In this interview, find out more about SportsImproVR (South Netherlands), MiTale (Southwest Finland) and LiikU ry (Finland), who will be responding to the challenge of improving motor skills and physical well-being of adolescents “MoVR”.
Could you tell us about the activity and the purpose of your companies SportsImproVR, MiTale and LiikU ry?
Our DIGIT-PRE project team consists of SportsImproVR, us (MiTale) and LiikU ry. The lead partner SportsImproVR creates sports education apps for virtual reality devices. MiTale is a game company from Turku, Finland. We do PC games, serious games & educational software as well as outsourcing work for various clients and projects. LiikU ry is a sports education organisation that is active in Southwestern Finland.
What attracted you to DIGIT-PRE?
We have worked with serious games, gamification and health-related software before so DIGIT-PRE seemed like an interesting opportunity right from the start. It is also always interesting to work together with different companies and learn about their fields. This time we are diving into the field of sports education.
Could you describe your common project "MoVR" in a few words?
Our solution is SportsImproVR Playground. It is a motor skills training application for 10-13-years-old children. It features fun and intuitive exercises with game mechanics and striking visuals. We are basing the exercises on the Dutch and Finnish curricula so that the solution can easily be implemented in teaching.
What challenges have you faced so far when working with a partner from another country?
How different is per country when it comes to readiness from health care professionals and organisations to enter talks about what makes their daily activities challenging and what kind of solution would be desired. We found that in UK and Southern Europe everybody is very open and ready to share experiences, being genuinely grateful that a tech company want to build a custom solution for their needs. In Western Europe the same type of organisations are only interested in final product, once it is ready to use.
Finally, have you already taken part in a European project before? If not, what are your concerns? If so, why do it again?
We haven’t encountered much challenge in our co-operation. I think the biggest questions for us at the moment are in designing our solution and making it the best possible product with the best possible market approach.
