• Swindon & Wiltshire Awards
• Wednesday October 11 2023
• Author Name: Peter Davison

Creative tech studio Aer Studios wins prestigious BIMA award for innovative app

Aer Studios, a creative tech studio based at Box on the Wiltshire border near Bath, has won a BIMA award for its groundbreaking gamification project, The Data Escape Room.

The national award-winning digital eLearning tool is designed to enhance data literacy among professionals through an engaging and interactive escape room format.

This immersive learning experience, produced by Aer Studios, leverages the concept of escape rooms, fostering collaboration and critical thinking in a challenging and entertaining environment.

The platform supports real-time multiplayer communication, ensuring a seamless user experience.

The Data Escape Room is an innovative approach to workplace training. It offers an experiential learning theory, by replacing standard eLearning with a multiplayer, remote session where participants use data literacy skills to solve problems and “escape” from imaginative challenges and scenarios.

The inclusion of a live facilitator who guides the game and collects real-time analytics makes The Data Escape Room an industry-first, enhancing its effectiveness as a training tool.

So far, participant data has indicated a substantial increase in data literacy. The platform has facilitated the training of over 400 people, clocking over 1,200 hours of learning.

The BIMA Awards, established in 1985, are the UK’s longest-running tech awards. Recognising great strides made by both big and small businesses in the British digital sector, the BIMA Awards celebrate pushing the limits of what is possible.

Original thinking and impact lie at the heart of its criteria, rewarding excellence in impact, innovation and craft as achieved by tech leaders like Aer Studios.

The London-based awards ceremony is set for Tuesday, November 21.

MD Tom Harber said: “We are incredibly honoured to receive this BIMA Award for The Data Escape Room.

“This recognition underscores our commitment to producing meaningful digital experiences and impactful solutions that master aesthetic appeal, technical execution, and interactivity.

“We believe that data literacy is vital for the workforce of the future, and The Data Escape Room is at the forefront of this revolution. It brings together the best of Aer Studios’ creative craft and technical rigour.”

Phil Greenwood, head of product at The Data Escape Room, said: “The Data Escape Room has made a significant impact for our customers and the way they think about and use data.

“Staff who have taken part are more confident in how they use data and have demonstrated greater levels of scrutiny and challenge.

“We have also seen learners apply the lessons from their experience to change the measures they use to be more outcome-focused and improve the way they visualise and present data outputs.”