XR for Business

XR for Business

By Alan Smithson from MetaVRseBusinessTechnologyArts
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XR for Business episodes

  • Meeting in the Flesh in XR, with Glue’s Kalle Saarikannas

    Some people find VR to be a solitary experience – too lonely to ever really be a place that humans can feel comfortable in. Well, tell that to Alan, when he met today’s guest – Kalle Saarikannas from Glue – in Glue’s virtual reality chatroom. Despite being continents apart, it felt like they were face-to-face. Kalle sits down again with Alan – this time, without the avatars – to explain why he wants to make Glue a household name.

    Alan: Today’s guest is Kalle

    Saarikannas, business development manager for Glue, a new
    collaboration platform — and I’ll let him talk more about it — but
    Kalle is a 26-year-old combination of curiosity for emerging
    technology and commercial sense, making innovations a reality. Glue
    is a multi-user, multi-device, virtual reality hosting platform that
    is redefining the future of remote collaboration. Prior to Glue, the
    pioneer of XR remote collaboration, Kalle was working closely with
    intelligent packaging, RFID sensor tech, mobile augmented reality,
    and RFID solutions for B2B and Consumer Engagement Solutions. He’s
    built a strong, built-in entrepreneurial mindset, and established his
    first business at age 15. He has a master’s degree in business
    management from Hanken School of Economics, and an expression of his
    interest towards XR technology. He wrote a master’s thesis about XR
    tech, “Immersive Virtual Reality and Training, Using VR in the
    Facilitation of Learning.” His free time is spent volunteer
    firefighting in Helsinki, Finland. To learn more about Kalle and
    Glue, you can visit www.glue.work. Kalle, welcome to the show; so
    excited to have you.

    Kalle: Yeah. Thank you, Alan,

    for having me on — and Glue — in the show.

    Alan: It’s really wonderful. I

    had the opportunity to try your platform back in New York during…
    there was a conference, I can’t remember what the conference was, but
    we we’re speaking at it, and I got an amazing chance to meet with
    your colleague, Jani. And he got to show me the Glue platform —
    which, for the people listening — imagine putting on a VR headset,
    and it doesn’t have to be the most fancy headset. They’ll work with
    all of them. You put it on, and now you’re standing in a room. Like,
    you and I had a conversation — you were in Finland, I was in New
    York — and we had a conversation as if we were standing in the same
    room together.

    Kalle: Yeah, I remember that. It

    was quite fascinating to me, too. For the first time in virtual
    reality, we were having an eye contact with each other, although we
    were some 4,000 miles apart, in different continents.

    Alan: It’s really cool. So,

    maybe describe the Glue platform, and what your vision is for this.

    Kalle: As you mentioned in the

    intro, Glue is a software; a system for live mobile device virtual
    reality collaboration. We’re not just a virtual reality platform, but
    we also support desktop users, mobile phones, iPads, and we provide a
    whole service for having meetings in virtual environments. Basically,
    our business model is that we are building a platform which operates
    in a software as a service model, by offering the client access to
    persistent virtual spaces that can be customized to the needs of the
    client. Let’s say a enterprise wants to — that has a lot of remote
    meetings using traditional remote softwares, such as Skype for
    Business or Google Hangouts, which are based on two-dimensional
    screens. You’re having video calls, you can see the other from the
    camera — instead of that, we offer three-dimensional virtual spaces,
    that you can really feel the presence of other people, although you
    are sitting on a different continent, miles apart.

    Alan: It’s one of those things

    where describing virtual reality to people that haven’t tried it is
    like describing the color red to a blind person. It really doesn’t
    work. The way I explain this to people is — even people who’ve tried
    virtual reality and said, “oh, you know, this is great, but it’s
    very isolating” — when I was in Glue, the last thing I was
    thinking was isolating, because I was in the room. I was standing
    next to you. We were having a conversation. I was looking at you. You
    were looking at me. We’re a little bit cartoonish as our avatars, but
    I’m assuming — over time — that will become more realistic. But
    really, I felt like I met you. I felt like I was there in the room
    with you. We looked at an engine; we pulled it apart, we put it back
    together. You created these beautiful different environments. And one
    of the things that I think for businesses, there’s a lot of meetings
    that happen that don’t necessarily need somebody to jump on a plane,
    but that just seems to be the best way to get that done. We’ve all
    use Skype and these types of video conferencing, but they’re missing
    that personal touch. I had Jacob Loewenstein on from Spatial, talking
    about their collaboration platform, but theirs is more AR. How does
    yours differ, VR versus AR? And why would somebody choose one over
    the other?

    Kalle: As you mentioned, we’ve

    been focusing on on VR — virtual reality — which basically means
    that you have your headset on, and the whole environment you see is
    computer-generated, and it gives a lot of possibilities compared to a
    AR. Whereas AR — augmented reality — you basically use the
    surroundings you are in. So, the office room that you are in. Or your
    home. You basically use that space, and add digital content on top of
    it. Whereas in VR, everything you see — your whole line of sight —
    is computer-generated. It gives you vast possibilities to create
    basically everything. It’s not dependent on the actual surroundings
    you are sitting on.

    Alan: So basically, what you’re

    saying is I could be in a gym in New York–

    Kalle: As you were.

    Alan: [Laughs]

    Kalle: When we had the meeting,

    I was at our office in Helsinki, and I saw the pictures Jani posted,
    that you were at the hotel gym, using the hotel Wi-Fi, which — as we
    know — are not that stable, usually, the free Wi-Fi. And we had the
    meeting, using the hotel Wi-Fi in New York, 4,000-5,000 miles away.
    And we walked, using Glue’s advanced multi-user technology, in the
    same virtual space. Although you were standing at the gym in New York
    City.

    Alan: I will put a photo in the

    show notes. I’ll find a photo.

    Kalle: Yeah, it’s hard to

    explain otherwise.

    Alan: Yeah, it was great! I

    mean, the room was double-booked, and so we just literally went into
    the gym. I put on the headset… but because it’s so immersive, I
    forgot that I was in the gym. I felt like I was in this beautiful
    room overlooking the mountains, because you’ve created these
    beautiful environments. So… let’s say, for example, we want to
    create a custom environment. What’s required to get somebody up and
    running? What’s required? What do people need?

    Kalle: First of all, I could

    give a short intro about our approach to our product, and Glue in
    general. Basically, our vision for Glue in the future is that Glue is
    going to be a platform for virtual reality; especially virtual
    reality with multiple users. So, a multi-user platform. At this
    stage, we have done customized content for our companies, for
    clients. For instance, we’ve done them a certain virtual spaces, and
    then simulated training scenarios. Digital twins, which basically
    means that we have created a factory — for instance — in VR. But
    the big picture in the future; the plan is that Glue is going to be a
    platform that others can use. Any company that is working with 3D
    animation and 3D assets can use our technology, and build on top of
    that technology. We’re not aiming to become a project house for
    companies, but a platform — or, the way to create VR content in the
    future. So at this stage, we do customized client work as well. But
    in the future, we want to collaborate with different businesses that
    currently create XR solutions, by enabling them to use our technology
    to bring many participants into the same virtual space. Because
    accessing VR is pretty lonely, doing it solo by yourself. That’s
    something that we want to get rid of in the future, and be there
    together.

    Alan: The one thing that I

    really found interesting — beyond being in a virtual space — is the
    fact that you’ve also allowed people to access the meeting from their
    smartphone, or tablet, or computer. If you don’t have a VR headset,
    you can still participate in these experiences. And it feels very
    much like… Second Life. It feels like Second Life.

    Kalle: Well, obviously, the fact

    is that the penetration of VR headset is not that big at the moment,
    but we’ve seen the same development with smartphones over the last
    decade or so. So we know that we can expect that VR is becoming
    mainstream all the time as we speak, but we will also want to keep
    the possibility to access our platform and the meetings using
    handheld devices. So basically, we would be sitting on a bus with
    your headphones on, and be in the same meeting using your phone. And
    when you get to your office or your home, you can then put on a VR
    headset, and then to be even more immersed, obviously, than using a
    phone or an iPad. You don’t have the same functionality as you have
    using a VR headset, and that is something that we recognize. We’re
    developing a certain special set of different tools, depending on
    which device are you using. We want to make Glue a universal platform
    that can be accessed no matter which product you’re using, or which
    kind of type of device.

    Alan: That’s awesome. It’s going

    to be powerful, oh, my goodness.

    Kalle: Yeah.

    Alan: You mentioned that there’s

    a bunch of new features and improvements since I tried it in New
    York, and I can’t wait to try out the new features. What are some of
    the industries that you are targeting with this? Or, what are the
    industries that you’re seeing starting to take an interest in this
    technology at the moment?

    Kalle: We’ve been developing

    Glue for the past two years or so. The technology is largely built by
    ourselves in-house. We’re a company of roughly 30 people strong in
    Helsinki, Finland. At this stage, we’re collaborating with large
    enterprises, working with various industries. There’s pilot cases,
    including customized training scenarios, specific scenarios created
    for corporate communication purposes, and even historical
    reenactments brought alive with this technology. And the core of all
    these different cases is the multi-use AR functionality. At this
    stage we’re currently in, we’re exploring different industries and
    different use cases for this technology, to find that the best
    industry to serve with this technology. As we both know, there’s so
    many different possibilities with XR technology.

    Alan: Yeah. I think that’s a

    problem for startups in this industry in general, is that you build a
    product that could literally be sold to automotive, mining,
    engineering, design, architectural, medical — you name it. Every
    single industry can benefit from this technology. So, where do you
    start? And where do you start to sell that? Which is one of the
    reasons why we started this podcast. There’s so much education that
    needs to be done, so that businesses that are listening — or even if
    you’re in health care and you want to have remote collaboration
    meetings — you can reach out to Kalle and the team at Glue, and
    start using this technology immediately. If you’re in, let’s say, oil
    and gas, and you want to have meetings — talk about the next
    pipeline or whatever it is — the use cases in the industries are
    unlimited. I think you’re only limited by the amount of bandwidth you
    have for sales, unfortunately.

    Kalle: And obviously the core of

    Glue is a remote meetings — the actual meetings taking place — and
    we have focused on human-to-human communication using the technology.
    But you mentioned, for instance, doctors and the healthcare industry.
    We’ve actually done simulation trainings based on Glue’s technology.
    For instance, there’s a simulation training for teams of doctors and
    nurses to practice crucial — sometimes even life-threatening —
    patients scenarios. And with this kind of technology — having the
    possibility to bring multiple users to the same virtual space — we
    can actually create simulation trainings for teams of doctors and
    nurses. Because obviously, when you’re a surgeon doing a surgery for
    instance, you’re not there alone. It wouldn’t make any sense to use
    XR technology alone, because in the actual situation, you are there
    together with the nurses and your colleagues. We actually had that
    kind of project underway currently.

