Safe Driving Challenge
Virtual Reality
OVERVIEW
3M needed a way to showcase their signage products reflectivity to global customers. The best way to do this was to bring customers to a test track in Minnesota, but that isn't always possible for all their global customers. So I came up with the idea to recreate our test track in Virtual Reality to provide our global sales team with a better demonstration tool. The goal of this project was to better communicate to our customers the power of our product and it's differentiation from our competitors.
ROLE & DURATION
Project Design Lead | 3M
Storyboarding, Design Strategy, Creative Direction, User Research, Testing, Product Launch & Management
Feb - Aug 2018
The Problem
3M High Grade Retroreflective sheeting is brighter at greater distances, unlike cheaper sign materials. Our wet reflective pavement markings are visible in the rain, unlike many other common forms of pavement marking. Our Conspicuity markings make broken down trucks more visible at night so they are not a danger to drivers, trucks without markings can cause fatal crashes.
​
But how do you properly showcase these benefits unless you see it on the road while you are driving?
​
Having customers drive on a real night time road in the rain is dangerous. Having a test track like that in every country all over the world is expensive. So how do we put our customers in a dangerous driving simulation to properly showcase the advantages of our products.
Insights
An in-depth quantitative survey of 3M customers at the largest traffic safety convention in the US (A.T.S.S.A) gave us a great understanding of what customers wanted to see.
They want to be in control and wanted to drive when seeing our products.
Wanted to see our products directly compared to cheaper competitor products.
Wanted a demo that they could be complete quickly.
Layout
To create the right environment I wanted to make sure we hit a few key marks.
-
A narrow road on a cliff face, something that would give the driver real reason to avoid crashing.
-
I wanted to make sure that the road was level and winding. From user testing we knew that people in VR can handle a bit of side to side motion, but can become sick quickly when up and down motion is introduced.
-
It needed to be broken up into sections, Poor reflectivity, High reflectivity, and Mixed reflectivity. This way the user gets a very thorough understanding of the differences between materials.
-
I wanted to make sure that the environments were similar enough that drivers didn't believe we were making any one section too difficult, but different enough that the whole experience felt fresh.
Using Empathy to Connect with Customers
Customers needed to "feel" what it was like to drive on a dangerous road at night with poor reflective material. This is a very real problem that all drivers experience. With Virtual Reality I could give them that experience in a safe way while also educating them on the value of our materials.
​
This empathy was an extremely important part of our sales process and to the development of this tool. The policy makers who decide on road infrastructure spending must weigh the cost of the material to it's benefit to their end user, the driver. By making them empathize with that driver's experience they are more likely to spend more on the higher quality product.
Data Driven Communication
Throughout the experience we collected data on how fast they drove, how many times they took a wrong turn or crashed, and how many objects they ran into. This was a visual representation of how they did, it reinforced the experience they were feeling. Users had statistics that showed that when they were anxious they drove slowly and had more accidents, while when they had better reflective material and they were more comfortable they could go faster and not worry about having accidents. Empathy backed up by data is very powerful.
In addition to that I built a mechanism into the application that allows us to get customers leads and follow up with them using the data from the demo. The data we gathered from the experience and similar real world data is a great opening into a larger sales conversation about getting more high reflective material on their roads.
The Results
This demonstration was wildly successful for our Transportation business. Our customers related to it immediately and it was a hit at our largest, most important tradeshow. After it's initial launch it was sent to all of our international tradeshows and was then taken on a roadshow experience that traveled around the United States. Local government officials across the US would be able to take this demonstration with our sales team as part of a larger sales initiative to increase the sale of high reflective materials throughout the country. It was also installed at our Washington D.C. Customer Innovation Center and has been showcased to numerous senators, house representatives, and Department of Transportation employees and policy makers.
​
Below is a full video recording of the demonstration.
Millions Saved in reduced travel costs and
remote demo construction
65%
Increase to booth attendance at key tradeshows
90%
of customers told us they learned something new about 3M products
Lessons Learned
Working on this project I learned a great deal about the challenges of game design. I was not intending to make a game at first, but as the concept formed it started to take on many aspects of a game and with it came many common game design UX issues.
Primarily, how detailed I wanted the game mechanics to be. For instance, how intense (realistic) will the driving experience be, how much drift do we want the car to have, what speeds is it capable of, how responsive are the steering controls, what additional admin commands do we need to design in case someone breaks the game in some unpredictable way? All these questions and more became more pronounced during the testing portion of the development. It really gave me an appreciation for how much testing must be done in order to make a simulation like this.
​
Robust testing was so crucial to this project, I lost count with how many times I ran this course, but it was all for the betterment of the project and (unsurprisingly) ended up being one of the most important elements.
