Immersive: the new buzzword and the use-cases it can support

In 2016, on a business trip to Paris, I noticed there was a lot of buzz on the street around Pokemon. An immersive game that merged together with the virtual and real-world, leading to a 200% jump in stock price for the company which launched it.

It was hard to fathom the concept for its time, at least for me personally as I was not able to understand why these youngsters are frantic about finding a Pokemon, near the cross-section at Musee De La Homme. But I discounted it by saying many companies know how to harvest an opportunity through a new revolutionary concept, by making people hooked to it. After all who doesn't need an aggressive boost in stock price.

A few years later, in 2021 October, Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding of the Facebook parent company as Meta, with the objective to bring the metaverse to life, and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses. Zuckerberg vision is to embody the internet and surround the user with the content in a way, it feels like the user is living the virtual life.

Just like Facebook was banking on its Oculus VR capabilities to bring an alternative universe to life, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, referred to Azure Cloud Services as a 'metaverse-stack' in which users can engage with data, processes and each other in a digital avatar.

In very simplistic terms, Metaverse is a 3-dimensional, immersive environment, built on digital twin technology, creating an alternative reality in which multiple users can interact with each other for work, play, business, collaboration or community building.?

Where can it be of use?

The traditional flow of invention was to find the need first and then invent something to meet/ address those requirements. In our current state of evolution and technological progress, we have switched things a little bit.

We now first introduce a revolutionary tech and then figure out the use cases. I am not making a controversial statement here, after all even after almost a decade of introduction, in 2009 we still have to figure out where and how to use Blockchain.

There could be myriad use cases of the immersive Tech, also known as augmented reality, metaverse or digital twin. But I would be touching upon a few based on my first-hand experience.

• Product experience - Virtual trial of clothes, spectacles and other accessories before we buy has been common for a while now. But this use-case is the very basic one for immersive tech. A virtual experience of real estate and merchandise, take it a notch higher as it needs more resources to successfully mimic the real environment. The most advanced level here would be something like Anatomage Table by Medtronic, which enables the healthcare practitioner to navigate in 3D through detailed anatomic structures, for the surgeons to plan about the device requirements and implant techniques. I witnessed one during a visit to Medtronic Research, and it was pure magic.
• Sensitization towards certain causes - Immersive tech can help shape attitudes also, especially for topics for which people do not have the reach to experience the topics and the associated risks involved. For example, to change attitudes towards topics like Global warming, racial prejudice, etc. immersive is being used to shape up attitudes in a visceral way. Education and Training is a known use case.

• Virtual site visits - this is one use-case, which I indeed proposed myself to counter the first-hand effects of travel and mobility restrictions, on client visits- for services companies. In 2020, when the travel restrictions and lockdowns got announced, services companies like the one I worked on in the past, faced the typical challenge of showcasing their capabilities to the clients, when movement restrictions do not allow travel. In the recent past, this company made huge investments in a customer experience centre, which was used for client visits explicitly and was one of the key differentiators when clients used to evaluate the decision to award the contract. It was indeed expected, as this was the first-hand experience that client stakeholders had themselves. In the new emerging normal, the fate of that investment changed overnight. Now client visits are serious business for Technology and Service companies, as it is the most critical indicator of client interest, and provides confidence to the vendor company as well, around what different dimensions and shape the deal may take. Missing it out completely, for whatever reason is not an option. So to make it possible, I started some research as part of an ideation exercise, to find out if there are Augmented reality capabilities inside my parent organization. I did not have to spend too much time to discover that there was an extended realty acquisition my parent organisation made years ago, but it was not being leveraged that much. I reached out to the executives responsible for that business group and worked on a blueprint, to create a virtual client visit platform, where regardless of hardware dependencies, the customer can get the same experience as if visiting the experience centre physically. This wasn't just about creating a virtual model of the experience centre, it was about creating a digital twin by capturing all experiential dimensions as if you are taking the customer physically over there. The entire customer journey was designed and curated, even leading to a customer visit platform, where the executives can pick and chose even their food preferences, which would get delivered in an orchestrated way as per the agenda of the visit, anywhere across the globe based on customer location of access. One very interesting aspect of the entire customer journey was the customer wasn't just witnessing what was happening, indeed they were participating in it. For example, we had modules and elements planned where while seeing a demo for AP Workflow, a customer can pick and choose the role-play of a stakeholder like an Invoice processor, approver, exception resolver I presented the blueprint to my company's leadership, while on the virtual visit and experience it first-hand, how easy, agile and transparent this process will be for the end-user, with the solutions being proposed. Give the executives to touch and feel the technology, and the difference it creates. Let them process/ approve a few invoices or pass through some journals. This was the immersive environment, we envisioned creating. Further, the custom platform had an option for a live floor walk, where at the click of a button, the customer can directly speak to the representative, whose digital twin they see on the screen. One can easily assess the impact this would have on prospective clients, subject to precise execution. One differentiating benefit for the service provider here was - the augmentation in capability to host multiple clients on the same day, same time. Physically if one client is in the experience centre, you cannot plan a second visit- but using immersive tech, multiple clients can be hosted all at the same time. This offered phenomenal scalability.

No technology is free of its drawbacks and frills, it's a fine balancing act and needs a phenomenal sense of judgement to know how much is too much.

Immersive tech is no different. I would leave the topic of setting boundaries for a separate piece, but it's worth calling out the psychological effect of too-much immersive consumption could be similar to what happened to Sam Neil's character in the 1994 Hollywood flick "In the mouth of madness". Another risk it carries is related to the privacy of individuals, especially when you relate to technologies like Deepfake and the way it is being misused.

We as a generation have been great at innovation, but have been below average at regulation. Recent adventures with Crypto-currencies and Blockchain are examples next door.

-Mohit Sharma

Disclaimer: The objective of this write-up is sharing of information and perspectives. There is no intention to name or call out any company, client or individual I have worked for. Professional life offered me some great learnings, and opportunities - I am just paying it forward, by passing on the learning. I could be reached out for comments or feedback.