A digital first approach to the future of work
is where the industry and all companies will be heading.
Could the future of work
not be at home or in the office, but in the metaverse instead?
There's that word.
"Metaverse." "I'm doing well, how are you doing?
When I think about the metaverse, I think about immersive experiences
that have a sense of active presence.
Wow. Look at this.
This is me.
The metaverse is projected to become over a trillion dollar market
by the end of this decade.
And whether you know it or not, you'll probably be working there in the future.
We're moving into a world where we're going to be interacting
with computers with our bodies.
This is definitely trippy.
I think the adoption curve is going to be slow.
It's weird. I'm a weird, floaty thing right now.
Oh, look at you.
You have no legs. It's kind of a fun world.
And we're just at the very beginning of a very long journey.
Now, to properly tell this story, I felt it was important that I,
A) never leave my home and B) spend a bit more time
in the metaverse myself
So I got a VR headset.
Tried it on.
Checked it out a little bit.
I actually feel like this is what I should look like all the time.
And found someone who's been immersed in AR / VR,
commonly combined and referred to as XR, since the beginning.
"Oh, it says he's here." What up?
I caught you guys talking about me.
My name is Kent Bye and I do the voices of VR podcast.
There's a sauna that's upstairs.
We did a scout for the right place to do the interview.
We considered a hot tub.
Now you're in. Feels great.
But ultimately,
we chose this quiet and comfortable lounge, complete with the fireplace.
We even created a virtual three camera shoot with my colleagues, Tom and Jordan.
"I am rolling." It's the gang.
We're getting the band back together.
"I'm rolling on my end." "Cool.
All right. Yeah. Take it away."
I mean, it's just the whole idea of the avatar.
I find that interesting, especially in the context of work
and meeting people that we choose how we're going to be represented.
I mean, I don't know if I would be a ragdoll bunny rabbit
driving a robot in any other context.
What's happening is impacting your emotions.
In some ways.
You know, we're in these avatars, and we have a sense of embodied presence.
But, you know,
we can have the virtual body ownership illusion
where you start to really own this body that you have.
When you have that full....
MATT: Kent's obviously much better at this than me.
You can tell how his hands move really naturally when he talks.
Whereas mine, well, they fidgeted and mostly just kind of
folded in on themselves.
Let me ask you, how did the pandemic change our concept of meeting?
On the onset of the pandemic, you had all this technology with Skype
and Zoom and everything that had been out there as infrastructure for a long time.
But most people would prefer to meet and have that full, rich
and bodied interaction.
But after the pandemic, pretty much everybody you could meet with.
And so it actually kind of democratized access to different people.
And I think VR is kind of place to kind of be in this next phase.
As we move forward.
You know,
we're having this conversation right now where you didn't
have to come out to Portland, Oregon, but we can still, you know,
recreate the essence of what would happen if you would be here.
This concept is being adopted by a multitude of companies
whose research has found that fully simulated environments of immersive
learning helped their trainees retain information better
as it gives them a stronger sense of place and a more memorable experience overall.
KENT: Accenture is a huge consulting company.
They hire anywhere from like 60,000 to 100,000 people a year.
They've purchased 60,000 Quests to be able to send out
to be able to do onboarding into their company.
Whoa. Wait a second.
But what little time I've spent in VR I couldn't help
but feel like it's more of an escape rather than a place to work.
And if I'm going to step
into an alternate reality, I want to fly around, play games
and do things that aren't possible in the real world,
which doesn't really include taking meetings.
KENT: I often find within a lot of those workplaces
they have the most amazing technology in the world, and then you're in a world
that just makes you feel like you're in a soulless corporate office.
And you go in there and you're like, "I totally don't want to be in this space."
MATT: Nevertheless, there is a mad dash in the tech
sector to create virtual spaces that are conducive to work.
And some of the largest companies are leading the charge.
As you probably already know., Facebook rebranded to Meta,
signaling their intention to lead in this new virtual world.
So I got myself a slightly more buttoned
up, smoother and younger looking avatar with much better hair.
Whoa.
That's kind of me.
To check in with Meta's Senior Product Director Micah Collins.
I assume that you believe that this is the future of work.
Is that correct?
I believe it is a part of the future of work.
I think what companies and employees need
is a new common collaboration platform.
I remember how long we used to travel for a 30 minute meeting
and take the redeye back home.
It's crazy to think about ever having to do something like that again.
We want to essentially allow a new culture
around collaboration to emerge where people can kind of be
however they're comfortable, build a very inclusive product
that still fosters options and the ability to be as present as you want to be.
"So, uh Barcelona, huh?"
MATT: The gamification of reality
has blurred those lines of what work really is, how you get work done.