    And you mentioned also the mining

    industries, and those heavy industries. Using our technology, we can
    create, for instance, a digital twin of a large factory. And once
    again, you can go there together with your colleagues that might be
    sitting across the world, in a completely different continent, by
    just putting the VR headset on. There’s a lot of different use cases
    for the platform, for Glue. But the main thing is our platform —
    whatever we do with the platform — is that you can share the
    experience with others. The multi-user kind of functionality is the
    core which stays throughout, whether it’s just remote meetings, or
    simulation training, or a digital twin production.

    Alan: You mentioned digital

    twins, and one of the things that came to mind was a manufacturing
    facility. You could take a LIDAR scanner or a laser scanner, go in,
    capture a digital twin of the actual facility. Can you drop that into
    the Glue platform, and then have a meeting in that facility?

    Kalle: Yeah. Actually, what

    we’re now exploring is a technology called Matterport. I think it’s
    kind of a 360 camera that you put in an actual space — for instance,
    an apartment — it takes a 360 degree picture of the space. Then you
    move it a bit, and it stitches together all the pictures, and it
    creates a 360 picture with all the depth as well. So basically, you
    can create — with this kind of technology — true 6DoF virtual
    spaces. So with this technology, we’ve actually been able to scan a
    space. Last week, we actually scanned our office with this
    technology, and then we can bring this scanned apartment to Glue. In
    the future, we can go through aN apartment, for instance, or it can
    be a factory. Using these optimized 360-degree cameras to scan the
    space, and then bring it to our multi-user platform. This scanned
    space can be used as any VR space. It can be many participants in the
    space, and it gives vast possibilities for industries that are
    working with older locations. Obviously, when you have a new
    apartment, you have usually the building information models, and you
    have a digital footprint of the design available. But when you’re
    working with apartment that was built a hundred years ago, you need
    to be able to somehow scan it — to make it a digital version of it.
    And that is something that we’re currently exploring.

    Alan: Incredible.

    Kalle: Again, it offers quite nice possibilities to scan existing spaces and enable it to be accessed with multi-user technology.

    Alan: One of the companies that

    we work with, RealityVirtual, they do real quality photogrammetry of
    places. So they’ll go, and take thousands of photos of a place,
    convert that to a digital aspect, take away the lighting sources, and
    allow you to relight it. So, you could take a museum, capture the
    whole thing, relight it; you could then walk through the museum with
    a flashlight, or you could relight it with disco lighting — whatever
    you want it. But giving people the understanding of exact one-to-one
    experience, and then having the Glue platform to… you know, “glue”
    it all together, and allow people to experience it multi-user. That’s
    really what sets it off. Because standing in a museum, looking at
    some art by yourself is nice. It’s beautiful. But being able to
    collaborate with people, and go to an art show together is going to
    be magical.

    Kalle: Yeah, and actually, as an

    example of museum, we did a large project in Finland called Virtual
    Turku in 1812. Turku is one of the biggest cities and the oldest
    cities in Finland, and there was a devastating large fire in the city
    in 1827, which basically destroyed large parts of the city center. We
    decided to take the task together with the Museum of Turku, and
    recreate a city center before the fire, using those multi-user
    technologies. We created a virtual replica of the city center before
    the fire, and we actually had guided tours with tour guides that
    would otherwise be using pictures and traditional mediums. They used
    Glue, and had guided tours using our platform, with people walking
    through in the city center that burned 200 years ago.

    Alan: Wow.

    Kalle: It was so popular in

    Finland that it was — I think — all the spaces were reserved within
    the first hour when it became available.

    Alan: That’s incredible. But

    here’s the thing is… what people don’t understand is, as VR
    headsets become more prevalent and it’s just something you have at
    home ( [laughs] I’ve got two-dozen, although I am a little bit of an
    outlier). But as they become more prevalent, where you don’t have to
    hook it up to a computer, and you don’t have to wait for windows
    updates and all the stuff — you just pick it up and you can start
    experiencing things — you can say to your parents or grandparents,
    “you want to go check out that art gallery today,” and hop
    in Glue. And now we’re in the art gallery together, and share those
    experiences across borders. One of the things that I think is going
    to be really perfect for VR in general — and it’s not B2B, it has
    nothing to do with XR for business — but, bringing these experiences
    into retirement homes. Into places where people have very limited
    mobility. Hospitals, or long-term care facilities, where having that
    one hour of escapism or reprieve from the doldrums of just generic
    walls all day can be the difference between a good quality of life
    and not. And I think, being able to do that collaboratively with
    family members is going to be just a beautiful experience.

    Kalle: Yeah. Not just old

    people, but also people with disabilities. I think there’s been a lot
    of cases where social VR platforms have given people a possibility to
    have discussions and meet other peoples online, using this XR
    technology. Obviously we’re focusing on B2B — so basically,
    companies an NGOs and those kind of things — but social VR platforms
    that are focused on the consumers have had really nice results with
    people that might have disabilities otherwise, and meeting people in
    the real world. There’s a lot of different benefits with this kind of
    technology.

    Alan: So with that, we’ll move

    back to B2B, because there’s so many use cases for this. But I want
    to talk to you about the ones that you’re really focused on, which is
    the B2B market. That meeting market. What are some of the challenges
    that businesses are facing when looking to do this? What are the
    barriers to entry?

    Kalle: I think in general and

    looking at the XR industry — and especially to remote collaboration
    — one of the hurdles that still has been a problem (that isn’t
    really a problem) is that many companies don’t understand that the
    technology is already there. That they don’t acknowledge that it is
    possible to have those kind of meetings that we had already in
    October, between Helsinki and you in New York. That’s not sci-fi
    anymore. It’s already here. But we need to educate companies to
    understand that the technology is already available. As you
    mentioned, it’s really hard to understand and believe if you haven’t
    really tried to technology. So, we need to give as many people as
    possible possibilities to try, to believe the technology. Because all
    the people that have tried our platform and our technology have been
    completely amazed by it. It’s really hard to explain without giving
    them an actual trial of the technology.

    Alan: It really is.

    Kalle: The world is moving so

    fast, that there is simply so much innovation going on that, if
    you’re not within the industry, it might be that you don’t recognize
    all the possibilities. It’s really possible today. So those companies
    that are innovative, and brave to take the first step, are the ones
    that are going to end up being the winners. Innovation is constant,
    and you can’t deny it.

    Alan: It’s moving faster and

    faster and faster. I did a TED talk recently talking about the
    marriage of education and technology, and how we’re entering into the
    exponential age of humanity. How spatial computing, virtual/augmented
    reality, artificial intelligence, IOT, 5G, quantum computers — every
    one of these subsets on their own is revolutionary, moving the needle
    forward. But when you combine them together, and you start seeing
    augmented reality and block chain and artificial intelligence all
    running with a 5G back end, you realize that these technologies
    aren’t siloed. They’re all just going to be one part of our
    day-to-day lives, and they’re coalescing at the exact same time.
    Which — as humans — we’re very good at thinking in linear thought,
    “if I do this, then I grow by 10 percent, or 20 percent,”
    or whatever. We don’t really think in terms of exponentials, meaning,
    “if I do this, I’ll grow by 2000 percent.”.

    We’re just about to enter this

    exponential phase of humanity, where things speed up much, much
    faster. I think we need to look at platforms like Glue as a solution
    to things like unnecessary business travel. If you look at nothing
    else except for unnecessary business travel, that is a huge drain on
    our resources. And most people don’t like flying around for business.
    It’s great to go to a conference, that’s fine. But if you just need
    to fly around the world for a meeting, that’s just crazy. And I know
    nobody in business that I’ve ever talked to is like, “yeah, I
    love getting on a plane for a one-hour meeting!” Said nobody,
    ever. You’re solving not only a problem of business communications,
    but also an environmental problem. If you look at it from that
    standpoint — that Glue can really decrease business travel, and
    that’s a direct cost, and it’s more effective than something like
    Skype — it is not even close. It’s just leaps and bounds better.
    It’s just a matter of time, if the headsets are becoming less
    expensive, so the cost to experiment is less… do you guys have a
    free trial of Glue?

    Kalle: Yeah, obviously, we’ve

    been — as said — at this stage, we’re collaborating with different
    large enterprises within different industries. So at this stage, it’s
    not commercially available on our websites, but it’s more
    case-to-case, because at this stage we want to gather structured
    feedback from the clients that are using Glue. At this stage, we
    really want to develop the product and be a product, then be ready to
    commercially ship the product at a later stage.

    So, yeah, there’s trials. Trials can be

    made. And we’ve let a bunch of people to have trials for a couple of
    months, to gather feedback on how they are using the platform,
    because we’re still kind of looking at what is the best way to
    utilize this technology. Because, as you mentioned, there’s so many
    different ways of using this technology. It can be remote meetings —
    just basic white collar meetings — which are based on
    two-dimensional assets of just, for instance, a company sales
    meeting, which is basically based on figures and numbers. Whereas it
    could be also a product lifespan, which is then basically the whole
    lifespan from designing the product, to validating the product, to
    eventually launching the product. And everything can be done in our
    VR platform.

    Alan: Incredible.

    Kalle: Feel free to be in

    contact with the trials. We would be happy to have discussions.

    Alan: So, people listening: you

    can sign up for trials. I think now is a great time to sign up,
    because not only do you get an early access to what’s coming in the
    future, but you also get the development team listening to what you
    want, and what you need, as a first adopter of this technology.
    Companies have the ability to actually give you feedback. That’s
    incredible.

    You mentioned design

    meetings/collaborations, but then also, taking that exact same
    platform, and you design a car in virtual reality. The management
    sees it, approves it. Your designers go in there and then make some
    changes in design, and then all of a sudden, now you can use it on
    the retail side, and customers can now go in and look at this car.
    There’s so many possibilities. It’s unbelievable. Is there anything
    else you want people to learn about the Glue platform?

    Kalle: As mentioned, the goal is

    to create a platform; a platform that other XR houses, that are now
    currently building projects — can be marketing purposes or different
    cases for client companies — we want to reach out for those
    companies as well. I said we’ve been building this technology for the
    past two years with a team of roughly 30 people. So, it’s taken quite
    many hours to build the multi-user technology to be as robust and
    solid as it is today. So, we want to reach out to different companies
    working with AR and VR projects to become a part of our ecosystem, so
    that we can provide them our platform, that they can use to provide
    multi-user experiences to their clients in the future. It doesn’t
    make any sense that everybody uses two years to build a multi-user
    platform, whereas it makes more sense to use a platform that can be
    used to build on top of. As said, we want to be scalable, and in the
    future, we simply cannot make all the customized projects and all the
    cases we would like to do. As you mentioned, we don’t have the
    bandwidth in sales and development to do everything, so we want to
    collaborate with other actors in this space.

    Alan: The question asks; what

    kind of background — what kind of environment — should we create?
    We’re going to get creative on this one.

    Kalle: Yeah, maybe something

    regarding the Canadian nature. It’s pretty nice, and there’s a lot of
    similarities with the Finnish nature as well.

    Alan: I think so. We’re just

    great people. We just want to be helpful.

    Kalle: Yeah, for sure.

    Alan: What problem in the world

    do you want to see solved using XR? It doesn’t have to be Glue
    specifically, but what problem in the world do you want to see solved
    using XR technologies?

