On Thursday the 13th. The virtual, online Virbela Open Campus hosted the “Future of Work in the Metaverse” panel.
Joining the panel was: Virbela founder Alex Howland, Second life founder and High-fidelity CEO-founder Phillip Rosedale. XR Consultant Charlie fink and AR/VR futurist (formerly of Magic Leap/Amazon) Cathyn Hackl.
A metaverse is a shared virtual space and during the panel, the value and potential of use cases of metaverses for enterprise was discussed; alongside its potential integration.
The thought of the panel was the importance of world building and the importance of avatar interaction.
The value to enterprise:
Metaverses can give enterprises an engaging alternative to video and text chat. Zoom fatigue have been noted by Standford studies, with their four causes of Zoom fatigue:
- Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact
- Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time is fatiguing
- Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility
- The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.
Suggesting a potential solution for the fatigue being in audio-only breaks.
This mirrors a 2017 study by Yale SOM’s Michael Kraus. That showed that voice only communication can be more beneficial over video. With people engaging better with emotions, from voice only communications.
The value that a metaverse potentially brings is the removal of video. Being replaced with advanced avatars that can better represent the user. Without the issue of Zoom fatigue.
This brings an added value to Avatars in the Metaverse space, as if we are communicating through voice only avatars. The avatars representing us must be engaging and fill the social gap that will be lost from a lack of video. A potential fix could be eye tracking for example.
Metaverses in the future:
And this is important, speaker Phillip Rosedale’s previous success, Second Life was a famous example of an online economy and eco-system. This was fuelled largely through avatar cosmetics. The speakers argue that a similar metaverse could be the future of enterprise.
“We don’t understand yet whether it’s a make a phone call future with better technology like better audio or better video. Or if it is something like what we are doing here with Virbela” – Phillip Rosedale.
Alex Howland goes on to state that while this technology “seems odd to most people right now”, Alex believes that in the future; the technology will become more second nature.
With Gen-Zs joining workforces. It was noted that the comfortability of using metaverses, through gaming platforms such as Fortnite or Roblox; will bring a new level of familiarity to the concept.
There seems to be a potential to bring these engaging environments to enterprises in the future. To a generation who can become fully immersed in a metaverse; using it to it’s full potential. Time will tell.
