How to implement Immersive Experiences in your strategy & Spatial Computing News!

Crossposted from our Substack!

Welcome to the Digital Explorers Diary #57!

A curated collection of thought-provoking topics about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.

Executive summary:

• Starting small for implementing immersive experiences in your strategy,
• Snapchat closes its enterprise-focused section,
• AI-powered targeted ads,
• and Quest3 inside-out body tracking!

Integrating Immersive Experiences in your strategy: start small!

In 2023, we see a maturation of immersive technologies (Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality). They become common and accessible to anyone from their smartphone, are an integrated part of all major social networks, and are adopted by brands and industries. As marketers, industries, and technologists, the allure to implement these technologies in your strategy is tempting. And you should - these experiences are proven to drive customer acquisition, client lifetime value, and brand awareness; and for industries, are improving processes and training.

But it’s difficult to know where to start. Even at their mature stage, immersive experiences still look complex to implement, with still doubt about their efficiency, especially when being part of an integrated business strategy. This is where you need to slow things down, take a bird’s eye view, or, to take another nature analogy: be the tortoise, not the hare.

Yes, it’s tempting to listen to the technology sirens and plan to move every process on a blockchain, implement generative AI in all steps of your employee's workday, and only do meetings in “The Metaverse.“ But realistically, nobody’s ready to do that. Too much change, too much uncertainty. It’s great to see what the future could look like but to go there, one must take prudent steps.

Of course, there are areas of your business that would benefit from improvement. Instead of disrupting everything, choose one area where the usage of innovative technology could make sense. Then, choose a target market, a specific audience, a flagship boutique, or a temporary popup store. With that, implementing a targeted project is easier and safer, and you can learn and iterate fast.

In the spirit of lean startups, this iterative process of learning and adapting is indispensable. It nurtures not only technical insights but an understanding of how audiences interact with these new digital tools. Each project will move your business a step closer to mastering the art of immersive experiences.

This applies to the end users, of course, whether it’s your employees or your clients. But it also matters for your business itself. Your team needs to get familiar with the technology, understand what they can learn from it, and how to use it properly. Implementing radical changes too fast will lead to confusion and could become a lost opportunity. Starting small sets everybody’s confidence and a foundation for more ambitious projects. As results become more apparent, the rapport strengthens, paving the way for more extensive, innovative campaigns.

Be the tortoise: the journey to success with innovative technology is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.

This Weeks News:

• Only a couple of months after its launch, Snap has closed its AR-focused enterprise offering. Related to the article above, their vision of e-commerce, where AR can be integrated at each step and in every vertical, is very futuristic but unfortunately not realistic in the current business and economic climate. Maybe they should have started smaller!
• Interesting take from Ben Lang about the Apple Vision Pro and how they approach Virtual Reality - a word that hasn’t been said once during the release keynote: “Apple is treating VR like a ‘full-screen’ mode for Vision Pro; the thing you consciously enable when you want to rid yourself of other distractions and get lost in one specific piece of media. If you think about it, that’s exactly how we use full-screen on our computers and phones today.“ This is an excellent way of conceptualizing the different modes of a headset; that approach might indeed be the seamless user experience that we need.
• As a follow-up to last week’s article about advertising in the metaverse:Lunchables is the first company to try rewarded ads in Pokemon Go. No surprise, it really fits the brand’s target and message - curious to see the metrics once the campaign ends!Artificial Intelligence is already used in targeted advertisements, but the recent advances in this technology are starting to power up new ways of high-precision targeted ads, with this partnership between Snapchat and Microsoft to integrate sponsored links in Snap’s AI bot “My AI.”

• It’s been a couple of weeks since the Meta Quest 3 release, and another promising feature was announced: inside-out upper body tracking and leg estimation.What it means: without the need for controllers and by using the cameras that are in front of the headset, the device will be able to estimate the position of your body using AI-driven algorithms.

From the Podcast

Every week, I’m teaming up with Guillaume Brincin and Sébastien Spas on the Lost In Immersion podcast. This week:

1. We obviously focused on the Meta Connect conference and its announcements. In short:We’re worried about the distortions of the Quest 3 Mixed Reality mode. We don’t expect it to be perfect, but my test in a retail store and some videos we could see online show worrying distortions.We wonder about the usage and ethics around the AI Influencers that Meta created for Facebook and Instagram. Will people really use it and maybe form bonds with them?Finally, we touch on the realistic avatars demo, and while it’s impressive progress, it won’t be available until 2025 and will probably be super expensive.

Watch the podcast below, and tune in at 10 am UTC on Tuesdays on Twitch, and listen to the podcasts on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Amazon!

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