    Kalle: When you mentioned about

    environmental issues, obviously this kind of technology can be used
    quite well to reduce the amount of flying and travelling, because
    using advanced, multi-user XR technologies you can basically teleport
    your… I wouldn’t say “existence,” because it’s not a
    similar teleportation as in Star Trek (at least not yet). But
    basically, you can have the same functionalities as you would in a
    meeting that you would be physically face-to-face with another
    person. With virtual collaboration and remote presence of having
    multiple users in the same virtual space, you can reduce the amount
    of flying, which then directly helps to cope with global warming,
    which is a megatrend that affects all of us. It’s a global
    phenomenon. We need to act to slow it down. So with XR technology, we
    have a completely new medium. A three-dimensional spatial medium that
    we can use to achieve completely new dimensions of collaboration —
    even better collaboration compared to a face-to-face meeting that you
    have with anyone. You still have, for instance, gravity. Using a
    computer-generated environment such as virtual reality, we can erase
    the gravity. So basically, you can have a car engine in your hand,
    and you can just leave it on the height of your head if you wish to
    do so.

    Alan: That’s amazing; if you’re

    standing in-person, looking at a car engine that weighs a thousand
    pounds, you can’t flip it upside down and look at the bottom. But you
    can do that in VR/AR.

    Kalle: Obviously, because

    everything is generated by computer, so we don’t really have any
    limitations. So when you think about it, that we can — using
    platforms such as Glue — we can reduce the amount of flying. It
    reduces the CO2 emissions, and it helps to fight global warming and
    environmental change, and simultaneously provides you the possibly to
    be a Superman and lift a thousand-pound engine on top of your head.
    With these, it’s pretty clear in my opinion that this kind of
    technology is going to revolutionize how we communicate as a species.

    Alan: I agree. Most people try

    it on, they go, “this is a great video game platform,” or
    “this is a great concert platform,” whatever. My first
    immediate thought was, “this is the future of human
    communications.” And I stand by that. Great to hear that
    somebody else thinks like that, too. I’m not just crazy!

    Kalle: We wouldn’t have used

    that much man hours to build a platform, and focus on the platform,
    if people didn’t believe this is the way to go, and the future of
    human communication. There’s so many benefits, using this kind of
    technology.

    32 min
  • Meeting in the Flesh in XR, with Glue's Kalle Saarikannas
    Some people find VR to be a solitary experience - too lonely to ever really be a place that humans can feel comfortable in. Well, tell that to Alan, when he met today's guest - Kalle Saarikannas from Glue - in Glue's virtual reality chatroom. Despite being continents apart, it felt like they were face-to-face. Kalle sits down again with Alan - this time, without the avatars - to explain why he wants to make Glue a household name.
    Alan: Today's guest is Kalle
    Saarikannas, business development manager for Glue, a new
    collaboration platform -- and I'll let him talk more about it -- but
    Kalle is a 26-year-old combination of curiosity for emerging
    technology and commercial sense, making innovations a reality. Glue
    is a multi-user, multi-device, virtual reality hosting platform that
    is redefining the future of remote collaboration. Prior to Glue, the
    pioneer of XR remote collaboration, Kalle was working closely with
    intelligent packaging, RFID sensor tech, mobile augmented reality,
    and RFID solutions for B2B and Consumer Engagement Solutions. He's
    built a strong, built-in entrepreneurial mindset, and established his
    first business at age 15. He has a master's degree in business
    management from Hanken School of Economics, and an expression of his
    interest towards XR technology. He wrote a master's thesis about XR
    tech, "Immersive Virtual Reality and Training, Using VR in the
    Facilitation of Learning." His free time is spent volunteer
    firefighting in Helsinki, Finland. To learn more about Kalle and
    Glue, you can visit www.glue.work. Kalle, welcome to the show; so
    excited to have you.
    Kalle: Yeah. Thank you, Alan,
    for having me on -- and Glue -- in the show.
    Alan: It's really wonderful. I
    had the opportunity to try your platform back in New York during...
    there was a conference, I can't remember what the conference was, but
    we we're speaking at it, and I got an amazing chance to meet with
    your colleague, Jani. And he got to show me the Glue platform --
    which, for the people listening -- imagine putting on a VR headset,
    and it doesn't have to be the most fancy headset. They'll work with
    all of them. You put it on, and now you're standing in a room. Like,
    you and I had a conversation -- you were in Finland, I was in New
    York -- and we had a conversation as if we were standing in the same
    room together.
    Kalle: Yeah, I remember that. It
    was quite fascinating to me, too. For the first time in virtual
    reality, we were having an eye contact with each other, although we
    were some 4,000 miles apart, in different continents.
    Alan: It's really cool. So,
    maybe describe the Glue platform, and what your vision is for this.
    Kalle: As you mentioned in the
    intro, Glue is a software; a system for live mobile device virtual
    reality collaboration. We're not just a virtual reality platform, but
    we also support desktop users, mobile phones, iPads, and we provide a
    whole service for having meetings in virtual environments. Basically,
    our business model is that we are building a platform which operates
    in a software as a service model, by offering the client access to
    persistent virtual spaces that can be customized to the needs of the
    client. Let's say a enterprise wants to -- that has a lot of remote
    meetings using traditional remote softwares, such as Skype for
    Business or Google Hangouts, which are based on two-dimensional
    screens. You're having video calls, you can see the other from the
    camera -- instead of that, we offer three-dimensional virtual spaces,
    that you can really feel the presence of other people, although you
    are sitting on a different continent, miles apart.
    Alan: It's one of those things
    where describing virtual reality to people that haven't tried it is
    like describing the color red to a blind person. It really doesn't
    work. The way I
    0 min
  • Designing the User Experience for WebAR, with Google’s Interaction Developer Austin McCasland

    How an end user experiences a new

    mode of technology is almost as important — if not more — than how
    the tech works on the inside. Because, let’s face it; it could be an
    amazing bit of code, but if the human mind does not find it simple or
    easy to use, it’s a non-starter. Austin McCasland is a UX prototyper
    working with Google, and he and Alan chat about the finer points of
    UX design for AR.

    Alan: Today’s guest is Austin

    McCasland, a designer and developer in immersive computing. Austin
    has written multiple courses across VR and AR design and development.
    He’s designed and developed Paint Space AR, named by Apple as one of
    the best apps of 2017 and currently works full time at Google as an
    AR Interaction designer. Austin employs a user-first synthesis of
    technical understanding and UX design to create effective and useful
    products in emerging technology. I’m really, really excited to
    welcome Austin to the show. Austin, welcome to the XR for Business
    Podcast.

    Austin: Thank you for having me,

    excited to be here.

    Alan: If you’re looking to learn

    more about Austin, you can visit his website at austastic.com. Let’s
    dive right in; you work at Google as a UX designer — user
    experience, for those who don’t know — walk us through what you do
    on a daily basis.

    Austin: I’m a UX designer, and I

    do a lot of prototyping. Basically what I do is, I think about
    software problems from a user-first perspective. Thinking about what
    are things that people are doing that they need solved — or what are
    things that they’re doing that they could do better with technology,
    whether it’s a standard app, or with AR/VR – and then I basically
    go through a process of iteration to come up with features for
    products. And specifically, in my current role, I’m on a prototyping
    team that looks at how we can leverage spatial computing across all
    these different types of use cases. So, I see a range of use cases,
    and explore what’s possible from a product perspective.

    Alan: So, what are some of the

    use cases that you’re seeing in your day-to-day business that you’re
    prone to working on? Or what you’re really attracted to? What are
    some of the best use cases so far?

    Austin: The things that I look

    out for when there’s a use case that could be particularly
    well-suited — and I’ll speak mostly to AR here, although I can also
    speak to VR — but in AR, when there is a problem that’s already
    spatial in nature, it’s usually a pretty good indicator. You’ll see
    this with try-on apps where — and I use this term more broadly to
    also describe apps like IKEA and stuff — let’s say there’s this
    problem of, “I need to see what something looks like in my space.”
    AR is really well-suited to help with those types of problems. Or,
    “what does something look like on me, in physical space?” Now,
    those aren’t the only things. But any time that your users are doing
    something out in the real world, or they need information about how
    something would be in the real world, that’s usually a pretty strong
    signal that you can lean into AR to provide some value there.

    Alan: Let’s give an example. You

    mentioned IKEA, and what they’re doing with their Place app. What
    they basically allow you to do is take your phone, put a digital
    piece of furniture in the exact size [you want], so you can see what
    your couch is going to look like. But this kind of transcends all
    types of visualizations. For example, I saw one where Coke did a
    visualizer to show retailers what the new Coke machine would look
    like in their stores. And it’s not just sending them a photo and
    marking it up. It’s real-time, and that’s — I think — a really
    powerful tool for sales.

    Austin: Yeah, especially because

    one of the key differences between what would be a standard
    documentation — like in that Coke use case, for example — is that,
    you can get a sense of scale in a picture, but when you’re doing
    something and it actually appears to be there — you can walk around
    it, you can hold other things up near to it — it gives you a much
    better idea of scale in general. If you watch the Google IO keynote
    this year, one of the examples they did was Visual Search, where they
    just put a shark on stage, and it’s as big as the shark would be.
    That example follows through to these physical products as well. It
    doesn’t surprise me that Coke did that. I think it’s a really great
    idea.

    Alan: It’s amazing; I think

    we’ve only just really scratched the surface of this. From what we’re
    seeing, the larger brands are all experimenting with AR — and I’m
    assuming you’re seeing this in the day-to-day basis — where there’s
    just a lot more experimentation being done. It’s finding those killer
    app use cases, and see-what-I-see — or virtual try-ons — are really
    big.

    I actually wrote an article called

    “Augmented Reality’s First Killer App: VTOs,” or virtual
    try-ons, and everything — from sunglasses, to footwear, to
    necklaces, jewelry, contact lenses, shoes — there’s so many ways to
    use AR to try things on. And I think the next big one is going to be
    clothing, which I know Google has made an investment in. Clothing
    virtual try-ons, but more for in-store. Are you seeing brands
    starting to roll this out, or is this something people are just
    testing with now?

    Austin: I am not as familiar

    with that specific work. What I can say is that, the verticals that I
    see having the most immediate, effective, actionable use cases is
    probably in fashion and beauty. For all those reasons that you just
    mentioned. So, when I say “fashion,” that could be anything; from
    a retail experience when you’re in a store, or it could be a brand
    experience that you don’t need to be in a store to have. In beauty,
    there’s these face filters. There is obviously a big opportunity
    there. And you see people like Sephora have these
    try-it-before-you-buy features in their apps and things like that.

    Alan: Yeah, there’s a company

    based in Toronto called ModiFace, and they were purchased just
    recently — about a year ago — by L’Oreal, for their virtual try-on
    of makeup. They had very, very accurate facial tracking, and L’Oreal
    bought them for an undisclosed amount. So, it’s happening. There must
    be value being created there.

