3.1 Augmented reality
Pierce (2018) describes an augmented office environment of the future:
Picture it: You get to the office, grab a keyboard off the shelf […], and find an open space. You log in to your glasses, and your entire workspace appears in front of you. To your right is a shelf stocked with all the apps and bookmarks you use every day. You reach over and grab one, place it on the floor, and the full-scale CAD model of the car you were designing pops into place. Pinned to the wall are all your digital notes, arranged in exactly the way you left them last night. To your left hover six virtual screens displaying browser windows, stock tickers, and Twitter. You ask Siri to pull up your email, and your inbox appears. You can see everything, but all anyone else sees is you, wearing glasses […], typing on a keyboard and reaching around in the air.
While your first thought might be that working like this could be isolating, Pierce thinks that ‘collaboration could actually improve’, allowing us to ‘share information in more useful ways’.
To meet our need for social interaction at work, we might find that our working habits change, taking us back to the days where everyone had a coffee break at 11am and sat together in the tea room having a face-to-face conversation!