AR Campus Tour App
By Bath Spa University
Creator's Statement
How do you better engage and inspire university student applicants during a typical campus visit? Bath Spa University tasked Immersive Promotion Design with the challenge of creating a new immersive experience that would engage its applicants during Open Days, and help to creatively position Bath Spa University as a university of choice for creativity, enterprise, and student support.
To support the university's 2022 Offer Holder Days, we produced an Augmented Reality Campus Tour,
which aims to bring Bath Spa’s Newton Park campus to life, adding an extra layer of digital magic over the already beautiful surroundings in order to encourage its student applicants to see the often hidden opportunities, networks and success stories that truly define a student’s university experience.
Designed and produced by Dr Matthew Freeman, this project was a collaboration with ZubrVR who built the app and shot bespoke immersive content using 180-degree and 360-degree cameras on-site at the university. It was also a university-wide initiative, supported by Bath Spa University’s Marketing, Student Opportunities, Accommodation, Technical Services and Senior Management teams.
Summary
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First we conducted background research into how other universities are using immersive marketing to support their student recruitment activities, analysing successful and unsuccessful examples.
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We then gathered existing audience insight regarding how the prospective student demographic typically participates and emotionally engages with immersive marketing content.
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Next we completed bespoke audience research with a cross-section of current students at Bath Spa University to better understand how the target market uses immersive technologies, but also their expectations and responses to immersive technologies. This research was done via focus groups at the university.
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Based on these findings, we developed a strategy for our AR Campus Tour, which aims to provide an immersive portal into the world of Bath Spa University based on psychology, experience design and marketing.
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Finally, we produced the content for the AR Campus Tour - comprising a mix of 360 campus spaces, 180 captures of the TV and Dance Studios, 360 images of student accommodation sites, audio recordings of student stories, AR recreations of student work, including a video game and a magazine, plus an AR intro from one of the Pro-Vice-Chancellors. This was all published as an app for the university, and aligned with its 2022 campaigns.
Manifesting as an immersive trail across Bath Spa’s Newton Park campus, the AR Campus Tour app invites visitors to track down posters inside campus buildings. When the posters are scanned, an AR experience is triggered before your eyes. Watch the walkthrough video of the full AR Campus Tour above, or see snippets of the nine AR experiences and their posters documented below.
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In the news...
Learn more about our AR Campus Tour by reading the article in FE News, which includes an interview with Matthew Freeman. Click below to read the full article.