    The other thing you mentioned about

    furniture; furniture is another big one that we’re seeing. What are
    some of the UX considerations with that? Because once you’ve got this
    app on your phone, and you want to see a couch, what are some of the
    things that you consider when you’re designing something like that?
    Or, what would you consider?

    Austin: That’s a good

    question… I think what you see is that it’s really easy for AR
    applications to fall into two categories. One is something that is
    very useful, but infrequent. Furniture shopping is one of those
    examples, where I’m not shopping for furniture on a daily basis. But
    when I am shopping for furniture, AR can be like very, very useful in
    that circumstance. The second one being sort of the inverse of that,
    which is things I do every day, but the struggle there is to get it
    to be more useful than an existing app. But AR plays really well in
    these sort of episodic scenarios, where I’m deciding on furniture,
    for example. What I would start thinking about is the inbound funnel
    is always super important for augmented reality, because currently,
    the best AR experiences have a dedicated app. WebXR just isn’t quite
    there yet. It’s getting close, but you can’t go to any browser and
    just have these web-based AR experiences.

    Actually, in the case of furniture, you

    may be able to now, because these model viewers are basically being
    — and when I say “model viewer,” it’s being able to put a 3D
    model at a scale into space — let’s assume we’re IKEA. So, we have
    an app that people might care to download. What I think about is,
    “we’ve already gotten them into this app; now what are they
    going to do? What do they want to see?” They probably want to
    see if stuff fits in their space. They probably want to see if it
    matches with the existing furniture that they have. I would start to
    look for opportunities there. So let’s say I’m following the journey
    of this hypothetical user, that wants to get a new couch that matches
    with the other furniture in their living room. I would start to look
    at the tools that are available both inside and outside of AR. I
    consider AR to be both the computer vision input to AR, as well as
    the output. I would start to look for, “are there ways that we can
    assess the style of someone’s room from a computer vision
    perspective, and then provide them with a better list of stuff that
    will probably already look good?”

    Alan: Wow. That’s like

    next-level retail.

    Austin: Exactly. And I think

    that all frameworks that are out there — as well as just the CV
    frameworks that are publicly available — are super powerful, and
    we’re at a stage right now where magic is becoming accessible to
    every developer. One thing I always tell people — because I give a
    lot of workshops and I try to get people involved in AR — it seems
    really intimidating and hard. It seems like magic. Like you’re going
    to need a team of super geniuses to do this incredibly difficult
    task. But in fact, the APIs are so easy now, that you could get a
    development team up-and-running in like a week or two, and be doing
    stuff like analyzing the room for style, even if it’s just getting
    the color palette. Stuff like that.

    Alan: Wow. So, the barriers to

    entry for businesses are plummeting. But if you’re a company starting
    out — this is a good question to ask, I think — let’s say you’re
    Bob’s furniture store, and you’ve got an app already, and it allows
    you to search the catalog and select the things… but AR is not
    built-in. What would their first steps be? “Do I use VR? Do I use
    AR?” It’s a bit confusing. What do you think is the first steps for
    these businesses to start using? Because bringing together a
    development team in a week is one thing, but most of these companies
    have no experience in developing anything. Would you recommend they
    find a developer to work with? Or work with another company? What are
    your thoughts on that?

    Austin: A couple of things to

    pick apart there. The first is, how do they decide AR, VR, or both?
    If the real world context matters to your users, or it needs to be a
    thing that happens on the go, then AR is probably going to be a
    stronger, more compelling fit. Just because you can’t incidentally
    use VR; you need to be planning to do it as a consumer, because you
    don’t carry the headsets with you. But if you need to have a really
    detailed, highly-immersive experience — that is, you’re just
    focusing on the virtual content — a good example would be if you’re
    training someone how to service a new type of valve. That might be
    better suited in VR, because it’s hands-free, and they can have this
    really focused experience there.

    Moving forward, “how am I empowered

    to do this AR stuff, or VR?” What I would say is, figure out a
    general idea of where you’d like to go, and then speak to someone
    like a developer. But less to see if they can be your developer, and
    more to figure out the difficulty level of what you’re proposing.
    There are certain problems in computer vision that sound like, “of
    course we can do that,” but they’re actually quite difficult; and
    there are other problems that sound ridiculously complex, but that
    actually might be fairly simple.

    Alan: Can you give examples?

    Austin: Uh,

    yeah. Here’s a great one: if I told you that I could, like,
    perfectly apply new makeup to your face — when you moved, it was
    projected on you, it was exactly like you — that might sound really
    hard, but that’s actually super easy. With all the new face APIs that
    we have, you don’t need to spin up a big effort to make that happen.

    But on the flip side, I can then tell

    you; if you want to detect when someone is, let’s say, confused? Or
    smiling? Or something like that? It’s possible, but you’re gonna have
    to spend a lot more time developing that. And it’s just because, in
    that particular circumstance, the way that the face moves when you’re
    experiencing emotions is not as apparent. Same with eye tracking;
    it’s very difficult to track someone’s gaze through a phone right
    now.

    There’s these nuances in development

    that mean you probably want to talk to someone to see how hard what
    you’re proposing is. That’s a good first step. But let’s say you get
    their feedback: there’s two things you can do. If you’re feeling
    really scrappy, you can do what I did, which is learn some
    development and get it started. Unity is a tool that we use a ton,
    and it’s cross-platform. So if you’re going to be doing a mostly
    AR-dedicated app, I would look into that. And there’s tons of amazing
    tutorials and content.

    But let’s say you’re not looking to get

    that scrappy. There are some — I can’t remember now off the top of
    my head — but there are companies that will do AR/VR work for you.
    However, one thing that I think a lot of people don’t realize is that
    a lot of the core skillsets that you would want for making an AR or
    VR product are — from a development perspective — their game
    development stuff, because the people in that field understand how to
    work with 3D things, how to work in 3D space. And they understand the
    pipelines that are needed to get a 3D model into the world, and
    they’ll be able to ramp up super quickly, even if they aren’t already
    AR/VR people. If you can find an interested game developer — or a
    few of them — they can probably get AR or VR stuff started very,
    very quickly, because it’s just downloading one of these frameworks
    like ARCore or ARKit.

    Alan: You get to see a lot of

    different use cases come across — I would assume — in your
    research, and also just working at Google. I’m sure you see a lot of
    different things at conferences and stuff. What are some of the best
    use cases you’ve seen of XR for business?

    Austin: I think some of the most

    promising use cases right now in VR — because when we say XR, we’re
    talking about AR, VR, and the weird, hazy space in between with
    pass-through cameras and Magic Leap and all that — where I am seeing
    there being a lot of traction, and things that I feel are really
    compelling from a business perspective, a lot of them are in the B2B
    space. And when I say this, it’s for headset-based experiences. This
    could be for something like a Magic Leap or an Oculus or something
    like that. And these B2B use cases… the thing is that, consumers
    are fickle. And these headsets have an inherent cost; this barrier to
    entry. These teams are trying to push the prices low, but inevitably,
    if it’s difficult for me to get a consumer to even download my app?
    It is much, much more difficult for me to convince them to buy a
    whole device.

    However, from a business perspective,

    it’s really just like a return on investment thing. If I can provide
    an application, and let’s say it is to train mechanics on how to
    repair this thing; if I don’t have to fly them out on-site to the
    actual equipment, or if I can demonstrate that they are trained
    faster, or they retain information better, which makes them make
    fewer mistakes it’s really easy for the business to say, “yeah,
    we’re just going to buy 10 headsets and do this.”

    Alan: Yeah, we’ve seen that

    quite a bit.

    Austin: I think training is

    powerful in VR, in these circumstances. And it’s interesting, because
    at first I thought, “oh, wouldn’t it be awesome if I was a car
    mechanic, and I could just automatically see where the part I need to
    fix is?” But the thing is that, it’s mostly consumers that need
    that. The people who are already experts in their field; they already
    know what to do.

    Alan: They don’t need to know

    where the oil goes. [laughs]

    Austin: Exactly. But one thing

    that I have seen that is really interesting are asymmetric,
    phone-a-friend type experiences, so that you can have — an example
    could be, let’s say we’re in a blue collar situation, where someone
    is out repairing something in the field, right? And they may not be
    the expert, but they’re the one who’s out there, and something’s
    going wrong. Being able to overlay information for those types of
    people; I can see what they see, and I’m pointing things out to them.
    That can be really powerful, to basically make every employee that
    that person has, an expert. And for some of those, you can even get
    away with using Google Glass and stuff like that.

    Alan: So, remote assistance and

    see-what-I-see. It’s like having an expert leaning over your
    shoulder.

    Austin: Another area where I see

    a lot of B2B traction is in architecture and construction planning.
    This is — again — with the headsets that there are some AR
    experiences, but a lot of architecture firms are bringing clients
    through their proposals in virtual reality now. Just because it’s
    such a selling point, and – frankly — a competitive advantage for
    your architecture firm, to be able to actually let people step foot
    in their building before a single brick is laid.

    Alan: Yeah, I’ve seen a number

    of different use cases. One of them in particular was a hospital,
    where they rendered it out in 3D, and put everybody in the VR
    headset. And then the nurses, for example, got to sit at the nurse’s
    station. As they were sitting there looking around, they realized
    that there was a wall that was in the way of communications, and
    blocked the flow of everything. And this is before they’ve even dug
    ground. So, they were able to catch this line-of-sight problem really
    early.

    Austin: At one of my previous

    companies that I worked at, we were exploring a lot of… it wasn’t
    architecture, but it was in the sort of B2B use cases for spatial
    computing. If they had built that wall, and then they had to tear it
    down and fix it, or something difficult happened that caused someone
    to get more injured, or not get help? The cost is immediately
    justified. That’s why it’s so powerful; because, as a consumer,
    you’re not going to save money by getting a VR headset. You might be
    able to do certain things better. You might have these awesome
    experiences, and those might have value to you. But in the right
    circumstance — in a B2B perspective — you can actually say, “you’re
    wasting money if you don’t engage in this VR content,” because
    procedural non-adherence or mistakes get made. And that’s really easy
    to justify, if you’re doing that B2B stuff. It’s got a lot of legs in
    the B2B space.

    Alan: We’ve kind of come full

    circle. We’ve talked about using AR on the mobile phone devices to
    showcase virtual try-ons, and then we take it up a notch to the
    virtual reality glasses, or augmented reality headsets, where you can
    train people in not necessarily difficult-to-train scenarios, but
    allow them to have much more practice than normal because they can
    repeat it, they don’t have to travel to do it.

    Let’s say, for example, your training

    takes six months to get somebody a gas fitter, for example; six
    months to get them up-and-running. You can probably shorten that time
    dramatically, reduce the number of errors, and then — using that
    see-what-I-see or remote assistance feature — virtually eliminate
    all of their potential errors. If there is an unknown, they can call
    for backup. Are you seeing this being rolled out at scale, or is this
    still in proof-of-concepts? Or, what are you seeing?

