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AirAware VR

An immersive VR experience and physical air purifying product that engage members of the public about the effects of air pollution.
Climate CrisisAwarenessClimate ChangeEducation
Collage of air pollution

Addressing climate change requires profound behaviour change, not only in consumer action, but as members of communities. AirAware is both an immersive VR experience and physical air purifying product that engage members of the public about the effects of air pollution and their role in it.

VR experience

Using virtual reality headsets and a video filmed in 360 degrees, the experience immerses people on the streets in the effects of pollution in the local area.

After signing our waiver form and reading our leaflet, people will be set up with a headset to participate in the experience, where they'll be guided about the impact of traffic in the local environment, statistics, and a brief bit of history. Afterwards, they'll be asked a series of questions to ascertain their feelings and future intentions.

Wearable product

Additionally to the VR experience, we're interested in future technologies that might change people's role in air pollution. We produced an idea for a wearable device that absorbs air pollution as people walk the streets. People can try this physical prototype and share their thoughts. This connection between virtual and physical helps to prompt interesting feedback.


Watch our immersive VR experience

Watch responses from the people we intercepted

View the wearable product overview

View the flyer and detailed graphic information

Sam Royle
Sam Royle
Service Design (MA) 1YR
Ja Yeun Ko
Ja Yeun Ko
Design Products (MA) 1YR
Hadar Vishne
Yiling Huang

Where we started

Where we started

Addressing climate change requires significant behaviour change, not only from businesses but from citizens. This was something that our team was specifically interested in, and we started to explore what high-impact actions people could take to reduce their footprint. We were able to define a few key areas, including and reducing red meat, material and energy consumption, and avoiding flying and driving.

Focusing on individual behaviour

Behavioural change was a specific area of interest. How could you actually make people reflect on and change their habits? We began by reading studies on behavioural change and realised that it was no easy task. Many of the efforts employed by organisations and companies such as using simple graphic campaigns were not truly effective. But, we’d seen that are tactics that can be employed to help improve chances of success. For instance, certain theories around behavioural change states that by making an intervention contextual, you’re more likely to affect someone’s behaviour.*

To ensure contextuality, we knew that starting a local, community level would help us have the most direct impact, and we started to look around us at the environment of our campus in Kensington. What we saw were some extremely busy roads, including Cromwell Road and Kensington Road, and as we started digging more deeply into the research, we identified that the Borough of Kensington & Chelsea as one the most polluted areas in London, and therefore the entire UK**. A high proportion of this pollution was coming from vehicles on the roads. 

Problem framing

This research presented us with an opportunity, and we were able to reframe our problem statement as

"How might we influence people on the streets to reflect on and change their behaviour by showing them the direct impact that driving and flying were having on the environment"?
Man using VR headset

Market Research

Studies on virtual reality (VR) at Stanford University have shown that it’s able to influence behaviour. *** Stanford is designing experiments that test the efficiency of using VR to teach empathy. Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab said “Though changes are often small, studies repeatedly show that virtual reality experiences can impact thoughts and behaviours in the real world.” The tests are creating situations such as putting participants, who are not colourblind, through colourblindness VR colour-matching exercises. The scientists measure the likelihood of understanding the perspective of others before and after the exercise, noting positive change from participants after the exercise. That positive change is also being applied by the participants into future, separate scenarios, demonstrating the opportunity for behaviour change learned in a scenario to have long-term impacts on an individual.

Our test

To make AirAware a reality, we created a VR experience and uploaded it to a headset. We intercepted 6 people on the streets, showing them the experience and getting their insights. We also created a physical prototype wearable air purifier, and also tested this with all participants.

Woman using VR

Results

The results of this overall experiment were interesting. On the one hand, we had some really positive feedback about the experience overall. People found it engaging, and they saw the value of having a wearable pollution device.

However, a few things we could have done better. For example, the location of our test (on the RCA campus) meant that many of the participants were students who had a low carbon footprint. We were restricted by college regulations as to where we could run our test, but ideally we'd want to find people with a higher impact on the environment, perhaps targeting fuel stations or car dealerships.

Additionally, we looked at other examples such as iAnimal, a VR initiative run by an animal rights charity Animal Equity in the US.**** They used VR to show the reality behind factory farming, and had seen very positive results. We wanted to build on this work and use VR as a way of showing people the true impact of their behaviours of driving. We realised that we would struggle to intercept drivers at the point of action, but saw a way to educate broader society on car and plane use. This is how we landed on the concept of AirAware.

Our output


Immersive experience in VR – We developed a VR experience using 360 video, and engaged people on the streets of Kensington.
AirAware Device

References

  • * Lorraine Whitmarsh, Wouter Poortinga, Stuart Capstick, ‘Behaviour change to address climate change’, Current Opinion in Psychology, 42 (2021), 76-81 (p. 78).
  • ** Greater London Authority, ‘Air Quality Information for Public Health Professionals – Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’, (2012), P.17
  • *** HP article on Stanford's study on VR and behavioural change
  • https://garage.hp.com/us/en/innovation/hp-vr-vhil-behavior-change.html
  • **** Animal Equity article on iAnimal 360 video experiment
  • https://animalequality.org/news/world-first-animal-equality-launches-latest-ianimal-360-film-featuring-kat-von-d-and-amanda-abbington/


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Royal College of Art

Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
London SW7 2EU