In 5-10 years’ time, XR technologies will be driving more efficient forms of operating in every function from learning and development to sales and marketing.

The disruption XR will have on businesses could be likened to the impact the internet itself has had. Every aspect of our working lives will be changed in 10 years. Your smart glasses will be more widely used than your smartphone as a communications/computer display device. You’ll take a lot more meetings and attend a lot more events in a fully 3D virtual environment with holograms of your colleagues. Even today in 2021, organisations are using VR to train employees with huge success in information retention and reduction in working errors.

An area that some enterprises have already started looking into for improving customer experience is using AR for guidance and technical support. By creating AR instruction manuals, as well as deploying AR remote assistance when AR headsets will become more consumer friendly, companies will be able to reduce their spending on technical support and improve customer satisfaction

When thinking about going into XR development, remember that you are not investing in the technology, you are investing in a team. Going into such a project it is best to pay utmost attention to what kind of team you would need to build the experience. It is important to look at the expertise, experience, the ambitions, goals, and how they plan to reach those goals.

AR, MR and VR will transform the quality and effectiveness of business communication and collaboration over a 5-10 year period, much in the way that advances in video technology did in preceding years. The experience of corporation-wide communications will take a leap far beyond the current videoconferencing standard. Products will be designed and tested more quickly and precisely inside AR, MR or VR. Teams within the business will be better- trained and higher-performing after experiencing realistic and engaging educational simulations created in AR, MR or VR. The relationship and communication between the business and its customers will also evolve as a result of AR, MR and VR technologies, allowing customers to experience aspects of the business brand, operation and products in a new level of detail.

Studies have shown that companies that give their employees the option of working from home have boosted their productivity significantly, and feeling the presence of your colleagues in VR conquers Zoom fatigue. The challenges are the same with any new technology; some people are slower in accepting the new tools, and 5-10% of VR users (depending on the headset) complain about dizziness, mostly due to not following recommendations. In time, headsets will be even more lightweight and ergonomic. We are still early adopters.

When you stare at a screen, you remember watching something on a screen. Using AR/VR, your brain remembers you lived it. That’s why most AR/VR content is called an experience, because that’s what it truly is. This has many benefits: faster and more efficient learnings, contextual guidance, 3D visualisation in itself. In a hybrid remote/ office work world, AR/VR devices will bring people together in a shared space, something that’s never been done before

The biggest benefit that AR offers is increasing customer touchpoints with the brand. Brands that don’t often interact with their customers should consider creating AR experiences that would allow their users to directly interact with them.

The biggest challenge in my opinion rests with the decision-makers in the companies or corporations that are considering using XR applications, more so than the technology itself. If these decision-makers embraced XR with the same enthusiasm as what they did with Web technologies 20 years ago, I’m convinced we would have all progressed much further than we currently have. Decision-makers are still wary and are still to be convinced of making significant investments in these types of initiatives, despite the advantages being quite obvious: reductions in cost, savings in time, increased levels of engagement from participants, the creation of new sets of data from interactive and immersive experiences that simply aren’t possible via any other medium.

Campaigns will become completely experiential. You have the possibility to build procedural and dynamic campaigns which can change based on dozens of parameters. Game engines like Unreal will start to play a pivotal role in implementing immersion into brands. Campaigns may live far beyond the sell by date just because of the immersion offered by VR, AR and MR.