Trigger warning: This article mentions harassment and sexual assault; the videos on this page may be triggering for those who have experienced either.
It Only Takes One is a marketing campaign that launched by the Northamptonshire Police, Fire, and Crime Commissioner in 2022. It aimed to reduce violence and harassment against women and girls in Northampton Town Centre, particularly at night. Often, the blame for harassment and sexual violence is placed on the victims, but It Only Takes One instead sought to encourage potential perpetrators to better their behaviour, and to encourage bystander reporting and safe intervention. IOTO was created in partnership with Northants Police, Rape Crisis, and the Suzy Lampligh Trust.
It Only Takes One was developed by Amplitude, a creative agency based in Northampton, which is where I worked while creating the proof of concept spoken about here. Below is the campaign's main video, from which I drew inspiration.
The Concept
In 2023, as part of an expansion of the original IOTO campaign, I created a proof of concept for an interactive campaign element. This interactive element would be made available for free to members of the public during managed sessions, helping those who do not experience street harassment (predominantly men) understand what it feels like and the impact it has.
The concept was simple: The player would be tasked with walking from one end of the street to the other. My aim as a designer was to make them feel uncomfortable during their journey.
Experience Design
The street was dark and minimalistic, with few landmarks to help people navigate. I wanted to create a sense of disorientation to wrong-foot even the most confident of people. I added a film grain and a vignette around the edges of the screen to make the place feel gritty and dangerous. I added a 'blink' effect that happens at random (sometimes in quick succession) to momentarily block what the player can see.
Initially, the player has a 'guide'. A thin white line (taken from the design of the campaign videos) trails ahead of the player, but its speed increases until it's too fast to be kept up with, leaving the player lost within nondescript streets. Streetlights offer safety and provide a goal, but these lights blink out of existence as the player draws near.
The sound of high-heels clacking on the pavement is deliberately echoey to increase the sense of loneliness, and I added distant background noises and horror ambience to add to a feeling of claustrophobia despite the wide open street. Vile catcalls occur at random intervals, playing from speakers on either side of the player character, or behind them, but never from a position they can see.
The final piece of design trickery was that there was no safety to be had. The player continues through the streets looking for safety while the catcalls, blinks, and ambient noise get louder and more frequent. Eventually, the experience culminates in a sudden cut to black and messaging explaining that this is how some people are made to feel while out and about, even in daylight.
Further Development
Unfortunately, while this test garnered a lot of positive interest, reasons outside my control meant no interactive element went past the proof-of-concept phase. It is possible this will be revisited in future.
Comments