    Austin: So, I can’t get into too

    many specifics on everything that I’m seeing. But I will say that
    there are many proof-of-concepts out there, and there are things that
    are being rolled out and tested at scale, for these high-fidelity,
    headset-based experiences. The interesting thing is when we talk
    about at scale — and this is why I peg these heads-up basic
    experiences as probably a better fit for B2B, and the AR phone
    experiences as B2C — it’s because the scale that we’re talking about
    when we’re talking about the headsets, is such that, maybe you have a
    business model where you say, “get 10 headsets, and you can use our
    software to train your employees to do this thing.” And then
    essentially, as a business owner, you’re not working on the headsets,
    and once the software gets to a certain point, what you’re really
    doing is almost like you’re providing a service. You’re providing
    this training service through your software — almost sassy. The
    scale there is like, “I have probably fewer clients, but they’re
    whales. I’m doing bigger deals.” There’s big money to be made with
    each client you win. So, doing something like that at scale, you
    might only have 10 major clients, and that’s a big deal.

    Alan: No kidding.

    Austin: In the B2C stuff with

    AR, the reason why this is powerful is because everyone already has a
    phone. Now, you can actually make a product that’s targeted at pretty
    much everyone in America right now, right? Because everyone has a
    smartphone. And not just America. There are some places where people
    have lower access to phones, but for now, we’ll just say everyone.

    Alan: Well, I’ve read a stat

    yesterday that — as of last week — there was 400 million Google,
    ARCore-enabled devices out there. That’s a pretty good scale; 400
    million devices. Then Apple announced their ARKit devices; there’s
    about 600 million. So we’re at about a billion smartphones that have
    AR-enabled superpowers built into them.

    Austin: Exactly. And that’s a

    big deal. If you can convince one tenth of those people to spend a
    dollar each, then you’re doing pretty good. Or even a hundredth of
    that many people, to spend any money at all. The challenge in the
    consumer space is that consumers are fickle. B2B; you can make this
    really reasoned and logical approach for return on investment to your
    clients. “You’re gonna save money. This is good for both of us.”
    And you land fewer of those clients with more money. If you’re an SMB
    person, considering developing something for consumers, there’s still
    — like you’re saying — a billion devices. That’s all a lot of
    opportunity.

    But people are more fickle, and your

    go-to-market strategies, and your general approach to your product
    are going to need to change to try to lure them in to use your app.
    One of the things that I find is, in AR, little moments of… how do
    I put this… flashiness – like, cool entrance animation, or
    something beautiful or interesting happening — that can be really
    powerful, and a huge draw. If you’re going into the consumer market,
    understand that you might be spending some of your development time
    working on things that are not your core value proposition, but which
    help users feel like they’re having a high-quality, interesting
    experience. Whereas on the B2B side, you don’t need to focus on that
    quite as much, because you have a captive audience.

    Alan: There’s some of these VR

    communication platforms, where you can go in and you can work
    together, and they’re not fancy. They’re not flashy. The environments
    are decent, but they’re just there to get the job done. And they do a
    great job at that. When we’ve built B2C apps and stuff, we realize
    that consumers are fickle. They expect everything to look like it has
    a million-dollar budget, because that’s what they’re seeing on a
    daily basis on Facebook and LinkedIn. And Microsoft’s done a really
    great job at sandbagging everybody by showing what the Hololens can
    do and stuff, when it’s not even real. I mean, they just released a
    video of Minecraft. Very, very well-edited. And then, when clients
    come and say, “we want that,” you’re like, “well, that’s great.
    That doesn’t exist. It’s all CG. I can make you a beautiful video
    like that.” There’s a bit of a challenge between consumers’
    expectations and what is possible to be delivered.

    Austin: Yeah. I just spoke at

    Google IO. The session that I hosted — with Diane Wong — was on
    using augmented reality as a feature, and I think this is one of the
    ways that you can circumvent that. I think for a lot of businesses,
    the best way for them to leverage augmented reality is to not have an
    AR app, but just have a feature in your app that’s powered by AR, and
    consider augmented reality to just be another thing in your tech
    stack. Just like you can have a back-end database that can supply
    real-time information online. You also have AR that lets you have a
    pass-through camera experience and understand the world, and put
    stuff back into it.

    Alan: I love that. I was

    speaking to one client and they wanted us to build a virtual try-on
    for their product, but they wanted a separate app. I said, “well,
    are you going to be selling through your app?” They said, “no,
    we’re selling through our website.” But then I said, “well, if
    you’re selling through your website, then you’re going to hit a
    button and ask people to: download an app; open the app; try on the
    object; and then you have to go back to the website to buy it. You
    just lost everybody, right across the board.”

    Austin: Yeah.

    Alan: Being able to be cognizant

    of the consumer journey… if somebody is on your website, don’t take
    them into another app to do something else. I love your idea of using
    AR as a feature within a bigger app as part of the experience, not
    the experience. Unless you’re Pokémon Go, in which case, go
    nuts. This is the key takeaway. If you’re building something for a
    consumer, make sure that you’re not just building AR for the sake of
    AR; but, it serves a purpose within the greater potential of your
    app.

    Austin: I think that’s so

    important. Actually, in our process — and my process — you always
    just periodically need to be able to have a good answer to, “why is
    this better to do in AR than not in AR?” And if you are unable to
    answer that question? To be totally frank, the state of things is
    that XR is emerging tech. The APIs are constantly shifting. There is
    a smaller workforce that are experts in working on it. If you’re a
    business that wants to do well, that’s somewhat risky, right? There
    needs to be a payoff for that risk. If you can’t answer the question,
    “why is this better in AR,” or, “why is this better in VR?”
    Then there’s probably more traditional avenues that are going to be
    easier for you, that are going to provide just as much value. But I
    think what we’ve been talking about this whole time is, where are
    those areas that are actually more compelling in a significant way to
    your business with AR or VR than without it? Those are really the
    sweet spots to keep a lookout for.

    Alan: Got it; “where is it

    better?” And we talked about some of them, where AR does make
    sense; anything where you need to see something in context to the
    real world. One of the ones I saw a long time ago was a paint one,
    and it allows you to point your phone on the wall, pick any color you
    want, and the wall would automatically change to that color. It was
    kind of cool, but the other thing is, I saw another version of that
    where you just took a photo, and it did that. It wasn’t real-time. Do
    you really need it to be real-time? That’s another great question; do
    these things have to be real-time? Or can they be from a photo and
    redone? Because making it work real-time is a lot more difficult than
    post-production, or doing an app that just finds a wall and sticks it
    on.

    Austin: You’re totally right. It

    can often be hard to make a clear, reasoned assessment of why
    real-time is better than not real-time, because it’s this feeling of,
    “it’s really there, and you can really see it!” And there’s these
    little things with how you move through space. But I actually
    consider augmented reality to be both the in and the out. And I think
    that those asynchronous operations, I would still consider to be AR.

    I think one of the key things that I

    have been coming to understand as I’ve been working more deeply in AR
    is that you can have your camera understanding the world and
    projecting stuff back out into it, but you can also have a successful
    AR experience with either side, right? I can know stuff — like my
    product catalog if I’m IKEA — and then all I have to do is just put
    that in the world and it’s really cool. I can also just understand
    stuff from my user’s perspective, and then have the output not be in
    AR.

    Let’s say we use that IKEA example

    again, where I look around my room and it figures out my style. I
    could take you into an experience where now, you’re just browsing a
    list of all the things that are in your style, and there’s no AR
    output. There’s this real flexibility there. I think when people
    think about AR products, they’re like, “oh, what would I put
    into the world?” But just look at Google Lens, for example.
    Google Lens lets you get x-ray vision on stuff, so I can look at a
    product and I’ll get similar products. The results often are not in
    3D; they’re in 2D. That really starts to unlock what’s possible with
    AR, when you think about it in that way.

    Alan: Interesting, that’s a

    really great way of looking at it. So, we’re coming near the end of
    this podcast. What problem in the world do you want to see solved
    using XR technologies?

    Austin: That’s a good

    question… the most powerful things that technology does is, it
    makes us high-information people. We know stuff. The average person
    knows more now than ever before. You’re a Google away from knowing
    anything on any topic… except for in circumstances where I need to
    know information about the world around me. Like, I want to look at
    someone’s shirt, and know how much that shirt costs. I have to do a
    lot of steps to figure that out. And as we see the form factor of
    spatial computing evolve, it would be really great if we got to a
    place where we could have incidental XR experiences. And by that I
    mean, I don’t have to take out my phone and go into an experience,
    and I don’t have to go back to my house and put on my VR headset. If
    I always have something… and if you look at where the money is
    flowing, I do think that there’s evidence to support that we are
    getting there.

    Alan: Yep. Magic Leap just

    raised another $280-million.

    Austin: Yeah, exactly. Here’s

    why it’s important to get in now. You want to understand the space.
    People say “fail fast!” Get all of your fast failing done now,
    and then when we are able to have these incidental experiences where
    I could just be walking down the street and I don’t have to
    intentionally go in; I can have these passive things.

    Alan: I actually came up with a

    crazy idea for a UX for exactly that. When you’re wearing glasses, we
    keep seeing this hyper-reality version of the world where marketers
    have hijacked our senses, and there’s flashy stuff everywhere. But I
    came up with an idea of — this, again comes down to the user
    experience — if I’m walking down the street, I don’t want all these
    things flashing at me, and lines that are like, just, craziness
    around me. I want to know that, “okay, that building has some sort
    of AR content on it.” It’s maybe highlighted or whatever. Very
    subtle, but I choose when I want to see the highlighted spatial
    computing information. But it should be just a natural part of my UX;
    of my day. I’m like, “oh, I if I look at that sign, there’s an
    extra piece of 3D content in that sign, if I allow it.”

    Austin: I love that. And I think

    a great proxy is, if you look at your phone, your operating system
    doesn’t give you ads. You can go into experiences like apps and stuff
    that might have ads, but you’re not going to make a phone call and
    have someone trying to sell you something. And I think that these
    spatial computing platforms are going to be similar, because no one
    really wants that. Like, no one does.

    Alan: [laughs] Yep.

    Austin: And I think that

    advertisers are aware of this as well. You don’t want to enter into a
    space of negativity for the people you’re advertising to. It’s in
    their best interest to be delicate in how they handle spatial
    computing advertisements, anyways. I don’t think we’ll end up in that
    hyper-reality future. I really hope we don’t. [chuckles]

    Alan: I really hope so, too. Oh

    my god, can you imagine? There’s a video on YouTube called Hyper
    Reality. It’s seven minutes of what happens if marketers are allowed
    to take over our senses. It’s kind of awful.

    I think these shows like Black Mirror

    have really opened up people’s eyes to the possible negative
    consequences of this technology. And everybody that I’ve had on the
    show — and almost everybody that I talked to in this industry — is
    aware of the negative consequences. But we’re all pushing towards a
    more inclusive future.

    Austin: Absolutely. And people

    who are specialists in AR and VR are fewer in number, but that is
    also changing. There’s so many courses that are popping up that it’s
    not oversaturated at all. But even if you compare today from two
    years ago, there’s never been a better time to find people with AR
    and VR expertise to help execute on your vision. The number of people
    who are competent in it is growing every day, with these online
    learning programs, or otherwise.

