Describe the creative idea

It's been a rough couple of years for Australian universities, forcing them to think outside the box to attract both local and international students to their campus. Having recently completed a $1B+ campus master, University of Technology Sydney needed a campus tour that could work around lockdowns and offer more than just a hint about their innovative new teaching and learning environments. We created an immersive digital experience that would enable prospective students to freely explore the UTS campus — delivering unique user journeys based on each user’s specific study interests just as if they were walking around campus in person. While universities often tailor their marketing to either domestic or international students, our innovative tour platform appeals to prospective students from anywhere looking to study at any level, and using any device.

Describe the execution

Guided by the jade-haired and 3D-rendered Alex, the UTS campus tour offers a gamified choose-your-own-adventure experience tailored to each user’s academic interests. Designed for any prospective student, the tour is delivered in-browser on any device. Users are immersed in a completely 360° environment encompassing 17 scenes incorporating 9 faculties and schools, with features like interactive hotspots and free-roam mode included throughout. UTS’s youthful brand energy needed to shine at every touchpoint. Lightness and minimalism were utilised to ensure a visual style that was modern and bright — just like students’ futures. The UI leveraged transparency, hover effects and subtle motion to highlight touchpoints while keeping the user immersed in the tour experience. Even the non-binary tour guide avatar was tailored to have the broadest cultural appeal, personifying the UTS brand through their young and dynamic look-and-feel. Behind the scenes, the platform itself was largely custom-coded to deliver superior performance, seamless streaming and smooth scene transitions with minimal loading screens — even on slower connections anywhere in the world. These elements combined to deliver a streamlined and personalised digital 360° campus tour that any prospective student could immerse themselves in from anywhere in the world.