Uncovering hidden worlds
The HSBC Digital Team was looking for a different way to communicate the real depth and scale of what they were doing to keep customers safe and financially empowered. We created a series of concepts that would make the most of VR as a medium to communicate with press and the media in a fundamentally different way.
Creative routes
Our early ideation led us to two distinct creative routes through which we could bring to life the story a way that felt it could let us talk about the subject matter but present it in an entirely different way.
Our first was to represent the unseen world as one parallel to ours, into which we could draw our characters to tell the story of all the things that happen without them even knowing.
Our second was to create a macro world, closer to our own, but abstracted and presented in a way that allowed us to view it from above and see the richness of data and context that surrounds everything we do.
Under the sea
A metaphorical undersea world, accessed through hidden doorways in our ordinary settings served as a space to use immersive visual environments and gamified mechanics to communicate what are otherwise largely uninteresting, albeit technically impressive, elements of the HSBC strategy for customer experience.
We explored the ways we could do this without straying into territory that felt inappropriate for the context. We arranged the experience in chapters, each related to the experience of a single character that represented a key customer segment.
The view from above
Our second route was built around a series of islands, each representing a different aspect of the strategy, and a canvas upon which each one could be explored through a scenario the user was placed in.
After discussion with the client we landed on the second route as the most effective way of telling the story we needed to communicate. We then created a VR prototype for the Oculus Go headset which we iterated on. Two months later it was used by HSBC at it’s first roadshow event to communicate their vision for the future of banking and the depth of work going on at the bank to ensure customers were safe and prosperous.
