10 The future of communication and collaboration

The tools and understanding of hybrid and virtual communication and collaboration have accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While we adapted quickly and are becoming more comfortable with both the technology and the behaviours required for new ways of working, the technology is still rapidly evolving.

The term ‘metaverse’ is now fairly well known, in part due to Facebook relaunching to reflect the many products it owns under the corporate name Meta and to reflect what the next version of the internet could be. Mark Zuckerberg says in his ‘Founder’s letter, 2021’:

Already organisations and individuals are experimenting with new ways of interacting, and meetings are being held using technology to enable mixed-reality environments. While some of the technology is not new, the development of the software for these realities is opening new possibilities. The image below is reproduced from the article ‘AR vs. VR vs. MR: differences, similarities and manufacturing uses’ (TechTarget, 2020) and provides a simple definition of the realities you might need to start to engage with.

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Figure 27 Augmented, virtual and mixed reality

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Image shows the difference between augmented, virtual and mixed reality software. Augmented reality – interactive objects are layered on top of physical environments without the ability to manipulate the augmented objects. AR overlays the digital information onto the real world. Virtual reality – the real world is hidden, and the user is completely immersed in a digital experience, creating a digital simulation of a real environment. Mixed reality – the capabilities of AR and VR are blended, bringing together the physical and digital world to produce an environment where physical and digital objects coexist and interact in real time.

Figure 27 Augmented, virtual and mixed reality

Activity 30 What might the future of communication and collaboration in HEIs look like?

Timing: 20 minutes

Watch the video Online conferences, remote work, virtual events: are shared virtual experiences the future? by John Koetsier (2021):

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JOHN KOETSIER:

Our shared virtual experience is the future of meetings and work.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Toyota is a global corporation with over 350,000 employees, almost $300 billion in revenue, and manufacturing or sales outposts in over 140 countries globally. How do you connect, develop, and train a company of this geographical diversity and size when even the Olympics in Japan will be held without foreign visitors this year? Perhaps, in virtual reality.

According to the Leadership Network, the results of training in VR include 15 times more knowledge retained at 72% less cost, and 98% less time wasted in travel. TLN recently signed a deal with the automotive manufacturing giant to teach its executive master class leading the Toyota way in virtual reality. So I recently took a tour to experience it myself. First impressions, it's nothing like the vision that Microsoft has unleashed on the world in the form of Microsoft Mesh. That's of course, a seamless blending of the real and the virtual. Microsoft's gorgeous cinematic video introduction of mesh makes digital connection and virtual reality seem rich with detail, and context, and metadata capable of much more than even physical engagement today.

It's in a sense, sensual in a very baseline understanding of that word. It engages all your senses. It is important to note, of course, that the Mesh highlight reel video is mostly that-- a vision, at least at this point.

TLN's Gemba technology developed for Toyota and other global brands is very different. For starters, it's shipped and currently in use right now. It's available via $250 VR headset, the Oculus Quest, not a $3,500 HoloLens 2. Also, it's less about rich details of a human-like avatar and more about the simpler act of Telepresence and engagement with others.

That's of course, a bit of a kind way of saying it. The hard way of saying it is that in the Gemba technology, people look like animated boxes, sort of one or two steps up from stick figures with floating heads and somewhat expressive hands. That's kind of the point, says Nathan Robinson, CEO of TLN. He told me that seeing more photorealistic avatars can be distracting. Also, he says, we've heard that some feel, they get treated more equally this way. That's completely understandable in an era of heightened awareness of sexual or racial bias and harassment, just as some female computer gamers find. They get treated very differently when they use a typically male avatar or name.

It's not surprising, even if it is disappointing that the same can be true in corporate and business environments. Also, let's be honest. If you're bringing 35 executives together for a business meeting in VR, do you really want to have them spending the first 20 minutes customizing an avatar with colors and hairstyles and shapes? I can't even build a Facebook avatar that I like.

And executives trend a lot older than the general workforce population with likely less experience in VR and less ability to use technology. I could see a meeting starting off as a disaster with half of the attendees struggling to finish customization, and the others remaining unhappy with rush choices of clothing or eye color or nose type.