Why are we actually limiting ourselves
and constraining ourselves to an office environment in the Metaverse?
MICAH: Helping it feel like a place for work is a key part.
Is it familiar
enough where we can feel like it's something new, be inspired to be here,
but not be completely distracted by it so we don't actually get anything done?
I think it is that balance of like building something special, but also
building it for a purpose with intention to ultimately
help us focus.
MATT: Let's not forget that meetings aren't always just talk.
Fields like architecture, product design or fabrication require hands
on collaborations, something that XR is poised to take particular advantage of.
MICAH: What does it look like to sketch a new sneaker design together?
What does it look like to review something that's being designed?
How do we think about things like 3D object import from creation
applications, tools that designers use so that we can actually sit down and
have people look at something together and redline it in space together
and then export it for continued development.
NEWS ANCHOR: Video conferences can be mentally exhausting.
"Many of us are also experiencing a heightened level of anxiety and fatigue."
MATT: But just as there's zoom fatigue,
there's most certainly bound to be XR fatigue.
In fact, I kind of already have it
and as intriguing, as all this is my head kind of hurts.
My eyes are tired.
And in reality,
not every meeting is necessarily going to have to be this immersive.
MICAH: There may be a headset on my desk that's ready to go at any point in time.
Let me start the meeting in VC while I wrap up some texts
and do some other things.
Then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, now it's time to put on my headset
and go fully propelled and immersive into the space."
We want to take that friction away from moving
between different connection modalities and just make it really up to the user.
MATT: But as
a new adopter, let me just say we are not there yet.
The utopia is that it's seamless.
But let me throw a number at you.
Right now, the average large company uses 188 different apps.
188 I mean, that's kind of insane.
We have tech overload right now.
We're still not even getting Zoom calls right.
"Didn't you hear me, Judge?" "I can hear you.
I think it's a filter." I'm here live.
It's not that I'm not a cat.
MATTHEW BOYLE: We're still screwing those up left, right and center.
And you have people who feel excluded.
You have workers who are going into the office and spending
all day on Zoom and saying, "Why did I schlep all the way into the office
just to spend my day on Zoom?" There's going to be cool experiments.
Of course, there always are.
But, you know, in terms of this being how we work,
I think we're a little bit far from that right now.
The adoption curve is going to be slow.
It's going to be painful. It's going to be expensive.
Companies are already spending millions of dollars on new benefits
to keep employees happy and engaged so they don't quit.
So now telling them what we got to be investing in the metaverse as well,
they're going to say, "Well, what's the payoff?" "Why should we be doing this.?"
MATT: Back in the old fashioned physical world,
a bit north of Silicon Valley., Microsoft has been actively trying
to solve these more practical problems, what they deem the hybrid workplace,
a more equitable convergence of the remote and office worlds.
JARED: When you think of meetings in the future,
almost every interaction that you have in
person is also going to have some sort of digital person joining.
They're going to be on the other side digitally participating.
And so you kind of
have to design your physical space for people who aren't physically there.
It's our mission to make sure that remote interactions
are not second class interactions, that they're first class,
that any time we bring together the digital with the physical
that we really have a very rich, multifaceted interaction
that doesn't advantage or disadvantage anyone.
Because if we can tap into talent from all over the world, if you don't have
to physically be next to someone in order to make a difference in an organization
or in order to make sure that your idea is used,
imagine what we can do for the planet and for the human family, really.
MATT: This rethinking of the modern meeting
includes a complete reconfiguration of everything from technology interfaces
and multiple camera angles to room sizes and even table shapes.
JARED: Ultimately, what we found is that the most important thing is
that you have to kind of balance people seeing and interacting with each other
physically and also being seen by the digital participants.
And so we have come to shapes like you see here that allow cameras
to be able to create a separate video feed for each of the physical participants
that we can then beam over to people who are attending virtually.
That ends up being the sweet spot right there.
MATT: Of course, Microsoft is still betting that XR will be a part
of this future.
Their version of Meta's metaverse is called Mesh
They also have
an ambitious mixed reality headset, the HoloLens,
the adoption of which has yet to be wide enough to project any dominance
in the market, at least partially due to its very high price tag.
And that very well may be where Apple comes in.
MARK: Apple is the elephant in the room when it comes to virtual meetings,
virtual reality and augmented reality The company for about seven years
now has been working on a VR headset or a mixed reality headset, augmented
reality headset. They have people from NASA.
They have people from the video game industry.
They have people from Hollywood.
They have people who worked on the original, you know, Macs, iPhones,
iPads, Apple watches, leading the design of this project
from a software standpoint, a hardware standpoint, a content standpoint.