    Alan: You know what? I keep

    saying this; I’m shouting it from the rooftops. The timing is now.
    We’re about to announce something at AWE this year, which I think
    will actually contribute to the success of this, but I can’t talk to
    it on this podcast–

    Austin: Fair enough.

    Alan: –I

    don’t know when this one is going to air! Is there anything else you
    want to leave the listeners with before we close off?

    Austin: It bears repeating one

    more time; in the early days of AR, everyone came out with AR apps.
    Even the app that I made — Paint Space, which won some awards —
    it’s nothing but AR. In general, we’ve seen that be a tricky
    proposition. But from a business perspective, think about AR as a
    technology that can allow your users to do things better, or can
    empower them to do something they were not able to do before. So
    don’t think about it as this separate thing. Think about it as
    another way to engage with your users on your applications, and with
    your business.

    36 min
  • Designing the User Experience for WebAR, with Google's Interaction Developer Austin McCasland
    How an end user experiences a new
    mode of technology is almost as important -- if not more -- than how
    the tech works on the inside. Because, let's face it; it could be an
    amazing bit of code, but if the human mind does not find it simple or
    easy to use, it's a non-starter. Austin McCasland is a UX prototyper
    working with Google, and he and Alan chat about the finer points of
    UX design for AR.
    Alan: Today's guest is Austin
    McCasland, a designer and developer in immersive computing. Austin
    has written multiple courses across VR and AR design and development.
    He's designed and developed Paint Space AR, named by Apple as one of
    the best apps of 2017 and currently works full time at Google as an
    AR Interaction designer. Austin employs a user-first synthesis of
    technical understanding and UX design to create effective and useful
    products in emerging technology. I'm really, really excited to
    welcome Austin to the show. Austin, welcome to the XR for Business
    Podcast.
    Austin: Thank you for having me,
    excited to be here.
    Alan: If you're looking to learn
    more about Austin, you can visit his website at austastic.com. Let's
    dive right in; you work at Google as a UX designer -- user
    experience, for those who don't know -- walk us through what you do
    on a daily basis.
    Austin: I'm a UX designer, and I
    do a lot of prototyping. Basically what I do is, I think about
    software problems from a user-first perspective. Thinking about what
    are things that people are doing that they need solved -- or what are
    things that they're doing that they could do better with technology,
    whether it's a standard app, or with AR/VR – and then I basically
    go through a process of iteration to come up with features for
    products. And specifically, in my current role, I'm on a prototyping
    team that looks at how we can leverage spatial computing across all
    these different types of use cases. So, I see a range of use cases,
    and explore what's possible from a product perspective.
    Alan: So, what are some of the
    use cases that you're seeing in your day-to-day business that you're
    prone to working on? Or what you're really attracted to? What are
    some of the best use cases so far?
    Austin: The things that I look
    out for when there's a use case that could be particularly
    well-suited -- and I'll speak mostly to AR here, although I can also
    speak to VR -- but in AR, when there is a problem that's already
    spatial in nature, it's usually a pretty good indicator. You'll see
    this with try-on apps where -- and I use this term more broadly to
    also describe apps like IKEA and stuff -- let's say there's this
    problem of, “I need to see what something looks like in my space.”
    AR is really well-suited to help with those types of problems. Or,
    “what does something look like on me, in physical space?” Now,
    those aren't the only things. But any time that your users are doing
    something out in the real world, or they need information about how
    something would be in the real world, that's usually a pretty strong
    signal that you can lean into AR to provide some value there.
    Alan: Let's give an example. You
    mentioned IKEA, and what they're doing with their Place app. What
    they basically allow you to do is take your phone, put a digital
    piece of furniture in the exact size [you want], so you can see what
    your couch is going to look like. But this kind of transcends all
    types of visualizations. For example, I saw one where Coke did a
    visualizer to show retailers what the new Coke machine would look
    like in their stores. And it's not just sending them a photo and
    marking it up. It's real-time, and that's -- I think -- a really
    powerful tool for sales.
    Austin: Yeah, especially because
    one of the key differences between what would be a standard
    documentation -- like in tha
    0 min
  • The Down-Low on What You Need to Know (To Be Competitive in XR), with SuperData’s Carter Rogers

    If you need well-researched info on

    the trends and changing tides of emerging tech to feel confident
    dipping your toes into the XR sea, SuperData’s Carter Rogers has you
    covered. As their chief analyst, Rogers specializes in turning data
    into actionable intelligence, tailored to the needs of businesses who
    are just starting to explore the space. In today’s episode, he chats
    with Alan about what all the data can mean.

    Alan: Today’s guest is Carter

    Rogers, and he’s the principal analyst at SuperData, a Nielsen
    company. He regularly advises Fortune 500 brands and Triple-A game
    publishers on how to succeed in the interactive media space. As
    SuperData’s lead XR analyst, Carter is responsible for the company’s
    reports on immersive technology. A sought-after authority on
    interactive media industry, Carter has presented at every event
    around the world, including Casual Connect, the LA Games Conference,
    and the VR/AR Global Summit. His commentary has also appeared in USA
    Today, Variety, The Guardian, and Verge. He creates and oversees
    interactive reports and segments, including virtual and augmented
    reality, eSports, mobile games, and he’s really amazing at pulling
    together all the data that businesses are using to make real business
    decisions, on where to invest their capital. You can learn more about
    this data at superdataresearch.com.

    I want to welcome Carter to the show.

    Welcome!

    Carter: Thank you very much for

    having me, Alan.

    Alan: My absolute pleasure. I’m

    really thrilled and excited to have you on the show today. I know
    personally, we’ve used your reports for our company several times,
    and every time it’s been pragmatic, not pie-in-the-sky numbers;
    really validated, well-thought-out reports on where the industry is,
    where it’s going, who the players are. I really want to start
    digging into this, and learn more about SuperData. For the people
    listening, I want them to walk away knowing more about the industry
    and know where they can find more information. So, what is SuperData?

    Carter: Well, yeah, glad you

    read all our reports; that’s what we like to hear! To give everyone a
    overhead view, we’re a market research firm. We’re part of Nielsen as
    of late 2018, and the original focus of the company was on digital
    games — video games, primarily. But we since branched out to cover
    other areas, like eSports, game streaming, and of course,
    augmented/virtual/mixed reality. Started covering those areas when
    they were very tied to games, especially when the original Oculus
    Rift was launched. But as the XR space has broadened to include more
    enterprise-focused applications, we have also adjusted our research
    accordingly, and really cover the enterprise space as well; providing
    things like market estimates and things like that, to a wide variety
    of companies in VR and AR.

    Alan: Ok, so, you provide market

    estimates. Where is this market going? What’s one stat that’s going
    to blow everybody’s mind?

    Carter: I’d say the main thing

    is augmented and mixed reality are growing fast, but mainly in the
    enterprise space. I’d say that through at least 2022, the enterprise
    will account for the majority of augmented and mixed reality headsets
    like Hololens and Magic Leap. Enterprise will account for the
    majority of those through at least 2022. It’s really going to be the
    enterprise that drives this very hot space in the XR industry.

    Alan: You think it’s following a

    similar trend to mobile cell phones? BlackBerry started off kind of
    as an enterprise tool, as well. Is that what we’re seeing here? The
    technology’s maybe not quite ready for the mainstream adoption, but
    it has very real, very useful business use cases that can’t be
    ignored?

    Carter: I’d say that’s certainly

    the case in the AR/MR headset space. We’re obviously seeing more
    consumer success — somewhat — in VR. But the two issues for
    consumers right now are fashion and price — not to mention, the
    availability of compelling content. You have headsets selling for
    $3,000+, and they aren’t the sort of thing that most people are going
    to be willing to be seen out in public wearing, so–

    Alan: Although Magic Leap did

    publish some photos of a model wearing the Magic Leap glasses the
    other day. So they’re… [chuckles]

    Carter: [also

    laughs] Companies are definitely trying to make it more
    palatable to consumers. But I’d say, in the near term, it’s
    definitely going to be a few years before they’re truly
    consumer-ready. If you look at someone like Apple, they aren’t about
    to put their logo on something like the current developer-focused
    headsets out there. I think that — coupled with price — those
    aren’t really concerns for the enterprise if the utility is there.
    But we definitely do need to see smaller form factors; things like
    that, and much more accessible pricing, before it really takes off in
    the consumer space. So it is the enterprise that’s definitely driving
    this stuff for the near future — for the augmented/mixed reality
    side of the equation, at least.

    Alan: You’ve

    got kind of a divide; entertainment and gaming on one side, and then
    you’ve got enterprise applications across medical, healthcare, real
    estate, retail — across the whole enterprise. What split is it
    between media and entertainment vs. enterprise applications right
    now, as far as total market spend? Is that a number that you guys–?

    Carter: So, we don’t really

    track — from an absolute revenue perspective — the enterprise side
    of the market, just because so much of that is internal spending, or
    spending that’s not disclosed. It’s very difficult to get an accurate
    picture of the question of, “how much enterprise businesses are
    spending on their outsourced XR work?” So that’s not really a
    number we provide. We provide estimates on hardware numbers for
    consumer and enterprise; hardware shipments, hardware revenue for VR
    devices, AR/MR devices. And we also look at consumer software numbers
    as a whole. But we don’t do a one-size-fits-all sort of enterprise
    software number.

    Alan: So, what are the headsets

    that are poised to take over? Oculus Go came out with this $199
    headset – this really inexpensive headset — and they sold millions
    of these units. But do you think that, with the introduction of these
    new six-degrees-of-freedom [6DoF] headsets, we kind of have some
    agency for moving around? Do you think these are going to impact the
    sales numbers dramatically? Or it’s going to take some more time?

    Carter: Well, I think the Oculus

    Quest in particular is very important for VR gaming, because it’s the
    first VR device that is suited for gaming that’s not tied to a
    console or a PC. I think the three-degrees-of-freedom [3Dof] sets —
    like the Go and the Samsung Gear VR before it — are very well-suited
    for video viewing, that sort of thing. But the Quest really has the
    potential to drive interest in VR gaming, on the enterprise side of
    things. I think we’ve seen the Go has seen some early success, with
    companies like Walmart announcing that they were buying a lot of them
    to train employees for things like customer service. And I can
    definitely see some of these standalone headsets fitting in a middle
    ground between PC and things like the Oculus Go, where — let’s say
    — a training solution might be more immersive than just watching a
    passive video. Which still has its uses! But I’ve seen some talk of
    doing things like airline flight crews being able to train flight
    attendants, training through those sorts of headsets. They’re much
    more distributable than the standard Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, which
    has to be hooked up to a PC. Those sorts of headsets will definitely
    have their use cases going forward, but I think there is a lot of
    potential in the sort of middle ground, where it’s not necessarily
    training, or using highly-precise training applications; training
    things like customer service or things like that, that require a bit
    more interactivity than we’ve seen with what’s possible with the Go
    or the Gear VR.

