XR is still a new tool for enterprise end-users. While the emerging technology space is gaining ground in the popular hive-mind thanks to the marketing efforts of Meta, Apple, and others, it is still underrepresented in the workplace.
Before bringing XR hardware into the workplace, enterprise XR champions must help their co-workers, clients, leaders, and decision-makers understand the practical applications of immersive tools.
Most still see AR/VR/MR as a consumer product primarily for gaming. Therefore introducing XR as a serious workplace tool can come with misconceptions and hurdles.
To help dissect some of these challenges, XR Today spoke with Mark Christianson, a Digital Engagement Expert.
Christianson’s history with XR goes back to 2017, working with Mars, a global candy and pet food producer, as a Digital Experience Delivery Senior Lead on the firm’s international Digital Workplace team, promoting and innovating internal hybrid working environments, notably using and promoting XR enterprise solutions.
Christianson said:
We were getting into the XR scene at that time, which was relatively early. One of the big players was Microsoft and the HoloLens, which I was personally very interested in. By the end of that year, we got approval to purchase a lot of equipment, everything we could get our hands on for augmented and virtual reality.
While at Mars, Christianson operated a “test and try” methodology of adopting XR devices. Some of Mars’ leadership teams trusted XR, helping Mark’s team secure “all the equipment” he needed. However, he noted that many of those devices “are now museum pieces.”
Christianson added:
We became familiar with a lot of the things that were going on in the space and over the years I created small projects, pilots, and demos across multiple avenues with different technologies in order to gain momentum.
The XR industry expert noted how he became the “de facto XR champion at Mars. However, promoting the adoption of XR across the workplace didn’t come without hurdles and challenges.
Notably, introducing XR to senior leaders and decision-makers can prove challenging. Generally, knowledge and familiarity with XR are low, especially as a workplace tool. Therefore understanding how to champion XR as a workplace tool and negating fears of bringing gaming tools to the office is crucial for any pilots’ success.
Enterprise XR: The Gamification Trap
Gamification is a common tool used by businesses to improve client, customer, and worker engagement. For worker-facing use cases, a firm may use gamification systems for training or onboarding procedures, such as competing through leaderboards or providing feedback on team-wide accomplishments.
However, when initially introducing XR to the workplace, over-focusing on gamification or gaming applications may lead to misconceptions towards the true benefits of XR across various departments.
“Whenever there was a conversation that went on about XR, it ended up coming to me and being can you come in and hang out in this meeting etc. I think the key for me is to avoid gaming,” Mark added.
Christianson noted that while gamification solutions are a “great tool” and it’s where XR technology “was born,” it is a harder sell for senior leadership – “you start telling them gaming and business, it feels kiddish, and it’s harder to sell.”
In his earlier days introducing XR, Christianson leveraged the HoloLens to host demo sessions with senior teams, whereby they would learn more about immersive hardware solutions.
Christianson added:
I think it’s a trap. In certain industries, it might be good to do gamification, when you’re talking about consumer products. Now if you go in and you say I’m going to use a VR headset on an older crowd, gamification, that’s not their Forte. Gamification has to be used appropriately, but it’s it’s difficult. Sorry, it’s difficult to sell gamification internally.
Moreover, Christianson noted that while gamification may work in training or onboarding exercises, one should “be very careful not to become the game master.” Because when the “game-master” goes to decision-makers, “their only impression is that this is for gaming. That is the lens they’re going to look every other project through whenever they hear the words XR, VR, AR, they’re going to think gaming and that can be a tough thing to reverse the thinking of.“
Behavioural Components
Helping a workforce and leaders understand XR is a complex journey. There is a significant “behavioural component”, Christianson noted. An XR champion must help others understand the hardware and how to use it, providing and promoting insight into how the technology can exist in the workplace, optimise operations, and become ubiquitous in departmental procedures.
Christianson added:
This is new technology. A lot of people are still weary of feeling goofy putting the headset on. They’re not sold on the idea, or they’re super busy, and they don’t see the value in that extra depth.
Moreover, device iterations in the fast-paced technology space could raise ROI concerns. Due to the technology changing very quickly, “on the scale of phones,” Mark added, enterprise end-users may consistently spend on new devices and while a firm like Mars “probably could absorb that cost each time you make an iteration,” building a collection of old headsets may affect preconceptions of the technology.
Christianson noted that an enterprise XR champion may get questions concerning legacy hardware, such as “no one really uses it, or they only use it once a month.” Moreover, an enterprise with an overflow of old headsets may find it challenging to take care of the next generation of technology.
Moreover, if a new or old device is no longer suitable due to diverted device management considerations, a user’s first perception is that it’s “old, rickety, or it doesn’t work. That’s where that perception thing is really important.”
Christianson also said that “the key for me is to get a lot of people involved right away” and then establish centralised checkout systems – “you’re not going to put a headset on everyone’s desk. They just don’t use it that much.”
Check Out/Rental Systems
Mark explained creating a checkout or a rental system to centralise workplace XR can assist with adoption efforts. A proper device distribution system helps to get “a lot of things off the table” and optimise XR usage, including devices available, user management, commercial systems, and master service agreements with vendors – “if all of that’s taken care of, all you have to focus on – as a project manager – is to go ahead.”
Christianson also added:
[With a device distribution system] you already know everything else is done because the architecture is in place. It significantly reduces your time frame and your cost. That is where you have to look at the economies of scale, you have to enable people to go from that exciting [initial] idea to something working very quickly.
Mark continued: “That’s where the challenges come in. It becomes the roadblocks and the hurdles that make it very difficult for you to create a successful project.”
Enterprise XR: Influencing Leaders and Decision Makers
Keeping momentum and retaining a conversation about XR in the workplace is crucial to the success of the technology. Championing immersive solutions is key in assisting emerging XR technology to gain ground in the enterprise.
Chrisitan noted, “I realised really quickly that it’s a behaviour game,” adding that a workplace XR champion has to “influence leaders to make risky decisions.”
Mark explained:
You have to talk to the end users you have. This is a very different technology, and it’s not just that they’re using their phone in a different way. Some of them have never put a headset on, so you really have to look at that and say, what do you have to do on the behaviour side?
“Anything that creates those static hurdles is problematic,” Mark also added. According to the industry expert, an XR champion wants to “get the key players in the room quickly.”
Christianson also added:
Find your champions, find your people that are excited about this, and then work together. If you’ve got three or four different projects that are all touching in XR, you want to bring them together and say, can we combine forces?
Moreover, by combining forces to promote XR, IT teams may become more active in assisting XR adoption. It’s a “service industry”, says Mark, who notes that IT teams prefer working with standardised hardware expectations over doing one-off jobs on various devices.
If a group of XR teams can come together to standardise their hardware, they can avoid issues where IT teams are dealing with “three different technologies, three different headsets, three different vendors, and three different agreements.”
Standardisation impacts all XR projects, “you want to get that out of the way very early,” Christianson remarks.
To learn more, please watch the first part of XR Today’s interview with Mark Christianson on creating a discussion around XR in the workplace.
