By Don Byrne
Do you know the warning signs of drug use? Or the myriad of ways kids can hide drugs in plain sight?
The people at the Chippewa County Stand Against Meth campaign do. And in cooperation with Post House Virtual Tours produced an interactive virtual e-learning tool to teach parents, social workers, and others what to look for.
The Hidden in Plain Sight Virtual Simulation, a game-ified version of one of our virtual tours, was released in mid-January, and has already received almost 4000 hits with an average on-screen time of over 14 minutes. This means that people are not only finding it, but actively engaged with it. And for most it is both eye-opening and fun, though we've had more than one person come back three times before they found all 38 of the hidden items in the room.
Rose Baier, Chippewa County Criminal Services Director, wanted something that they could use without taking the actual "physical" room on the road because of the pandemic. She remembered seeing a similar tour for a Meth House tour we produced in 2016 and gave us a call to see if we could come up with something similar.
Post House Virtual Tours not only met that challenge but offered a distinctly different and unique way to keep the audience engaged by game-ifying the tour. They added a timer and scoring option, along with other add-ons, to help the viewer navigate the tour and find the items more easily.
Both tours include items hidden throughout each room that are visually highlighted when users hover over them. The user can then click to open "information windows" with information, tips, guidelines for safety, and what to look out for. The Chippewa County simulation added a video intro and took the information window a step further to allow viewers to "see inside" each item. The Post House also added sound fx to each of the items as an audible clue, and a "view all" button to see them all at once--in case they're limited for time. Both tours also include social sharing options and links to "more information" online.
All this and more could be part of any company's safety training program. Common applications include HazMat training, Confined Spaces, and Lockout/Tagout training where viewers can see the room or space they might be working in, and then identify safety hazards, practices, and procedures through a similar process, or take things a step further by adding multiple-choice testing, scores, and more.
For more information on any of these products, give us a call or send us an email.
And to see WEAU's News Story on the project, click below:
