First-person perspective as a training tool
We built the Empathy Lab with CGA Experience, CrossCountry, and Chiltern Railways to address a specific gap in rail industry staff training: the difficulty of building genuine empathy with disabled and vulnerable passengers through conventional instruction. The format was 360 VR in first-person perspective, placing railway staff directly inside the experience of the people they serve.This is training, not entertainment. The brief required something that would change how staff respond to real situations, which meant the scenarios had to be accurate, the perspective had to be genuinely first-person rather than observational, and the production quality had to be high enough that participants stayed present in the scenario rather than disengaged by technical shortcomings. We worked closely with disability consultants and passengers with lived experience to ensure the scenarios reflected reality rather than assumption.
