The U.S. Air Force is one of the six military branches that defend America every day. The greatest differentiator, besides the obvious flying part, about the U.S. Air Force from other branches is how Airmen think. Whether they’re up in a cockpit making decisions on the fly or under the wing troubleshooting systems, they’re using unique cognitive skills to get their jobs done. This project was sixteen-months long, and showcases how going into a deep dive can yield some amazing things.

The project started in 2019, before the COVID19 pandemic. The U.S. Air Force wanted an immersive tour-able experience to test cognitive skills of potential Airmen in a fun, gamified way. We had to create something that encompassed physical challenges too, as cognitive abilities change as your nervous system does. It had to be able to have a follow-up recruiting element, while still being approachable and light.

We had to look at what already existed in the game space first, so we started with arcade games and mind puzzles. We really had to understand not only how games were built, but what metrics we were able to measure to be able to provide real data. In addition, we looked at what training pilots had to go through when testing their own abilities, and we started to think about how we could combine these real life tests with more fantasy based game play. Several months and rounds of game ideation were in the works to build a virtual reality experience that you could step in to. We had to think of how a user would go through this experience from start to finish, and that meant understanding user flows and brand needs.

What’s the U.S. Air Force’s greatest strength? An Airman’s mind. How Airmen use reaction time, accuracy, composure, comprehension, focus and reasoning is imperative to every day successes they achieve. And now, with the help of Project E.C.H.O., anyone can test whether they’ve got the skills needed to become an Airmen.

What do we do with months of development and time spent on creating these games when no one can come out and play them? We create an online version so they can play at home. We repurposed the games to be able to get a broader reach than we could’ve gotten only with the tour event exposure. Adapting the games from a VR environment to an online environment was a worthy challenge, and we were able to create an experience that people could train repeatedly - something that wasn’t available in the original setting of the brief.

For the traveling in-person experience, users can play the games in a virtual reality setting in a mobile trailer that links to the online experience for repeated gameplay and brand touch points later. The site collects user data in real time, providing an assessment of six cognitive skills. Each game is designed to prioritize testing of specific skills, while retesting other skills from a previous game. The result is an accurate aggregate of how the user performed over the length of the experience. Users see where their skills stand, and are even able to replay to improve them over time.