MATT: With Apple's
reputation for relatively affordable consumer products.
There's little doubt
that whatever they drop will alter the landscape of the metaverse
But while the older kids fight among themselves in the great tech
sandbox in the sky, we mustn't forget that the metaverse remains anyone's game.
There's a diverse set of visions out there that could easily have an impact
on the workplace of the future.
And many of them don't involve AR, VR or any kind of mixed reality at all.
Desktop versions of meeting places can achieve similar results
without the adoption issues
or infrastructure requirements of VR headsets and the like.
ALEX: What we find is companies that are maybe VR first.
There's that novel kind of cool factor.
But not many people have headsets yet.
That's why we're desktop first application.
MATT: Virbela is betting that physical offices of any kind
are a thing of the past.
Offering an entire virtual campus, complete with everything
from private offices to convention halls,
auditoriums, music venues, yoga studios, soccer fields.
We even took a boat ride "Why don't you drive"?" "Oh, wow."
ALEX: We see environments like this becoming
kind of the hub where large organizations can come together
and have this united place of this is our headquarters.
When the pandemic hit, we were about 20 employees, and today
we're closer to 140.
MATT: Everyone here is hundreds, if not thousands of miles from one another.
Yet present together in this virtual campus.
ALEX: Nice, casual place to meet space gives us again these social cues,
the ability to sit, even though obviously our avatars aren't getting tired.
We see people getting territorial about their space.
MATT: At one point, we crashed a conference
and open the floor up to comments.
I asked people to tell me where they were physically,
and they were indeed thousands of miles away from each other.
ALEX: Wait, who's working from Disney World?
MATT: That is completely insane.
Well, thanks, everybody.
Thanks for letting us interrupt your meeting here.
Just the idea that someone could clock
in work hours while at the Magic Kingdom kind of blew my mind.
Here was someone able to balance work
and pleasure in a way that was unthinkable a few years prior.
But after about 2 hours inside this campus, I couldn't help
but recall what Kent told me about the state of virtual workplaces.
KENT: You're in a world
that just makes you feel like you're in a soulless corporate office.
You go in there and you're like, "I totally don't want to be in this space."
MATT: Whereas I do get the idea that work needs
to stay grounded in some sort of analog of reality.
There's a part of me that just wants to abandon all constraints
of the physical world.
And that thinking led me quite literally "Nowhere." What's up, buddy?
Welcome to Nowhere.
JON: This is a virtual 3D metaverse platform.
But Nowhere, we're not about recreating reality, like
by putting buildings and office rooms and board spaces.
We're about creating environments that really inspire different emotions
and different feelings about
how do you want to feel when you're in these enviroments?
Actually, why don't I take you to where I love to have my meetings?
Nice. There we go.
MATT:
Nowhere embraces magical realism as its backdrop.
It's decidedly avatar free web based,
and for lack of a better word, kind of anti-VR.
Instead, they've constructed a platform that takes the best of both video
conferencing and virtual spaces
JON: For us, there's nothing like the presence of....
of humans.
When you're on a zoom call. It's just a flat grid.
You know, you see the people's faces, but there's no sense of presence.
But within Nowhere,
you have that added sense of place that it allows you to create memories.
You know, we're looking at each other.
We're able to see all the subtlety of facial expression,
which is based on thousands and thousands of years of evolution of us
instinctually, you know, looking for signs of how we read people's faces
and how we read people's body behavior.
When I'm in VR, I feel disconnect from people
and I feel disconnect from the world.
You know, some of my most exciting moments in life are when I'm with humans.
I don't believe that cartoon avatars are going to create the feeling of co presence
and the feeling of intimacy that we need within work environments
to trust each other, to collaborate freely, and to really build
relationships that build great teams, that build great products.
MATT: Regardless of Jon's hard line stance on avatars.
It seems obvious that XR is not going away
The AR / VR and mixed reality sectors combined
is expected to grow into a $100 billion market by 2025.
And with the availability
of more affordable headsets, adoption is really a matter of when not if.
MARK: The next paradigm is really
these augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality ecosystems.
And right now it seems that Meta is going to be at the forefront
so you're going to see a wide array of people probably using those Meta headsets
for video conferencing.
More people at home will be able to get their hands on it.
And at some point, Apple's become a big deal too, for the future of virtual work.
MATT: I'm still wrapping my head around all of this.
VR and the like,
fully replacing our physical reality isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
But as alternative realities of every type seep into our homes and offices,
be them virtual or otherwise,
it's safe to say that this will not be our last meeting in the Metaverse.
Guys, this has been really fun. I think we should.
I think we should do this again.