Make Real

The Challenge:

Data analytics make the world go round. With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, there's an abundance of information to be mined and valuable insights to be discovered - if only we knew how to tap into it.

In 2021, a report by the UK government found that half of businesses struggle to recruit for roles requiring data analytic skills. Upskilling workers to improve data literacy is increasingly becoming a priority for executive leaders.

And it's not just analysis where there are knowledge gaps about data. Anyone across an organisation who might from time to time need to touch, change and transform data - which is basically everyone in an organisation - benefits from having a better understanding of data and its usage, capture, storage and control.

In this project, Lloyds asked us to help create a solution to drive engagement through a digital learning experience to make content about data relatable and fun, and to look at the subject beyond pie charts and number crunching into something with practical usefulness for a broad audience.

Here's a little known secret for you. Exploring data, when contextualised through a tangible real-world scenario, can be exceptionally enjoyable.

No, really.

For this project, we created a serious game which gave learners a single clear objective: build a house within a fictional city.

Learners can choose from a range of characters to play with, from the profit-motivated property tycoon through to a social-conscious environmental campaigner. With the character's goals to keep in mind, learners then set out with a fixed budget and time scale to build the best house possible for the specifications they need to work to.

But, along the way there are plenty of opportunities for the project to be thwarted. Not using data or using the wrong data can lead to you falling foul of building regulations, running out of cash, incurring fines or missing critical deadlines.

There is help on hand, however. Feedback at the end of each round tells you not only how well you're applying data to make each decision, but whether you've even using the right data in the first place.

Done well, serious games (or, to be more precise, "games that have a primary purpose other than merely to entertain us") can be an excellent way to engage and motivate learners.

By setting learners a simple goal - to build a house - we give learners a clear instruction that doesn't exhaust their cognitive power trying to digest complicated rules. Learners are left instead to push beyond their existing knowledge and skills, gathering what they need throughout the course of the game in order to achieve the desired end result.

But, just like in the real world, charting a path through the abundance of information is easier said than done. This brings a genuinely meaty challenge to the game. The greater number of pitfalls increases the chance of error; there's next to no chance that learners can coast through the game with fluke and guess work. To succeed in Data City, you have to be engaged. Even then, if you get to the end and find the house you've built contains cracks, or there's a toxic leak under the foundations, you can't help but want to go back to start and have another go.

By laying bare the complexity of the subject matter, the game shows how data underpins everyday life in substantial ways. Even for the maths-averse like me, seeing the application of data in a real-world task opens up insight into how data can help us do things much better.

The Challenge:

Blood type identification is a simple and common process, but the effects of getting it wrong can be devastating. Even a small amount of transfused blood of the wrong type can very quickly cause serious illness & even death.

The primary purpose of this experience, as outlined by the requirement of the NHS Blood & Transplant department, is to show how quickly blood agglutination can occur when different blood types are mixed. The aim is to build understanding around how important it is to select the right blood type for transfusions and what can quickly go wrong for the patient if you don't.

To deliver on that purpose, by the end of this experience learners are able to:Replicate the tile method for identifying blood types.

Deduce a blood type from Red Blood Cells (RBC) agglutination evidence.

List laboratory best practices: correctly setting up controls, demonstrating dexterity with fine motor skills, and being methodical in their approach.

Discuss the importance of selecting the right blood type for transfusions.

Explain the consequences of giving a patient the wrong blood type.

Learn without using vital blood supplies and/or generate additional hygiene and plastic waste (pastettes & pipettes).

As a pilot stage concept, Make Real and NHSBT worked together closely to ensure maximum value for the limited budget was achievable for development into this important area of training and end use case. Only by developing for Oculus Quest full VR hardware, offering reliable 6DoF tracking, performance and contained standalone nature could VR be deployed within hospital training environments, free from tethers and other hardware requirements, otherwise increasing costs and health & safety risks.

The finesse of the Oculus Touch controllers and their input meant that the delicate, fine motor skills necessary to interact with a pipette and the motion of mixing the blood to enable agglutination to occur, without causing contamination between samples upon the grid, combined with virtual feedback systems to inform the learner of their method suitability and necessary pressure levels.

Despite being a pilot, the design has incorporated a deep matrix of possible variations of patient and blood type, ensuring that the training is more than just learn by doing, but relies upon the learner to apply their knowledge and understanding with each play-through in order to correctly determine blood types as a result of the simulation of agglutination and choosing the correct blood type for transfusion and saving a virtual patient's life.

This project will be the first to be rolled out across NHS using the new Oculus for Business enterprise platform for improved security of data, device management and enterprise features including kiosk mode and offline data collection and reporting, as a result of Make Real's inclusion within the Oculus ISV Partnership programme.

Initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive but due to deployment date and impact of coronavirus COVID-19 upon the NHS and wider health sectors, full-scale rollout deployment and testing has been put on hold temporarily as associated stakeholders have been positioned within the emergency response teams. However it has already opened up avenues of discussion around other use cases to apply VR training to, within NHS L&D and the wider organisation, beyond the stereotypical expected uses.