Samenvatting

This graduation thesis details an attempt at raising awareness, among a defined target audience, for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life under water, by means of a virtual reality escape room (VRER).
 
In order to reach the goal of raising awareness a concept was developed revolving around splitting up the complex information of the subject matter into ‘fragments’. These fragments, objects that exist in virtual space, are then placed at strategic locations inside a VRER.
 
A prototype of this VRER was developed and tested with people from the target audience. The target audience was interviewed before and after their experience inside virtual reality and they also filled out a short questionnaire.
 
The results of testing sessions show that the individual fragments of information are capable of conveying messages to a diligent observer.
When the players are given the objective to ‘solve puzzles’ in order to complete the VRER within a given time limit, they no longer pay as much attention to the details of their surroundings that don’t seem immediately relevant to the completion of their goals.
 
In order to successfully reach the goal of ‘raising awareness by means of a VRER’ more research is required. To this end, a number of practical recommendations are made for improvements to the latest prototype.