Around seven years ago, the hype and excitement surrounding Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) hit Fever Pitch. Facebook acquired the Oculus Rift in 2014, and other vendors like HTC and Nvidia began competing to capture the hype. We saw Mark Zuckerberg with his flashy demo and heard about multiple Hi-Fi and Low-Fi competing headsets. Yet aside from a few demonstration booths in local malls, VR has failed to permeate our everyday lives as might have been expected from the enthusiastic media coverage.
Much the same can be said for augmented reality (AR), the somewhat misunderstood cousin of better known, well-prophesied VR. Aside from "Pokemon Go!", an augmented reality game where players capture lovable monsters around town with their camera phones, augmented reality hasn’t really become mainstream either.
Since we haven't heard or seen much about VR or AR, one could assume not much is going on, but a closer look reveals that that Facebook recently set up a massive Design and Development Center for VR in Seattle. Meanwhile JD Net and Tencent are investing massively in virtual reality entertainment complexes across China. As it turns out, the failure of reality simulating technologies (VR & AR) are living up to their initial hype as could have been easily predicted. Their current steady climb in application is no real surprise either. What's happening is that we've entered what Gartner describes as a "plateau of productivity." This is a development stage that most new technologies reach after the initial phases of inflated expectations. Then heightened disillusionment wears off. It’s during this phase that the true value and use-cases for the innovation begin to be realised.
With this in mind, both the AR and VR markets are projected to be huge global industries in the next few years, surprisingly with AR three times the size of VR at US$90 billion (as predicted by Digi-Capital). Growth for both technologies will be spread across a variety of different applications and needs. A notable volume of these solutions focus on commercial human resource applications where these technologies can be used to improve a company’s bottom line by increasing productivity or accelerating speed to skill proficiency.
The Difference Between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality:
Both AR and VR require a human being to be connected to a computer interface. However, the connection to the computer and the purpose of each respective system are totally different in very important ways. While AR is performance focused in the real world and seeks to improve performance by supplying the end user with critical information or urgent feedback as they perform a task that requires high precision, VR totally immerses the user in a condition that hermetically "seals" them off from their external surroundings.
Utilizing Virtual Reality to Improve Sales
It is for this reason that VR is perfectly suited to product awareness training. Organisations spend millions of dollars every year to ensure that their sales and customer service employees are aware of product offerings and cross-sell to existing customers. But what does one do when the product you’re selling is an experience? Well, at least one major hotel brand is taking advantage of VR to solve this problem. They provide customers and employees at one hotel the opportunity to "virtually" tour a sister property. The immersive experience is much more powerful than a brochure or online training. Thus customers build a stronger attachment to the brand and employees are more likely to remember and mention the wonderful views and amenities to customers. In this way the closed-off experience and quality of VR is utilised to maximum benefit.
Virtual Reality and Leadership Capability
Another VR training application with potential to add even greater ROI exists in the area of Leadership and Management Training. Since the VR environment is a 360-degree visual and aural experience, it can be designed to elicit insightful experiences, and exposure to highly charged workplace scenarios. Learners can be required to engage in complex problem solving and critical decision making that put current business simulations techniques to shame. The ability to provide realistic simultaneous information and choices akin to those in the real world finally gives HR the ability to test, intervene and improve leadership behaviours and skills in a more realistic fashion. Today many leadership assessment centres employ highly paid consultant/actors to challenge leaders and gauge their responses. VR’s potential to scale these interactions and dramatically reduce their cost by making them independent of location will be truly revolutionary.
What the "Plateau of Productivity" has in Store
Now that the initial expectations of reality-simulating technologies have died down, the next few years will see a proliferation of value-added use cases in niche areas. VR is actually only a small piece of this initial wave. Later in this series, we will discuss why innovations in Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence will have an even larger impact. In 2019, your staff probably won’t yet be working at virtual reality desks, but don’t let that setback prevent you from taking advantage of the coming wave of innovation.
Ronald Kantor and Justin Paul, are Talent Management Consultants at Latchmere Performance Solutions Co. Ltd. Ronald Kantor (Ron@LatchmereSolutions.com) is a Senior Solutions Architect Ph.D. in Education & Human Development, Justin Paul (Justin@Latchmereconsulting.com) has helped executives in over 30 countries improve leadership capability.
Series Editor: Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director at Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult’s Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to guide business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.