In Our Post-COVID-19 Reality, AR / VR Tech Will Lead The Way
To start things off: we at BadVR sincerely hope that all of our current readers, followers, or anyone stumbling upon our articles for the first time, are staying safe and healthy.
After a spring marred by nationwide quarantines, businesses are beginning the process of reopening. However, the question remains: “how will this pandemic permanently change our lives?” As a company who always looks towards the future, we’ve been considering the same question. Specifically how will this pandemic — and all the social changes it’s brought about — change the way humans use technology or indeed permanently change the technology we used to use on an everyday basis?
For those of you unfamiliar with BadVR, we are an immersive data analytics company focused on using AR, VR, and XR technologies to dramatically improve the way individuals examine, understand, and discover insights from their data. From the beginning of these quarantines, we have seen some very interesting advancements in the way humans have been using immersive technology — some coming from our experiences! As the US begins the process of reopening, we have asked ourselves (with cautious optimism): what role will VR and AR play in a post-COVID-19 world?
Immersive Technology During The Time Of COVID-19
To better understand the role VR and AR will play in our future, let’s take a look at the recent changes made in this space since the initial worldwide closures/lockdowns. Sales and usage of immersive technologies grew exponentially as individuals and businesses quickly looked for ways to stay connected from a safe distance. Oculus Quest and other VR/AR units flew off the physical and digital shelves with some models remaining sold out to this day.
VR/AR critics frequently point to a lack of users when discussing their skepticism of these technologies, but with a post-COVID surge of new users donning headsets at a rapid pace, there is undoubtedly now a much more substantial population of user, no longer just “early adopters”. When faced with unexpected new circumstances forcing remote communication tools to the forefront, consumers and businesses have quickly adopted solutions that previously were considered too “innovative.” Companies as big as Apple are even joining in, having released their refreshed iPad Pro for 2020 with a dedicated LiDAR sensor on the back (providing spatial computing capabilities) and releasing AR developer tools and software to boot. There are even fairly substantial rumors that Apple plans to release a pair of AR glasses by 2021! We look forward to seeing how Apple can further commercialize immersive technology and dare we say — make it cool?!
With a growing user base and enough enterprise and gaming use cases to really make immersive technology appealing to the masses, the focus has shifted to software development and use case refinement. Oculus recently launched “Oculus for Business”, a program that allows enterprise partners to tap Quest’s portability and ease of use for enterprise applications. Programs like these are helping to democratize and facilitate VR access to businesses in dire need of remote collaboration tools, and have helped blaze the path towards widespread industry adoption of immersive technology across many sectors.
Long Term Change
So how do these changes affect the future after COVID-19? To state the obvious: nothing will be the same. Our society and the fabric of our daily lives has been changed forever. But one thing is becoming clear — new technologies, especially those that empower remote collaboration and help remote teams function more effectively are being adopted at a rapid pace. This in turn has led to some unexpectedly fast innovation in these sectors, one of which is immersive technology.
COVID-19 has shown both employers and employees that they do not need to work in the same physical office to be productive or to effectively communicate complex ideas (or datasets)! Collaborative technologies are in high demand and this is an area where VR and AR technologies truly shine, emerging as the most important technology during this time. Multi-user immersive interactive experience are the closest to in-person interactions that are possible in a quarantined, socially distant world. Being able to share a virtual space with someone who is thousands of miles away, but who appears to be across a table from you is the future of all sorts of collaborative activities — from conferences, to meetings, to brainstorming sessions and more.
Immersion can add a great deal of value to the process of visualizing, analyzing, and communicating data. Collaborative remote data visualization products, such as BadVR, include valuable features such as annotation tools, presenter mode, and the ability to import, or link, your own datasets. Discussing trends and patterns in big data via Zoom is a thing of the past, as immersive collaboration makes it easier, faster, and cheaper to collaborate remotely.
We here at BadVR have taken that basic concept of immersive communication and taken it a step further, integrating the ability for even the most non-tech savvy individuals to perform high level data analysis immersively, together. Our software helps remote teams better understand the trends and insights in their large datasets multi-dimensionally, with a suite of collaborative tools and features that make the process as engaging and fun as it is effective. There’s no better way to build empathy with data, and to increase shared contextual understanding across distributed teams, than to explore and present datasets in an immersive, fully interactive ‘data environment,’ such as those that BadVR provides.
With more and more businesses moving towards being fully remote, it’s important for organizations of all sizes to have the tools necessary to maintain connection and collaboration across distances. And with companies having adopted and embraced the value of big data, sharing 2D spreadsheets or flat dashboards just isn’t enough!
Final Thoughts
While data visualization and analytics is certainly a powerful use for immersive technology and one that is critical to businesses across a great many industries, there are many other use cases for AR and VR, such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. All of these areas benefit from immersive technology applied to their immediate workflows, but as we’ve learned during this time of COVID-19, AR and VR have held unexpected benefits in remote collaboration in these sectors too!
As students across the country continue to suffer through long-winded, boring, 2D video conferences, innovative educators are adopting more engaging, effective virtual solutions. Studies have shown that the human brain learns faster through immersive learning experiences due to increased engagement and natural multi-dimensional teaching that presents information in a way that is much more intuitive, natural, and accessible. The same is true for data — and the way distributed teams collaborate around and discover insights within it.
As we move forward into a post-COVID reality, many parts of that reality will be far more virtual or augmented than they ever were in the past, as many of us have discovered the benefits of AR and VR technology within our own worlds. Immersive technology allows you to be there without being there, and as we continue to practice social distancing — what could possibly be better?
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If you want to get to know more about this awesome, immersive, gesture controlled future, BadVR would happy to chat with you! Our team strongly believes in putting usability and accessibility first with all of our immersive data analytic solutions. We have data solutions for everyone, from every background, for every dataset! BadVR is here to make YOUR data easy.
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Curious about incorporating immersive data visualization into your remote workflow? Then reach out today for a demo of BadVR’s platform!
