The technology landscape has come a long way in the last few years.
For decades, we’ve been looking for ways to bridge the gaps between the digital world and physical reality. Extended reality concepts like 3D video, VR, and AR have been gradually making their way to the surface of our everyday lives, through apps, video games, and online experiences.
However, in, 2020, the pandemic accelerated our digital transformation to a new level, pushing us around 7 years into the future, according to McKinsey & Company. The result hasn’t just been the increased adoption of VR and AR, but the evolution of Mixed Reality too: MR.
As the rising star of immersive technology, MR combines all the benefits of AR and VR into one incredible experience.
Let’s explore how MR could shape the future of work.
The Potential of Mixed Reality
The Harvard Business Review and Microsoft released a report in 2020 about Mixed Reality, and the new “dimension” for work. Microsoft has emerged as one of the market leaders in true “MR” technology lately. The company is already offering holographic experiences through tools like the HoloLens, and welcoming developers into mixed reality with Microsoft Mesh.
In its 2020 paper, Microsoft noted that 68% of companies already believed mixed reality would be important to accomplishing strategic business goals. Around 90% of companies also said that they’re already exploring and experimenting with MR in some way.
Though the survey acknowledges that Mixed Reality technology is still young, it also highlights the potential of the ecosystem. For instance, 62% of businesses say MR will improve customer satisfaction, and 55% believe it will enhance work processes.
As companies continue to invest more technology into Mixed Reality innovations, the potential of technology that can combine the physical and virtual worlds will expand more than ever. Mixed Reality isn’t just a mishmash of VR and AR tech. Instead, this aspect of the extended reality spectrum promises a future where we can interact with virtual content just as seamlessly as we would connect with physical tools and objects.
Mixed reality has the potential to beam team members into shared spaces with their colleagues through holographic representations. It can also allow a global workforce of remote teams to work together on a virtual model of a product, which they can adapt and shape just like a real item.
What Mixed Reality Will Do for the Future of Work
On perhaps the most obvious level, mixed reality promises to improve the way we collaborate on a massive scale. If the HoloLens technology and holographic experiences that businesses are creating today are successful, we really could have a future where hologram representations of teams work together in a “shared” space, no matter where they are.
There’s also potential for the experience to become even more impressive over time. Already, language barriers are becoming irrelevant in the digital environment as AR and AI applications can accurately translate conversations in real-time. We can see subtitles presented on a set of smart glasses, or even get words translated into spoken content in an instant.
As the workplace becomes more flexible, MR will allow employees to have more autonomy over how and where they work, without compromising on productivity. When we do come together for mixed reality collaboration sessions, employees from all backgrounds will be able to enjoy a range of content options. Visual learners will have access to immersive blueprints of products, while kinaesthetic learners can use feedback gloves to touch and feel an item.
All the while, because Mixed Reality will combine a virtual and physical world into something new, it also helps to eliminate the distractions that might otherwise be present with remote workers. It’s much easier to be distracted by a dog barking when there’s spatial audio of your team members surrounding you, or digital items you can interact with floating on the desk in front of you.
Mixed Reality Will Change the World
On a basic level, mixed reality shares many of the same benefits of various immersive technologies. You don’t need to spend as much money or time on travel when you can feel as though you’re in the same room as your colleague in a matter of seconds. It’s easier to feel like you’re part of a team when you can see your colleagues face to face rather than staring at them through a screen.
Mixed Reality also brings more 3D content into the workplace, so that we can dive into the details of different projects and ideas without having to use endless complicated blueprints, explanations, or sketches. All the while, the world overall will benefit from reduced demand for real-estate, and fewer carbon-producing cars on the road.
In the future, MR will be a genuine transformational technology, delivering benefits like:
- Better business operations: Immersive content provides us with the tools we need to come up with more creative solutions to problems. MR can help companies to work more efficiently, allowing engineers to try new ideas without wasting resources and reducing complex processes. Multinational Defence company, BAE systems already use MR through HoloLens to help with the creation of electronic propulsion devices. The result of MR technology has been a 50% reduction in assembly times
- Enhanced training: Mixed Reality can offer experiential training sessions which allow team members to experience a situation for themselves, in a simulated environment. For instance, you could teach a military professional how to deal with a hostage situation, without putting them at risk. For education, MR allows for the creation of unique experiences that deliver learning and even muscle memory improvements like no other technology
- Improved creativity: A Mixed Reality solution improves project development by allowing teams to make agile decisions and change features without wastage or excessive resources. For instance, Ford was one of the first companies to use MR. The company allows designers to create new designs at a lower cost, without over-spending on design implementation
- Better customer experience: Mixed reality can even improve sales and customer experiences. Users can see what a piece of furniture might look like in their home before they buy it. Clients can get an engineer to come to their home and essentially walk them through an installation or troubleshooting process with holographic displays
The potential of MR has just begun to present itself. In the future, demand for these mixed experiences will only continue to grow.
