RSA'S ROAD SAFETY METAVERSE
TYPE & TECH Educational Virtual Learning Environment, WebGL, VR
CLIENT Road Safety Authority
Shifting gear from ‘in-school’ to ‘at home’
The COVID-19 pandemic forced society to make significant lifestyle adjustments. For the Irish Road Safety Authority (RSA), this meant their educational focus was to shift gear from ‘in-school’ to ‘at home’, with learning resources distributed online to provide a safe and engaging remote learning environment for all students.
In collaboration with BBDO, Solarflare created a metaverse for road safety learning called ‘RSA Core’, as a means to harness innovative technology. Accessible through the browser the remote learning portal allows both RSA presenters and students to be virtually together whilst physically apart. Cast as avatars, the users are fully immersed and engaged within the 3D event space. Full with hosted RSA learning materials, such as presentations, videos, and animations, the content is tailored to certain age demographics and ready for a wide range of learning content to be taught.
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“I finally got to hang out with my friends again after months apart”
– Jacob O’Sullivan, Student
How we hacked it
Built in Mozilla Hubs, the 360 immersive environments with added spatial audio allowed RSA to immerse their students in stylistically bold colourful spaces with fun creative features like 3D objects and animated scenery, brilliant for younger audiences. Their attention fully engaged with awe and wonder, RSA is able to promote good road safety behaviour in a safe and impactful road education environment.
Accessed through an online browser, students are able to join remotely. With the teacher providing a secure web link, the RSA NRSES Presenter joins them virtually, guiding them through the experience.
In the classroom, the teacher is able to display this interactive space on the screen, while the RSA NRSES Presenters cast in as an avatar.
For those who have access, students and teachers can also jump in on mobile and Oculus headsets.
Buckle up and schedule a class
By using Mozilla Hub’s open-source platform, we were able to create a bespoke system solution that enabled Presenters to ‘schedule’ their classroom experience. We did this by creating a unique Admin Dashboard, giving them the option to:
- Book a room
- Select age group, where suitable learning criteria would populate the environment.
- Populate representations & Real-Time statistics
- Email notifications for secure links to system
From the beautiful Irish coastline and busy city streets to a themed “Seatbelt Sheriff” land the Virtual Learning experience consists of six different environments – all connected by an ‘RSA Core’.
Take a sneak at some of the following Virtual Learning experiences we created:
RSA CORE
The ‘RSA Core’ hub, a life-sized roundabout scene, is the gateway to the various themed learning spaces. The hub’s wheel structure represents RSA’s branding and values while showcasing Ireland’s diverse landscape with urban, town, rural, and coastal road scenes. These roads lead to themed learning zones through different doorways.
SEATBELT SHERIFF
Presenters can teleport through a cave portal, enabling them to educate students about safety. We developed a unique educational journey known as “Seatbelt Sheriff,” which features the following: Barn Door, Cactus Corridor, Cross the Road Challenge, Hi-Glo Disco, Inside the Roller-skate and Map View.
CONSEQUENCES
This environment includes key subject matter from RSA’s existing ‘Consequences’ content.
The centrepiece of the room is an upside down crashed car, housing key content from existing VR experiences as well as TV Ad campaigns.
SEATBELT ADULT
Starting within the Seatbelt Museum, presenters can take pupils through a virtual tour of the Seatbelt TV ad campaign. Able to include key subject matter in the form of 3D sculptures, video content and sound bites taken as inspiration from the TV advert.
SPLIT SECOND DANGERS
This room encapsulated the theme of being distracted whilst driving, taking inspiration from previous RSA content and integrating within this environment. Key statistics were displayed outlining true data that has been captured.
SPEEDING
Users get to explore this room learning the difference that speeding can have on the pedestrian death toll. We represented this by creating several doorways that automatically shut, increasing the speed and size of doorways to explain how the number of pedestrian deaths are hit by a car.
A 3D road safety adventure
Made available online via invite across multiple platforms, the launch of The Learning Portal has proved extremely popular with students, allowing RSA to reach more schools than ever before, with it even being booked out until the end of the year. Whether it’s desktop browser, tablet or mobile we even extended the mass appeal to virtual reality, truly allowing users to be immersed into the 3D road safety experience.
Back-to-school
In line with the announcement of the fine for failing to stop at a school warden sign, doubling, RSA revealed its new online Learning Portal on August 23rd, 2022. Alongside An Garda Síochána, the back-to-school campaign aimed to call on drivers to watch out for children as they return to school. Since it’s launch, it’s been adopted by the Irish national primary and secondary school curriculum.
Creating noise across the media in Ireland, the platform has been featured in…
RTE One O’Clock News, Virgin One: News at 12:30, The Irish Times, Irish Mirror, Irish Examiner, Joe, Fm104, Cork Safety Alerts, Tipperary Live, Midwest Radio, Dublin People, Highland Radio and Dublin’s Q102.
The Institute of Creative Advertising and Design Awards | User Experience for Advertising, Silver Award. Creative Innovation, Silver Award. Digital Experience, Bronze Award.
The Webby Awards, People’s Voice | General Metaverse Experiences: Public Service & Activism, Nominated.
12th Lovie Awards Winner | Metaverse Individual: Weird & Experimental, Bronze Award.
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