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What is Mixed Reality and what does it mean for the enterprise?

Microsoft says

AI will change the way businesses operate, but could it also change the way we see? Check out this article, which explores how the powerful combination of AI and mixed reality could transform how we work by putting the information we need directly in front of us. Then contact us to learn how you can plan for, implement AI, and advanced tech into your business and workplace.

The Invero perspective

Mixed Reality will undoubtedly change how we perceive and interact with the world. The working world is no exception. For REWIND, the content studio owned by the author of the article cited above, Mixed Reality goes beyond advertising and gaming campaigns. Instead, it stretches to include such innovations, such as a motivational mirror installed in an IKEA that compliments passers-by. Another instance, creating a 360-degree music video with the artist Bjork that puts the viewer right into her context. Also, transporting viewers to the remote Scottish highlands, in their beauty, to experience the character and style of a whisky.

What is Mixed Reality?

Mixed Reality is the progression that follows from Augmented Reality, which itself is an immersive, computer-generated simulation that can engage across the senses. This is different from Virtual Reality, which is immersive based on entirely digital information. Augmented Reality increases the perception of reality with digital enhancements; the environment is fundamentally real but has additional information grafted layers.

By contrast, mixed reality integrates the real and virtual worlds into co-existence, with physical and digital objects de facto interacting. This occupies a middle space that is neither fully physical nor virtual but a seamless hybrid of the two.

Mixed Reality is where physical and digital space meet, creating something totally new.

What does it mean for the future of work?

History is littered with anxieties that machines will replace workers. In many cases, they have. Yet devices statistically create more jobs than they replace; however, the worker must be willing to evolve into new (and often better) roles. At no time in history has this kind of evolution happened as rapidly as now, and there is no reason to expect deceleration. Change is the future, but this need not be a fearful idea.

In the world of work, Mixed Reality offers many positive applications:

  • Remote teams can collaborate as if in person. Language is no hurdle, with applications translating in real-time. This allows for greater autonomy over one’s working life, and that in turn increases productivity and enjoyment.
  • Learning can be adapted to different styles, accommodating visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners, and providing simulations that mean “e-learning” in fact becomes experiential learning.
  • Military training enjoys a higher level of safety for personnel in stressful situations, or simulations that in real life would be dangerous or even deadly. This also allows for training across various terrain and reduces spent costs on physical training goods.
  • Medical applications of Mixed Reality mean that doctors in training can interact with the body directly and in unprecedented hands-on ways. Increasingly sophisticated imaging in turn allows complex data to be better visualized, and conditions better understood. In time, surgeries will become quicker and more precise, with less damage to healthy tissue.
Women using an augmented reality headset.
Mixed Reality: you, too, can look this cool!

What about enterprise?

Today’s reality is that we must continue to evolve. Gone are the days, by and large, of a job for life. To maintain competitiveness, the enterprise demands current and sharp skills alongside the intelligent application of data in creating efficiency, continuity, and agility.

Mixed Reality has the powerful potential to help keep workers at the forefront of their specializations and empowered to avoid obsolescence when faced with it. Mixed Reality re-training can accommodate learning preferences and styles, locations, and schedules. Giving the worker greater autonomy and trust can lead to better performance overall. But besides training or re-skilling, Mixed Reality will change the kind of work we do and the way we do them.

Adapting to new technologies is naturally fraught with uncertainty and suspicion, whether it is an industrial machine or an intelligent one. Every advancement has brought the potential for good and bad actors. However, history shows an overall positive trend. Technology improves life quality, including longevity, nutrition, literacy, self-expression, personal and social safety, and opportunity. Today’s problems will beget solutions as yet unimagined, and Mixed Reality is sure to play a part.

At Invero, we believe in being at the forefront of change and supporting our partners and clients to use new advances to create innovative business solutions. Leadership means foraging into the unknown. We are here as your digital innovation partner and guide for those ready and bold enough to join us. As REWIND says, “nothing’s impossible.”As REWIND says, “nothing’s impossible.”