What has not been as evident to many is that much of that remote interaction will be between avatars of ourselves, with realistic representations of us conversing and engaging with others.

The boom and subsequent bust of Second Life (though as recently as 2018 it still claimed 800,000 monthly active users) showed that there was at very least intrigue at the idea of avatar-based worlds, even with what we would now consider very basic technology.

Virtual worlds for work

However the real potential of avatar-based virtual worlds likely lies in the world of work.

High Fidelity, the subsequent venture of Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, recently closed down its virtual social network and will now focus on providing virtual office spaces.

Then a few days ago Spatial, which offers a “holographic” collaboration platform in which team members work together in virtual spaces using AR headsets, raised an additional $14 million, with existing clients including Mattel, Nestle and BNP Paribas.

Watch the video below for a taster.

I have long believed that it is inevitable that we will collaborate with each others’ avatars in virtual spaces.

Two decades ago I imagined an investment bank trading room which was entirely virtual, traders sitting (or standing and shouting) wherever they were in the world, but appearing and interacting in the one virtual space.

Only now are we getting closer to having the technology to make this a reality.

Mapping expressions to avatars

One of the great successes of the now-defunct High Fidelity virtual world was using computer cameras to map facial expressions and gestures onto avatars, making them massively more realistic than the static avatars of Second Life.

However the biggest single challenge is that people need to wear VR or AR glasses to participate in virtual spaces, which masks their facial features.

Companies including Facebook are trying to address this with solutions including cameras inside VR headsets, which can for example show whether people are ‘smiling with their eyes’ and not just their mouth.

Moving to a world of virtual collaboration

The advent of comfortable, good-looking glasses with AR functionality will be a massive enabler of virtual collaboration, making it easy to see remote colleagues in the same room that you are in, as Spatial is doing.

The quality of body and face mapping appears to be improving rapidly, but will need to progress further.

Over the long term, as in 10-20 years, we could get to where it is hard to distinguish seeing someone in person and in a virtual world.

Well before that one of the major obstacles will be people’s comfort with working in virtual spaces. It took a while until video conferencing became standard practice in many organizations. It will likely be longer until it seems entirely normal to have work discussions in a virtual world.

One advantage of working in virtual spaces is that you can make your avatar look however you like, so you don’t need to be concerned about your hair, clothes, make up, or how haggard you may look. This might make virtual collaboration more attractive to many, though in a work context the more wacky avatars that were seen in Second Life are less likely to be used. Particularly in a work context, people will want to feel that they are interacting with a person, not something cartoon-ish.

How long will it take for collaboration in virtual worlds to flourish?

The journey is already well under way, with High Fidelity’s pivot, Spatial’s growth, many other players emerging such as Mann Made, and consumer VR social networks looking intently into corporate applications.

It is most likely to be a fairly long path from here, even taking into account that Second Life was founded in 2003. Progress will be relatively slow, with over time and amid scepticism, technological advances, innovative companies experimenting with and adopting collaboration in virtual worlds, and proven results taking us forward.

Then at some point we will find it commonplace and everyday to be working and collaborating with colleagues around the world in virtual spaces. Bring it on.

Lowe’s Holoroom How To: Immersing customers in home improvement learning

U.S. hardware chain Lowe’s is one of the first retailers to use VR to teach customers practical home improvement skills. Since 2014, Lowe’s Holoroom How To experience has gradually transitioned from a tool for customers to visualize what a bathroom or kitchen renovation could look like, to a platform for DIY skills training. The focus is on exploring real-life applications of VR “to directly help our customers solve everyday problems”, according to Kyle Nel, Executive Director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs.

In 2017, the six-month pilot of the Holoroom How To skills clinic is available to customers at two Lowe’s stores in the U.S. (Framingham, MA and Burlington, ON) and one RONA store in Canada (Beloeil, Québec). Wearing a VR headset, customers act on instructions from a video to practice skills such as installing shelves, painting a fence or tiling a shower. Tactile responses on the handheld equipment give customers the sensation of actually holding a drill or other hardware tool. The immersive nature of the technology makes it a valuable experiential learning platform and a source of useful insights into customer knowledge, recall and motivation.

Lowe’s asserts that people who participate in the Holoroom How To demonstrate increased motivation to take on DIY projects and better recall of the steps involved. “We believe innovations like Holoroom How To will soon enable instantaneous learning moments and massively scalable training opportunities that empower both customers and employees around the world,” says Nel.

CommBank’s Start Smart VR pilot: Fostering financial education

In a different take on customer education, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is incorporating VR for school children into its Start Smart corporate responsibility program. CommBank partnered with Australian author Ursula Dubosarsky to create a picture book, Sammy the Space Koala, that teaches children about financial decision-making, saving and investing. The book is made interactive by a VR headset, ‘The Teleporter’, developed by M&C Saatchi’s innovation lab Tricky Jigsaw.

The picture books and VR headsets were distributed to around 1500 students from 24 Australian primary schools during late 2016. The students were encouraged to take the VR experience home to revisit key concepts about financial literacy with their parents or carers, who were asked to provide feedback on the experience. According to Stuart Tucker, GM of brand, sponsorship and marketing operations at CommBank, one parent reported their child learned more in a 10-minute VR journey in outer space than they had in five years on Earth.

Using VR “teleports” kids into a “richer learning experience”, says Michael Canning, M&C Saatchi Australia’s Executive Creative Director. “VR is everywhere at the moment, but the reason that VR is relevant is because it becomes an active decision-making tool – if you’re just reading the book you can’t choose the items you buy. It’s hard to do that in a passive medium but VR turned it into immersive storytelling.”

Making the most of VR in PR

One of the key advantages that VR has over other mediums is that there are no distractions for the customer. This has significant implications for PR, as Alex Halls observes in a blog post for Wolfstar consultancy:

“The best PR campaigns have the power to grip the consumer but the weaker campaigns are often filtered out among the many news stories we see day to day. VR’s advantage is once the headset is on, you are completely immersed in the media, you choose where you look and what to focus on. Every part of it, every turn of the head, can be intricately planned for the best results and the biggest impact.”

Nonetheless, an effective use of VR must be closely connected to brand narrative and customer engagement to avoid “the gimmick factor” and ensure “that it’s still story first and technology second”, says Ian Shying, UX and Design Director at Edelman Australia. The way forward for PR, then, is to use VR as a strategic tool for meaningful storytelling and customer education.