Speak to Me Normally

A VR title that puts you inside the experience of social anxiety at work, designed from lived experience, so the feeling is felt from the inside rather than described from the outside.

The staff room, from the learner's place.

The meeting, felt the way an anxious colleague feels it

Most people know a colleague who goes quiet in meetings. Few know what the room feels like from that seat. Speak to Me Normally puts you in it.

The emotional turmoil people with social anxiety often endure is what the title is built to convey, from the inside rather than described from the outside.

What changes for your organisation

After the headset comes off, colleagues talk about how they speak to each other, which is the point of the title.

A team leader checks in with a colleague at her desk. — A check-in at the desk.

A team that talks differently

A team cannot change how it treats an anxious colleague until it has felt what its usual way costs. This title gives a whole team that feeling in the same session.

The debrief turns it into agreements about how the team speaks, asks and waits.

Seen from the inside

The scenes are first person. The person opposite is close enough to read, and the answer cannot be put off.

An interviewer faces you across a spare room, seen through the headset. — An interview, from the chair that dreads it.

A new starter waits in a staff kitchen, seen through the headset. — Starting a conversation in the staff kitchen.

Three colleagues sit at a round table in a meeting room, one wearing the headset, one turned to a wall screen. — A hybrid meeting turns towards you.

"Our ethos from the beginning has been about co-designing solutions alongside people with lived experiences."

Simon Lowe, PTR's CEO. Simon Lowe
CEO, People Tech Revolution. SAE University College, 2018

How a session runs

The title runs between 4 and 10 minutes, with dialogue choices inside the headset, and PTR delivers Library sessions with a facilitated group debrief. Some features need an internet connection; the Library collects no personal data, though it may collect app-improvement and analytics data.

A participant rehearses in the headset while two observers watch from another part of the room. — A group takes turns in the headset.

A learner repeats a quiet task inside a fully simulated room. — Running the same moment again, quietly.

A participant discusses an XR rehearsal with a facilitator. — Talking it over with the facilitator.

Designed from lived experience

Speak to Me Normally was designed from lived experience of social anxiety. It sits within PTR's Equal Reality VR suite, alongside Everyday Inclusion and Finding Common Ground.

Two people rehearse a standing workplace conversation. — A standing conversation, rehearsed in place.

Choices you make in your own words

Inside the headset the learner picks from dialogue choices, so the scene answers the way a real colleague would.

That is why the title works as practice and not only as a perspective: the learner has to speak, and hears what happens next.

The rooms where speaking up is hardest

Remote check-ins, mentoring sessions and branching conversations: the same discomfort shows up wherever a colleague has to find the first word, at any age and with any need for support.