    Alan: As you were talking, I was

    picturing the ways… I actually published a link today on LinkedIn,
    about how to select a VR headset for your enterprise, and things like
    comfort, weight, computer power. But the interesting thing about it
    — and the idea that I had is — in certain circumstances, 3DoF is
    being able to just look around. And being immersed in a 360 video,
    for example, makes a wonderful training tool. I think we’re sometimes
    overcomplicating things by creating all these really in-depth,
    computer graphics-heavy things, when you can just simply put a 360
    camera on. I know the company STRIVR has done a really good job at
    bringing 360 videos with annotations in the video, that give people
    that ability to do repetition, or just training on things that maybe
    aren’t mission critical.

    But Walmart, for example, wants to

    train people for Black Friday, to prepare them for the onslaught of
    craziness. Well, you can’t really train people for a situation that
    only occurs once a year. So something like that, I think is really
    interesting and intriguing. But as the headsets start to mature, and
    we see this ecosystem develop. I think you’re going to have these
    PC-based headsets that designers are going to be able to use, and the
    people creating [software]. And then you’re gonna have these
    standalone headsets, where they can view what those other people have
    created. They can be in a shared space, collaborating. But somebody
    who’s just viewing and commenting doesn’t need to have all the
    computing power of somebody designing and creating. So, I think there
    will be use cases for all of them across the enterprise.

    Carter: I will say, also:

    anything involving lots of specialized peripherals, — firefighting
    training, or something — is, for now, still probably best-suited for
    PC, just because there’s more flexibility in what you can do. And
    you’ve got things like the VIVE Tracker items that you canaf fix to a
    wide variety of things. Stand Alone space hasn’t quite reached that
    level, even with the 6DoF stuff. I think the more specialized the
    training is, the better fit it is for PC. Certainly for the time
    being, at least.

    Alan: Absolutely. And actually,

    one of the companies we just invested in, they do virtual reality
    training for heavy machinery. One of them is an excavator. I’ve never
    been in an excavator, nevermind driving one. I got in VR, I operated
    the machine, I drove it around, I killed some virtual people.

    Carter: [chuckles] Better to do

    that in training than afterwards.

    Alan: Right. I’m actually gonna

    do a little study with my two children, and put them in and let them
    spend an hour training on this excavator. And then — my brother owns
    a construction company — we’re gonna take them up there. We’re gonna
    put them in the excavator, and see if they can drive it.

    Carter: All right. Wishing you

    all, uh, good luck.

    Alan: Hopefully they don’t break

    it.

    Carter: Under strict

    supervision, I’m sure.

    Alan: But I think it’s gonna be

    a case where they actually can do it. The actions that you do — the
    experience of doing something virtually in a virtual environment —
    is going to be pretty accurate to the real world. A friend of mine,
    James, he went in a virtual reality crane training simulator, spent
    an hour in it. Then they took him outside, put him on a real crane.
    He was able to drive it. Which is crazy.

    Carter: That is. One thing we’ve

    seen is knowledge retention is so effective in
    virtual/augmented/mixed reality training. I think that’s why — when
    going forward — one area we might see a lot of activity is skilled
    manufacturing, training; things like that. Especially if a lot of
    employees in those areas are starting to age out of the workforce;
    companies need to onboard employees really efficiently. I think
    that’s a definite future use case — and current use case, really —
    for virtual/augmented/mixed reality; training. And that’s going to
    get increasingly important as current employees exit the workforce.
    They need to get new people in.

    Alan: You spoke about the data

    that SuperData provides. Can you get a little bit more granular on
    what businesses are using this data? How are they using this data,
    and what data you’re providing? What seems to be the things that
    these businesses and companies are looking to get out of buying these
    reports that you create?

    Carter: As

    for what our customers already can say — the game space — we worked
    with a variety of Triple-A game publishers. Outside of that, we’ve
    worked with companies like PayPal, Microsoft, Accenture. We have a
    number of reports available. As for the ones businesses can actually
    use, we’re putting out a report very soon on the consumer markets; an
    updated look at what games people are interested in, what software
    consumers are interested in, what consumer headsets are selling best.
    And we have a webinar for that in May — I think the exact date’s on
    our website.

    We also put out reports on things like

    augmented reality marketing. We did a white paper with — in
    association with Friends with Holograms — we put out for free on our
    website recently. We put out reports like that. Often, we do consumer
    surveys — surveys of enterprise developers, users, that sort of
    thing — to gain a better idea of what people are interested in the
    market. But, as for the data we provide, we often provide things like
    estimates of headset shipments — both to consumer and enterprise
    customers — consumer spending on things like games and
    location-based entertainment. Some of the stuff, we already talked
    about earlier, but also investments; where are venture capitalists
    investing? That’s important for a lot of startups in the space who
    want to know if they’re going into this — into a subset of the VR/AR
    space — are investors going to be potentially interested? So we
    project investment outlook in certain segments of the industry. On
    the enterprise side of things, we provide numbers like, how many
    firms are utilizing VR, AR, and MR per industry? How many in the
    travel industry are using? How many in the automotive? To sort of
    give people an idea of where there is potential market interest. And
    we similarly showcase how many firms are supplying those services, so
    that companies on the demand side can really gauge if there might be
    companies already serving that space, or if they should build
    something internally.

    Alan: So where’s the biggest

    underserved need?

    Carter: I would say right now

    we’re seeing — well, I can say one area where we see, maybe, an
    oversaturation is education. Just because there’s a lot of companies
    serving the space, and there’s a lot of educational institutions
    using it, but there often is not enough money in the space to support
    that many companies.

    I think manufacturing is still growing

    fast, and people are still sort of wrapping their heads around how to
    use it. Manufacturing in particular, there is a challenge there; a
    lot of companies are utilizing it, but they’re being very secretive
    about how they’re utilizing it. They’re not willing to talk about
    stats of how effective it was. And the problem with this is, it means
    some companies that aren’t utilizing VR/AR/MR training can’t really
    go and see use cases of how other companies have succeeded. We found
    that, for companies that are not using XR, only about a third plan to
    invest in XR in the future. This is among people that are already
    somewhat familiar with the industry. But for companies that are
    already using XR, about two thirds plan to invest more in it. And
    what this shows is, once companies have tried out XR, they’re very
    interested in continuing to invest more and more in the space. But it
    really takes a lot to get them over that initial reluctance to use
    it, and I think part of the problem we’re seeing is the companies
    that are using it and having success are not necessarily willing to
    show that success.

    Alan: And rightfully so. Let’s

    be honest: it is a competitive advantage for now, and there’s very
    few times in a company’s lifecycle when you have such a massive
    competitive advantage using a technology. That is readily available.

    Carter: That’s definitely true.

    I think it’s often on the side of the supplier to figure out a way to
    disclose that companies have had success, either through not naming
    brand names… things like that. But it is definitely a challenge in
    the short term, because companies are finding success, but it’s not
    public – or, in sort of “trade secret” space.

    Alan: Let’s just hammer this

    home for a second: companies that are not using XR, about a third of
    them are thinking about investing in the technology. The ones who are
    using it, two thirds of them are investing more in it. If that gives
    you any indication that this is successful – that this is moving
    the needle forward — and if you do not start working with this
    technologies, you guys are going to get left behind. It’s frustrating
    to have companies say, you know, “we tried VR. We tried to
    making a Google Cardboard thing,” and they made a little
    marketing kitschy thing. And it didn’t go anywhere, because they
    didn’t think of it as, “how can this software or solution solve a
    problem?” They just said, “oh, I saw VR at a trade show; let’s
    make something cool”.

    Carter: I’d actually also like

    to cite one other stat; we calculated earlier this year that, by the
    end of 2019, XR training will save about $13.5-billion. And what I
    mean by this stat is that, if every company utilizing XR training
    decided, instead, to forego that XR training, or make an equivalent
    training program without XR, it would cost $13.5-billion more,
    through either the creation of the training, or in terms of lost
    productivity. So we’ve really seen some tangible results, especially
    for companies that have used it. But it is very hard to get over that
    initial question. I think one of the big ways our data is useful is
    for companies where people need to convince internal stakeholders,
    “this is something we ought to try.” I think that’s one of the
    big use cases for enterprise-focused XR market research, for the time
    being.

    Alan: Interesting. We talk quite

    at length about training; it always comes up in every conversation I
    do. Training and education: it’s a no-brainer. It just works. But
    what about some other things, like augmented reality for retail or
    sales? One of the stats here is that social media AR apps are the
    most popular among mobile AR users. A sizable percentage of users; 41
    percent of users report using AR features in online shopping apps.

    Carter: Marketing is the big use

    case for mobile AR, for the enterprise right now. That’s because VR
    doesn’t really… we saw a lot of VR experiences that were
    marketing-focused in the early lifetime of that technology. We
    haven’t seen so many in the past year or two, because a lot of that
    activity and investment has moved over in the AR space. And that’s
    because it’s very cool and innovative, but it also has scale.
    MobileAR currently has over a billion users. And it’s interesting;
    the growth there isn’t really steady growth, year-over-year. You
    instead see a few giant apps — Pokémon Go, Snapchat, and Instagram
    with their AR features, most recently TikTok — these sort of giant
    apps will drive massive explosions in user numbers in the market, and
    that’s created scale in AR for things like Snapchat, recently having
    a Game of Thrones augmented reality ad. We’ve got furniture stores or
    any sort of eCommerce shop — Amazon, Wayfair — offering the ability
    to view items, to see how they’ll look in your home. So I think
    marketing/retail is really the big use case for AR. That doesn’t
    really show up in our consumer spending numbers outside of gaming,
    because it’s been very advertising-driven, and we track direct
    consumer spending in our model currently. But it’s absolutely worth
    noting that that is the big use case for the enterprise for MobileAR
    right now.

    Alan: I think you’re actually

    bang-on. I wrote an article about the first killer app for augmented
    reality, and it was virtual try-ons; being able to try on glasses,
    hats, necklaces, and see what the furniture is going to look like in
    your house. Really, virtual try-ons is the killer app. It’s easy,
    it’s simple, it doesn’t require a huge amount of capital outlay from
    the eCommerce companies. Brands can go direct-to-consumer now, where
    they maybe went through distributors. It’s opening so many doors for
    consumers to engage with brands in ways they’ve never done before,
    and being able to try on a product before you buy it on yourself –
    real-time — and then hit buy button: sunglasses, makeup.

    I was on a panel last week with

    ModiFace, and ModiFace was so successful, L’Oreal bought them. So,
    “this is so good, we’re just going to buy you. That way, we own
    the tech stacks.” I think virtual try-ons is a big one in
    MobileAR. You said there’s over a billion users now; I’ve read a stat
    that, by the end of this year of 2019, we’ll have over 2-billion
    AR-enabled smartphones in the market.

    Carter: It’s only going to grow

    as people… I mean, smartphone upgrade cycles are getting a bit
    longer, but I think as the stragglers upgrade into the latest
    ARKit/ARCore-capable smartphones are really going to see some
    interesting growth there. And it has really reached mass scale, quite
    a bit faster than VR/MR. For now.

