Spatial Charts POC - Data Visualisation in Mixed Reality

Extended Reality (XR) and immersive experiences will play an increasingly important part of our lives and society. Here is just one use case.

Spatial Charts

I was recently given the opportunity to extend a personal proof of concept I created exploring immersive Data Visualisation, Analysis and Interaction in Mixed Reality for my Meta Quest 3 headset, so decided to add some basic statistical analysis functionality, multiple datasets and share it with the rest of my team.

If you want to see it for yourself, you can see the demo video below or go to SpatialCharts.com (which just currently redirects to the video), which I registered to showcase the implementation.

If you follow me, you are probably already familiar with my obsession with domain names..

It must be something that has also captured the imagination of others as it has already been watched for more than 20 hours, had > 1,000 views and 40+ likes on YouTube which is unusual for my videos!

Somewhat serendipitously, the next day I was on a call and someone asked whether anyone had done any XR data visualisation and analysis of healthcare data.. so I am now exploring opportunities of leveraging Spatial Charts (or similar) for potential use by our clients.

Regardless of whether Spatial Charts (or similar) results in any update additional interest, uptake or revenue, I want to highlight that by encouraging and making space for personal experimentation, research and innovation.. good things happen and new opportunities present themselves.

Implementation

This experience was created using C#, .NET, Visual Studio and StereoKit and is shown running on my $500 Quest 3 device (all functionality except full colour passthrough) will also work on a $250 Quest 2 device.

I think it is important to mention, that if you are a .NET developer and you use Visual Studio, you probably already have the necessary skills, and by spending a little bit of time to experimenting with the StereoKit library, you could be creating similar experiences quite quickly.

You don't need a $3500 HoloLens, or learn Unity to create immersive experiences.

However if you are already in the HoloLens camp, good news; being OpenXR compliant, StereoKit also supports HoloLens and other XR devices. I look forward to getting my hands on a HoloLens to try myself. Until then.. the Quest 3 more than suits my needs and far exceeds my expectations.

I hope to share more Mixed Reality experiences using StereoKit and the Quest 3 in future.

My take on Innovation

After practicing and immersing myself in practical innovation for over 20 years, when it comes to innovation I have a few thoughts on the topic.

Firstly.. I believe that the best type of innovation happens through play and experimentation . We must maintain our childlike curiosity and wonder of the world and follow our creative impulses to explore and make sense of it. We can explore emerging technologies and their benefits to great effect with this same mindset.

“We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams” – Willy Wonka / Arthur O’ Shaughnessy

Secondly, whilst it is super important to “Start With Why ”, I generally see too much time thinking and talking about innovation, and not enough time on what I would call “practical innovation” – prioritising the act of developing and delivering value through innovative technology.

Show, don't tell.

“Ideas are great, implementation is better”

And thirdly, in order to make innovation happen, you just need to hire innovators and inventors, get out of their way, and give them the space, time and resources to be creative and innovative. That's it.

Trust me, they will be able to solve the problems you want them to solve with very little or no oversight or structure.

It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do. - Steve Jobs

If you try to prescribe or overly "manage" innovation, you end up stifling the very thing you want to be achieve. You cannot mandate innovation, turn it on or off or scale it at the flick of a switch.

Innovation, just like culture, starts and ends with people, so the best you can do is find innovative people, carefully plant the innovation seed, and nurture it in order for it to grow into a culture of innovation.

Summary

One of the reasons that I’m looking forward to completing my MSc Entrepreneurship Management and Innovation next year, is that I'm becoming increasingly passionate about combining innovative technologies with an entrepreneurial mindset to help the business better strategize and identify opportunities, markets, channels, audiences and use cases that can benefit from practical innovation and the implementation of innovative technologies such as XR.

Exciting times ahead!

If you like my videos and experiments with Extended Reality (XR) and Artificial Intelligence, make sure you follow me on YouTube , Twitter and here on LinkedIn .

-- Lee

Note: This article featured in the C# Advent Calendar for December 14th 2023.

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