EXperience has the teenager start in bed where he or she sees contacts from their sexual network appear around them, filling up the room. They can interact with the people in the room by looking at them. The teenagers hear their experiences and thoughts about their sexual encounters.

The biggest challenge in this project was to personalize the experience for each individual teenager. The VR EXperience needed an onboarding mechanism that enabled teens to customize their experience.

Our solution: let the teenagers have a VR chat conversation with their loved ones. Based on the input from these talks, the size of the group and gender, the EXperience is personalized. After the experience ends, tailored advice is given to each individual to promote safe sex.

Technology

In order to make the experience accessible to the target audience, we built the VR EXperience in WebGL and optimized for mobile. This allowed Dutch high school students to have the full experience on their preferred devices.

System Integrations

Native web API's.

Tech partners

Highlights

  • An impactful project that was so successful it was integrated into the national sex education program on high schools in the Netherlands.
  • Being able to leverage immersive technologies to educate teens on an important societal topic.
Awards
Webby Awards nominee
Lovie Awards winner, 360 video branded
Lovie Awards people’s choice winner
CSS Design Awards Website of the Day winner
CSS Design Awards Special Kudos winner
Awwwards Honorable Mention
Press
AD - Onveilig vrijen? Daar denk je na deze ‘exenmeter’ nog wel twee keer over na
RTL Nieuws - VR-spel moet jongeren veilig laten vrijen: 'Denk ook eens aan de exen van je exen'
Party scene - Ga met al je ex-bedpartners een virtuele slaapkamer in om condoomgebruik te stimuleren!
Fonk - Soa Aids Nederland wint Lovie Awards met VR-EXperience
DPDK | 2018

Pim van Helten

CEO

Want to create an immersive experience?

Contact Pim