You arrive in Gemba at a gathering point. TLN calls it the "lounge." This is where every single person is where they join says Robinson. We can interact with spaces, and we can have a quick chat in here. But this is just designed to open up and introduce the world of Gemba to everybody. You get used to the controls and environment there, including how to move around in the world.

Anyone who knows and uses an Oculus Quest will find it incredibly easy. And that's probably the headset that more people are familiar with than just about any other. It's also the VR headset that Walmart chose for its virtual reality training program, buying 17,000 units to distribute.

From the lounge, you can teleport to what Chemicals an island. Different groups and different companies have their own islands. You can literally walk up to a teleport station and transfer over, or a group leader can magic you away. There is a lecture hall. There are breakout rooms, and there are virtual analogs for paper, notes, whiteboards, and pretty much everything else that you need for collaboration.

Speakers in the lecture hall can bring up slides on an apparently ginormous screen up front as big as you want it. Basically, you can move forward or backward. They can put basically, any digital content you can imagine up there-- videos, slide, decks websites, notes, and so on. As I said, you can sit closer or farther, in different seats. Virtually sit, you can't actually sit-in VR. And your proximity to others impacts what you can hear and what you can't hear just like real life.

SPEAKER:

It's all designed to be as intuitive as possible.

JOHN KOETSIER:

Yes.

SPEAKER:

Because it might feel complicated at the beginning. But there are essentially two buttons, one that you click with your index finger in your left hand, and one that you click on with your middle finger on your right hand. And that's it.

JOHN KOETSIER:

Yes.

SPEAKER:

Everything else is a one to move, one to pick up.

JOHN KOETSIER:

You can also bring in 3D models and examine them together. So you could use this technology for more than a group chat or a big meeting. You could use it for interactive design sessions. Engineers, for example, could share engine designs. Explode them visually, and essentially walk around inside them.

Don't get too excited. Of course, this is Oculus VR. And what it gives in cheap and accessible hardware, it takes away in some fine resolution. While the Quest 2 has a resolution of 1832 by 1920 pixels per eye, in practice, it's not as clear on some small details as that might imply. For most meetings, however, it's more than enough. And if you lean into the technology, it does provide a much richer experience of being there than watching on a two dimensional screen on your laptop. It also enables much better workplace collaboration because you're in a VR space. It's not your typical computer or smartphone where a notification is always buzzing away, demanding your attention, interrupting your flow, and distracting you from the meeting.

What it result in me learning 15 times the knowledge compared to a traditional remote training or collaboration experience? I'm not sure about that. That's a tall order. What I do think is that it would retain my attention at least, in bursts of 90 to 120 minutes, much better than a traditional remote conference would. And that might indeed make for a much higher level of learning. Simply thanks to better, deeper, and longer engagement.

Ultimately, I think we do want something like Mesh. Here, can be anywhere Microsoft says, and COVID taught us that over the past year. Mesh will enable high fidelity interactions and collaboration at a cost of high quality equipment and a learning curve as well.

But Mesh isn't just a hardware platform. It's a platform specification. It runs on HoloLens, but it isn't limited to HoloLens. And that means that other hardware, including Oculus, phones, tablets, PCs, and interfaces we haven't even thought of yet can participate in Mesh, or they can participate in whatever technology or sets of technologies win.

That could be Mesh. That might be Gemba. And that might be some combination or synthesis of the two like, different worlds in Ready Player One. One thing know, the future of work and meeting isn't what it used to be. This is John Koetsier with Tech First.

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Then browse the articles below and do your own research on the internet. How do you feel about these tools and approaches to communication and collaboration? Could meetings become something of the past?

• ‘Are virtual reality meetings the future of remote work?’ (Comber, 2022)
• ‘A step into Meta’s VR meeting world, Horizon Workrooms’ (Germain, 2022)
• ‘Tech trends 2022: Meet me in the metaverse’ (Accenture, n.d.)
• ‘Ed on the metaverse’ (Deloitte, n.d.)