Exploring New Territories for Virtual Reality
Exploring New Territories for Virtual Reality
Some of our more fervent followers may already know that we’ve been experimenting with using Virtual Reality in our work, both far afield and closer to home. In the past two years we’ve made significant progress in discovering and leveraging what exactly this technology can offer us and low-income communities.
VR, despite its nearly limitless potential, isn’t traditionally associated with the realities facing lower-income communities - but at BoP, we’re working to change that - and proving that VR solutions can have a critical role to play in improving lives of people living at the bottom of the pyramid.
Some of our more fervent followers may already know that we’ve been experimenting with using Virtual Reality in our work, both far afield and closer to home. In the past two years we’ve made significant progress in discovering and leveraging what exactly this technology can offer us and low-income communities.
We first began our experiments with VR in 2015, with 360-degree videos allowing us to immerse our clients in the realities of lower GDP communities, helping them vividly visualize the challenges they face and spurring new attempts at solving them. Since then we’ve made numerous strides in deepening our understanding of, and proficiency with, the technology; concretizing our hope to harness its applications for even more meaningful growth throughout Asia and Africa. Today’s post will cover some of what we’ve been up to in the virtual world lately, and what we envision for the road ahead.
Bringing VR to Mozambique
In our last post we hinted at further potential applications we see for VR imbedded into our work, one particularly as a marketing tool. An idea seeded early is currently underway to becoming a working project, subsidized by VIA Water, which would see VR being deployed in Mozambique to assist in the sale of latrine solutions for communities where they weren’t readily available. We’re looking to explore the potential for VR to help door-to-door sales agents offer visualizations for the products they sell. Companies in the west have previously experimented with similar ideas, most notably, retail superpowers including Lowe’s and IKEA. Our project is inherently different as it targets an entirely different consumer group and the hardware itself must conform to fit our needs for price and portability.
We recently travelled to Maputo to oversee the initial steps in kicking off this project. Throughout the week we met with the latrine sales agents and their consumers, observing their current sales procedures and getting their thoughts and ideas on integrating VR into their routine. We also deployed successful guerilla-style field tests that proved how little apprehension there actually was surrounding the use of VR. People of all ages didn’t hesitate to grab ahold of the headsets and almost immediately understood how to use them. To get a glimpse of what it was like on the ground, check out our first video update about the project below. We’ll be releasing more of these as the project progresses.
We’re currently working with a production studio in Maputo to develop our first round of prototypes for the sales agents to test in the field. One of these prototypes is intended to replicate the function of a demo room, so instead of having to bring customers to a preassembled bathroom, they can step inside a virtual one by just looking through the headset.
We’re also looking into producing a new 360-degree video piece for raising awareness using a testimonial from customers. The plan is to have our next visit to Mozambique coincide with the first field tests of these prototypes, so keep your eyes peeled for the next update!
This project is a collaboration between BoP Innovation Center and the Mozambican organizations Naiss, XL, and FX Studio. If you’d like to read more about what this project is about, go to our VIA WATER project page
Documenting our work using VR
Our latest annual report showcases a lot of the other work we’ve done in the Virtual Reality space lately.
Since VR is a notoriously difficult technology to merely talk about, we decided to house our report inside a foldable cardboard headset to give the tech a proper introduction and also show how low the barriers of access really are. Besides the foldable housing, the report also includes 2 VR experiences that bring viewers to both Nigeria and Mozambique, immersing them in our work in a way that no other medium can currently achieve. The VR experiences show our work on Shakti+, a door-to-door sales model developed alongside Unilever, and on Novos Horizontes, a poultry producer using an inclusive distribution chain that we helped co-create. If you haven’t receive our report you can still view these experiences on our VR website, with or without the fancy headset!
VR on the road ahead
While our project in Mozambique is our first foray into using VR in a developing community, we have many other ideas and anticipate a plethora of applications for where the technology could next be used in our work. The applications for VR in the global south is starting to seem less and less distant. Most people in these communities are already frequent users of smartphones, and while VR production costs drop and their integration increases, it won’t be long until VR is a reality for BoP projects across the board. A learning investment made today will ensure we are ready for the time when VR integration becomes second nature.
We recently compiled a concept note that details some of the potential we see in VR when applied in the global south, which can largely be divided into three different categories. Firstly we believe that VR has tremendous potential as an instigator for behavioural change, and could turn out to be an invaluable tool when tackling deep-rooted habits in our work. VR also holds much potential as a training tool, as it allows users to be run through simulations of real-world situations without consequences for their actions. Lastly, product demos could easily be run through using VR, allowing sales agents to showcase entire product and service ranges with little to no physical burden, like the project detailed above.
If you’re curious to find out more about what VR applications we could offer your organization, don’t hesitate to find us at wassen@bopinc.org.
