Rosie Collins of the Fred Company with colleagues from The Children’s Society and other winners at the Vodafone Techstarter Awards 2019.
Since August 2018, Fred has been working in partnership with The Children’s Society, a national charity that works with the country’s most vulnerable children and young people. We have been exploring what role technology can play in their work. Our first major project was VRWY (VR With You), a co-designed VR project developed with a group of young people who attend the Pause mental health drop-in centre in Birmingham. Through a series of workshops, we explored what situations were typically causing anxiety for these young people and decided to focus on school-based scenarios for our project. We co-designed three scenarios - taking a test, walking down a busy school corridor and reading aloud in class - which we filmed as 360 scenes in a local school. We then developed this into a branching narrative interactive app, which allows the user to make choices within the scenarios, such as whether to read aloud in class.
The project went on to win the Vodafone Techstarter award in 2019, as well as the Vodafone Champions award at the same event.
In our second large project with TCS we collaborated with looked after young people in Salford to create 360 degree interactive tours of care facilities. This resource enables future users of those facilities to explore them ahead of time in a safe environment, and at their own pace.
Additionally, we worked with The Children’s Society team to develop a practical accessibility guide around considerations for organisations looking to use VR in their work.