Almost everyone is familiar with Zoom and most IT community is familiar with Slack and MS Teams. Employees have managed to create a new environment merging real with virtual meetings, interacting with team members, making presentations, indulging in banter and emojis and GIFs along with the daily work.
This is only the beginning of a new revolution. Augmented reality has already become a regular feature in new product offerings, manufacturing and assembly lines and surgeries. New forms of virtual reality are substituting for offices and redefining the future of work.
Over the longer term, it is expected that companies would use mixed reality to create conditions for remote collaboration and innovation as good as the in-person activities. There are three areas where work is progressing on improving the employees' productivity and collaboration.
Virtual Offices
LArge screen conference portals have co-existed with regular offices, to connect distant offices through informal, always-on video connections. This has also been used to create a meeting ground for remote teams as the teams, especially remote, felt disconnected and isolated when they could not see each other.
Now, this is being extended by showing colleagues with periodically updated pictures switching on when they are working and showing them on their desks, and indicating if available for a quick chat. With a simple click colleagues can connect up for a quick chat, discussion eliminating the need for setting up a video conference call. At the same time, team chat programs have a steady flow of messages, updates, emojis, Gifs, to keep the working atmosphere fun, lively, open. One can also switch to avatars instead of real pictures and connect with other employees across offices complete with conferencing facilities etc.,
Virtual focus groups
There is also an increasing requirement for using artificial intelligence to extend the research beyond conference room discussions. A few programs help extend the insights gathered from small focus groups to big digital surveys without distortion or bias.
Companies have also started using them for market research. They collect anonymised views, summarise it and using artificial intelligence that aggregates responses can also react and adapt discussions in real-time and explore ideas as they come up.
The anonymity allows managers to collect more responses including those who would not speak up normally. Many feel comfortable in the anonymity without fear of being identified and are more forthcoming in expressing their real thoughts.
Virtual collaboration.
many companies are resorting to mixed reality platforms as a solution for brainstorming and running projects. many projects that were frozen all of a sudden due to the epidemic outbreak, are being started and managed using virtual collaboration tools without compromising on the safety of the team members.
Many are resorting to tools like online sticky notes, shared digital whiteboards, co-editing FAQ, wikis, documents to get people together. Many are discovering that most work can be done virtually using the available tools quickly and at a less cost, and stress.
One of the main reason is the combination of video chat, voice and collaboration tools create more opportunities to contribute and work together rather than be overwhelmed by some powerful or loud voice. With greater representation in the room, teams were able to achieve better solutions.
More ideas and solutions were shared on multi collaboration tools tan if they had to flow through a moderator. The ideas were instantly shared digitally so that reports and documentation were available instantly.
Mixed reality domains
We are just beginning on mixed realty work. One year back nobody would have believed that we would be working so much from WFH and quite successfully at that. We can expect artificial intelligence tools to create optimal encounters across teams and functions, affordable smart boards, 3-D printers to allow design teams to physically test prototypes anywhere in the world while working from home, fast cross-town deliveries by drones of things not readily available.
Mixed reality technologies of the future would surpass what is popular today. Ten years from now we may look at the present Zoom calls with disdain compared to the collaboration tools at hand.
The Next Generation of Office Communication Tech
by Ethan Murray HBR 2020/10
Comments
Post a Comment