AHDB

Most people never see how milk gets from the cow to the fridge – the grazing fields, the milking parlour, the cheese that ends up on their plate. AHDB, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, promotes British farming and wanted to bring that story to the public at agricultural shows, trade events and exhibitions.

A leaflet or a video is easy to walk past. The experience had to hold the attention of people on a busy stand, many of whom would never have worn a headset, and work for them straight away with no instructions.

We combined two formats in one app: 360° video filmed on real dairy farms, so visitors stand in the field and inside a rotary milking parlour, and interactive 3D scenes where they do the work themselves. The scenes follow the supply chain from cows in the field, through milking, to dairy food on the plate.

We chose hand tracking over controllers, so anyone can pick up the headset and start using their hands with no tutorial. In each interactive scene a clipboard to-do list guides the tasks and ticks off every step as it is done.

AHDB has taken it to agricultural shows and exhibitions across the country – a reusable tool for public engagement. It runs standalone on the headset, with no PC to set up, and explains the dairy process by letting visitors take part rather than read about it.

We later ported the existing project to Japanese in a matter of days – a quick way to take a finished experience to a new audience.