Vodafone – Drive Safe

Following on from the successful deployment of the Vodafone – ‘Working at Height’ VR application, we ran a discovery session with the key Health, Safety & Wellbeing (HS&W) team leaders to determine other specific needs and learning objectives within the driver safety and awareness aspects of operations.

Challenge

The initial challenges raised by the discovery session outlined that the application would need to accommodate three fundamental structure requirements:

1. The solution needs to be a single app and unified user experience
2. The app needs to accommodate multiple bite-sized modules (games/experiences/interactives)
3. It needs to be accessible to all audiences, regardless of tech or connectivity (minimum spec 3G + entry-level smartphone)

In order to accommodate these three competing requirements, we would have to build much of the gamification mechanics at a level that is abstracted from any individual content module.

Use Case

There are three types of drivers: bad drivers, those who will improve with training and those that are already good. During the discovery workshop, the following core learning objectives were identified to help improve those that need it:

• Safe Behaviours – improving awareness and rewarding for safe behaviour
• Understanding consequences – individuals need to understand their personal risk profile and are shown the consequences of poor driving
• Provision of specific learning scenarios – e.g. breakdowns, vehicle checks, driver wellbeing etc
• Improving Anticipation – help users learn to better anticipate and react to other driver behaviour
• Improving Perception – improve perception of risks presented by the environment and context
• Reinforce ‘Absolute Rules’ – reinforce key messages behind this brand
• Reinforce ‘Work-safe’ / Home-safe’ – reinforce key messages behind this brand
• Teaching Risk – educating users as to what is an acceptable level of risk

The target audience for this application is anyone who works directly or indirectly for Vodafone and drives a vehicle in that capacity. Only 10 to 30% of driving roles are fulfilled by direct Vodafone employees, the largest proportion are therefore employed by third parties acting on behalf of Vodafone.

Broadly, there are 3 driver ‘profiles’ which are:

1. Professional drivers e.g. taxis, team shuttles etc.
2. Trade drivers e.g. those that need a van to complete their normal work
3. Other drivers e.g. all other employees that drive as part of their role or have company cars

The highest risk drivers are those in the professional and trade roles, so these are the primary roles to target located primarily in the AMAP region (80% of users), with ROW (20%) considered secondary.

Proof of Concept

During the first half of 2018, Vodafone partnered with Make Real to deliver a range of immersive learning products for Working at Height and Driving Safety. The Driving Safety applications were created for the HS&W department to coincide with their ‘Work Safe – Home Safe’ campaign.

These initial interactive applications were intended to be a starting point for an expanding series of potential modules/interactives/games that could be created to tackle the widely known risks that surround driving, especially in developing nations and working cultures.

Upon delivery of the first batch of modules a new requirement became clear; to tie the content together into a single gamified experience. It was felt by the HS&W team that this is essential to reaching the large and disparate target audience and promoting continued engagement with this life saving content.

Hardware

The target markets for the end users determined that the Android and iOS devices supported, and therefore the design of the application experience for performance, were within the mid-tier level of devices to ensure that minimum audience exclusion occurred by requiring high-end, latest mobile devices.

Test

Beyond the expected unit, integration, functionality and cross-compatibility testing required for any application development, user testing was carried out with a small internal group of 100 Vodafone employees mostly in UK, Turkey and Portugal, before the soft-launch (within specific key territories) as well as rigorous security, penetration and data protection testing by ISO-9001 compliant external providers.

Build

The mobile serious game is built with Unity Technologies 3D engine for ease of cross-platform build and deploy across Android and iOS devices and app stores. We integrated Microsoft Azure Playfab BaaS to ensure scale and stability of the no-SQL database of users, their learner profiles and global leaderboard system. Playfab also provides LiveOps and all the data and analytics necessary to measure the user behaviour, success and GDPR compliance of the serious game app during soft-launch and beyond.

The initial design incorporated 6 driving-safety themed mini-games, combined with a comprehensive set of multiple choice questions, which the learner has to complete each gamified day, driving around 9 city map levels within the safe working time limits.

Impact

Response from the trial was very positive and Vodafone commissioned further content and updates to the experience, including:

• An updated build for the official global launch targeted to tens of thousands of Vodafone employees and affiliates in 25+ countries, with additional support for French and Portuguese languages and various small additions and improvements.
• A v2.0 to be released later on in the year, featuring new games and features including well-being and mental health guides.

The full launch in Summer 2021 saw regional Vodafone territories launch the updated version. So far there have been 3,000+ learners actively engaged with the mobile learning experience and over 10,000+ hours of activity tracked. Over 50% of the engaged learners have reached Level 5 in the serious game and undertaken and achieved their virtual driver’s license assessment.

The mobile application was shortlisted as finalist in the following awards categories:

• Learning Technologies Awards 2020 – “Best Use of Mobile Learning”
• Learning Technologies Awards 2021 – “Best Use of Mobile Learning” WINNER (bronze)
• Learning Technologies Awards 2021 – “Best Learning Game”