eGRiST has partnered with Enlighten, an e-learning consultancy, to promote the myGRaCE wellbeing service to young people through an innovative Augmented Reality poster campaign.
Enlighten develop technological solutions for educators to help engage their audience and enhance the learning experience. With over 40 years experience in the education sector, and over 100,000 learners using their resources, Enlighten are at the forefront of educational innovation.
Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are a specialism of Enlighten. AR produces an interactive experience in the real world by augmenting the real world with computer-generated sensory information, such as images or sound. The worldwide AR and Virtual Reality market is expected to reach a size of $209bn by 2022, and AR solutions are being adopted throughout a diverse range of industries including medical, military and marketing.
Getting those with mental health difficulties to seek help is problematic for a number of reasons - for example, they may not recognise that there is an issue, or they may not know where to find help. Together, eGRiST and Enlighten are producing an AR poster campaign to reach those who could have specific mental health difficulties and encourage them to engage with myGRaCE: eGRiST's service for self-assessing and managing mental health and wellbeing.
Enlighten will produce several posters which each target a specific mental health issue, designed to catch the attention of viewers who may suffer from the particular issue, even if it is unknown to them. The viewer will then be able to scan a code on the poster using their smartphone or tablet device. When a code is scanned, an animation will play on the screen, overlaying the poster, which introduces the mental health issue and myGRaCE's role in identifying it. The viewer will then be presented with a button which, when clicked, opens the myGRaCE service in the web browser, with a customised assessment pathway for the relevant mental health issue.
To facilitate this campaign, we have built new functionality into GRiST's application programming interface (API). This allows a specific assessment pathway to be opened in the browser directly from a web link. So far, custom assessment pathways have been developed to link from posters on eating disorders, personality disorders, and PTSD, but this functionality also opens up opportunities for future campaigns targeted at specific groups.
Mental health is a huge, and rapidly growing, issue amongst young people. Enlighten have a proven track record of increasing engagement through their solutions, so we are very optimistic that this campaign will allow more young people to identify and start managing issues with their mental health and wellbeing.
We'll be sharing the posters on our website once they're finished.