As trends like remote and hybrid work continue to redefine the “workplace of the future”, companies are increasingly searching for new ways to reconnect and realign their distributed teams. With fewer opportunities available for staff members to connect and interact in person, organisations need to find new ways of synchronising their staff, transcending physical boundaries.
For many, this journey began with the implementation of new digital collaboration tools, which allow employees to share information in real-time, through messaging, voice, and video. However, even powerful platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom can’t always deliver the engagement, creativity, and presence attributed to real-world interactions.
Immersive collaboration tech could be the solution. Leveraging concepts like 360-degree video, extended reality, and the metaverse, immersive collaboration tools allow organizations to recreate the workplace in a digital setting. They help brands to create powerful environments where teams can interact effectively, without having to travel long distances for the face-to-face connection.
The question is, how do companies choose the right immersive collaboration tech for their needs?
Step 1: Define Use Cases
The first step in successfully choosing any new technology, is defining what the solution should be able to accomplish. Immersive tools can assist organisations in achieving a number of collaborative goals, from boosting the quality of meetings, to assisting teams in the development of new products.
By determining how and why employees will be collaborating in immersive experiences, business leaders can establish what types of technology they’ll need. For instance, if companies want to improve bonds between employees by allowing them to enjoy more human interactions, they might consider using extended reality tools to recreate a sense of presence in a collaborative session.
Microsoft Teams offers users the opportunity to bring virtual avatars to their meeting environments, for more powerful, interactive experiences in virtual reality. Solutions like Meta’s “Horizon Worlds” allow team members to work together through gamified experiences to improve bonds.
Alternatively, if teams are going to be working together on more complex tasks, like building new products and prototypes, they may need to leverage digital twin technology, and metaverse environments, to ensure they can interact with relevant virtual content, while working alongside distributed team members. In the field services and engineering landscape, the goal of immersive collaboration may be to provide mobile team members with real-time guidance, through AR smart glasses and remote assistance apps.
Step 2: Explore Extended Reality
Immersive collaboration doesn’t always have to involve extended reality. Simple forms of immersive collaboration, such as Microsoft’s “Together Mode” solution for video conferencing, and 360-degree video tools can still provide employees with a more engaging interactive experience.
However, XR is rapidly becoming one of the most common components of true immersive collaboration. The question for companies investing in this landscape, is which form of extended reality will deliver the right results. Virtual reality, for instance, may be an ideal platform for companies looking to provide employees with a digitised version of the workplace, or access to virtual tools for building prototypes and new products.
Augmented and Mixed Reality could be the ideal choices for companies investing in the new age of hybrid work. With augmented reality smart glasses and apps, team members can access real-time insights from subject matter experts and supervisors when they’re working in the field. They can send video streams back to connected staff members, and see annotations and notes overlaid onto their physical surroundings, using AR tools.
Mixed Reality solutions can even help to enhance the connections between members of the hybrid workforce on a deeper level, using holographic images to transport virtual representations of people, devices, and products into any landscape.