    Alan: Yeah. Fair enough. One of

    the interesting demographic pieces that you put in there is, “the
    largest a AR demographic is women between 18 to 34.”

    Carter: Yeah, these social media

    users are driving interest in this space, for now. Was Pokémon Go
    initially, but that shifted over to social media pretty quickly,
    about a year or two ago. And it’s worth mentioning, with Pokémon Go
    was, there’s lot of debate about whether it’s “real” AR or
    not, but consumers certainly consider it [as such], and I think
    Google search interest in augmented reality — the day Pokémon Go
    launched — hit the highest level up to that point. They definitely
    raised AR awareness, even if the implementation wasn’t at the time
    what we’d consider “true” AR. And I think they’ve closed
    the gap with their latest features, and I’m very interested to see
    how Harry Potter: Wizards Unite — which looks like it has a bit more
    AR implementation in the gameplay itself — how that drives consumer
    interest and awareness in AR, probably in just a few short months.

    Alan: One of the features that

    they added is object occlusion, meaning they use the camera to
    understand the world around you. So, imagine if you’re playing
    Pokémon Go, and you’re chasing a Pokémon; instead of it just kind
    of floating out in midair, it’s actually walking on the sidewalk, and
    it can run behind a tree or a person, and you have to go around the
    tree to find it. He’s literally hiding behind the tree! I think this
    is only the very, very beginning of spatial computing, as it relates
    to the real world around us; being able to add 3D data — in this
    case, Pokémon — in the world, in context, is going to be
    revolutionary. And we’ve only just begun to start to think about
    what’s possible when this starts to be a thing.

    Carter: Yeah, absolutely. As the

    sort of base-level smartphone gets more powerful, people will be able
    to design games around those sorts of features like object occlusion.
    Because right now with Pokémon Go, it’s often more efficient to turn
    off the AR entirely. And that’s what a lot of hardcore users do. But
    I think, as we see game designers think about how to incorporate
    things like that into the game design itself, and not just make it an
    optional, it’s-nice-to-have-it [thing], that’s where we’ll see some
    really interesting innovations in the games themselves, and
    incentivizing people to leave the AR functionality on when they’re
    playing successor games.

    Alan: I made a prediction a

    couple years ago saying one of the companies — Google or Apple or
    something — would create a game that would take us into our
    buildings; the internal world. So, office buildings, your house, or
    wherever. And you would be chasing Pokémon, or whatever it was,
    you’d be chasing something. But it would be you alone in a space, and
    the thing would be bouncing up and down. And what it would really be
    doing is capturing a point cloud map, or a virtual version of the
    space inside. Because Google has a fantastic collection of
    three-dimensional data around the world — Google Earth — but they
    have no data around the inside. Imagine sending millions of people
    around the world into buildings, using the game to collect point
    cloud data of these spaces.

    Carter: Yeah, it’s interesting.

    It’s sort of like the next evolution of reCAPTCHA, where that was
    used to transcribe books. Now you’re using AR to get more data about
    the world. I can definitely see that being possible in the long term.

    Alan: Yeah. Companies like

    6D.ai, these guys developed software that allows you to point cloud
    map the world using single camera from your phone. And my guess is,
    within the next six months, I would guess that they’re going to get
    sold to Apple, or Google, or Amazon, or somebody. Somebody is gonna
    buy them, because what they built is too valuable right now.

    There’s one stat here that I’m reading

    on SuperData: by 2020, the virtual reality market will be worth eight
    times what it was in 2016.

    Carter: I’m not sure if that’s a

    current stat… I can see what we have currently, because we do
    regularly revise our outlook.

    Alan: What did we see last year,

    as far as the whole market? Like, if you included XR —
    virtual/augmented/mixed reality — where’s the market right now, as
    far as size? 2018 and then beyond?

    Carter: Let me pull up what we

    have in 2018 really quickly.

    Alan: These data points really

    do inform investment. They inform businesses on their go-to-market
    strategies. It’s vital that you guys keep these up to date, as well.
    I know there was some crazy stats out there. Citi Financial came out
    with things saying eCommerce is going to be a trillion-dollar market
    by 2030. It may very well be, but man, that… they’ve since taken
    that report offline.

    Carter: I can say that, for now,

    we have 2018. Our current estimate of that revenue was $6.6-billion,
    and we’re seeing $33.9-billion by 2022; so yeah, several times
    multiplier.

    Alan: How much was in 2022?

    Carter: $33.9-billion is what

    we’re estimating.

    Alan: Is that for VR or AR or

    both?

    Carter: That’s VR, AR and MR

    combined.

    Alan: Got it.

    Carter: See, I cansay that

    includes things like consumer software. So, direct consumer spending;
    everything from spending on VR arcade tickets, to software downloads,
    to consumer hardware, straight-up purchases of hardware, and also
    enterprise hardware.

    So, sales of VR and AR headsets to the

    enterprise… I will say, some big drivers that we projected the
    future are AR and MR headsets, which last year, that market was under
    a billion. So that is contingent on some big growth we see in the
    AR/MR headset space. In the AR space, a lot of that was Pokémon Go,
    which grossed somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion dollars, if
    not more last year. It’s interesting, the MobileAR market this year
    is a lot of Pokémon Go last year. This year, it’s undoubtedly going
    to be Pokémon Go plus Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. So, Niantic is
    probably going to own the majority of the AR market through at least
    the end of 2019. We’ll see if any true competitor stacking emerge,
    maybe in 2020. There was a Tencent game released pretty recently
    that’s doing some impressive numbers in China, that has very similar
    concepts. It’s been described as “Pokémon Go meets CryptoKitties.”
    You’re collecting monsters, and I believe it’s block chain-based. So
    there may be some competition in that sort of space. I’m not sure if
    that game has — it’s location-based — but I’m not sure if it’s
    actually augmented reality-based. It is “Let’s Hunt Monsters.”
    It’s been described as Pokémon Go meets CryptoKitties, and since
    Pokémon Go’s not available in China, it certainly has that market to
    itself for the time being.

    Alan: So… the market is

    growing, and it’s growing dramatically, and it’s growing fast. One of
    the stats that you’re not collecting right now is, how much
    enterprises are actually spending on software development, that sort
    of thing. That could easily double these numbers, just strictly based
    on what enterprises are gonna be spending to develop internal things
    that we’ll never even know about.

    Carter: Yeah, we are tracking

    some estimates on how much enterprises are investing in the space,
    both as a combination of spending on their own internal R&D, and
    spending on external outsource software to help. That’s not something
    we’re disclosing publicly right now, but it is in the
    multi-billion-dollar range certainly, and we expect that’ll shift
    gradually from VR over to AR and MR in the next three to five years,
    certainly.

    Alan: The big “question mark”

    outlier is a company that has a fruit as a logo. What are your
    thoughts on that?

    Carter: Yeah. The thing to note

    about Apple is that aesthetics are important to them. It will be a
    few years before we see any sort of AR/MR consumer-facing solution
    from them, I think. Obviously, they see it as a big opportunity; Tim
    Cook has said as much. They’ve also said a lot of this ARKit stuff is
    a sort of stepping stone, potentially to those glasses. Any developer
    that is a big expert in an iOS-based AR app certainly has a leg up
    when a potential shift to glasses happens. I do think, though, the
    technology is a few years from being ready for where there is a form
    factor, and an ease of use that Apple would be comfortable sticking
    their logo on and selling it. We’re not going to be wearing them end
    of this year, that’s for sure.

    I think there’ll be a few major

    consumer electronics companies that might release consumer-facing AR
    glasses before Apple. It’s sort of like, they weren’t the first
    smartwatch, but they’re certainly the best-known smartwatch now. And
    I think we might see a similar situation for AR and MR glasses, but
    they will not be the first to hit the market, certainly, in the
    consumer space.

    Alan: But I think when they do,

    things are going to get crazy.

    Carter: They’re definitely not a

    company to count out, that’s for sure. Interestingly, in the consumer
    space, I should mention the Lenovo Jedi Challenges device, where you
    physically stick your smartphone in, and it creates the fake hologram
    that you see in front of you. That’s currently probably the
    best-selling consumer AR device. That’s definitely a bit of a toy.
    Definitely sort of the Google Cardboard of AR.

    Alan: How many units have they

    sold of that thing?

    Carter: I don’t think they’ve

    disclosed. We have some estimates, but yeah, we’re not disclosing
    that currently.

    Alan: Yeah, because I think

    that’s a company called Zimmerse that makes that.

    Carter: Yeah, and it shows that

    killer IP drives consumer interest. If that wasn’t branded with “Star
    Wars,” it certainly would be less popular, I think. We’ve also seen
    that in the VR space for PS VR. One of the big drivers, their sales
    with Skyrim VR — which is a well-known Elder Scrolls [title], being
    a well-known gaming brand — but that game wasn’t necessarily built
    with VR in mind. But it just shows when there is a household name, it
    drives a lot of interest. To get consumers interested in AR and MR,
    it’s going to take those sorts of household names, and Pokémon Go is
    obviously another great example.

    Alan: Yeah. Legend of Zelda is

    coming out in VR.

    Carter: Yeah, I think they

    just… yeah, with their Labo VR — which is definitely bit of a
    novelty — but I think that was a smart move to incorporate that,
    because there is a lot of people who are curious about how Zelda is
    going to look in VR. That are willing to try that, [more] than they
    would if it were just the mini games that were included with it in
    the box. I think those sorts of brands — even if they’re not perfect
    examples of AR/MR experiences — will be key to driving consumer
    interest. Whether that’s Star Wars, Marvel, you name it; I think any
    sort of A-tier entertainment brand will be particularly important in
    growing the space.

    Alan: Even location-based

    entertainment companies like The Void, they’re leveraging IP like the
    Ghostbusters, and Wreck-It Ralph, and Star Wars. I think you have the
    quote of the day: “killer IP drives consumer interest,” and
    I think that should resonate with listeners. If you’re building
    something in this technology, if you can partner with a killer IP
    brand, you’re going to increase your success. Like, the guys at
    Pokémon, Niantic; they — I think there were five or six years
    building different AR apps that nobody cared about.

    Carter: Yeah. Ingress plays very

    similarly to Pokémon Go, but–

    Alan: Nobody’s ever heard of it!

    Carter: Yeah. Once they stuck

    the Pokémon brand on there and made some tweaks, that’s when it
    really took off. I think what we also saw at the early days of VR is,
    there were a lot of pretty good games, but there wasn’t necessarily
    that one standout, “you have to play this.” I think Beat
    Saber has been sort of the breakout hit in many ways. I think that’ll
    be interesting to see how Oculus and the next wave of standalone
    devices leverage well-known IP, because I think that’s very important
    for getting mainstream, everyday consumers — who aren’t necessarily
    reading various tech blogs and stuff — interested.

    Alan: You mentioned Beat Saber,

    and it was just on The Late Show with…

    Carter: I think Brie Larson was

    there?

    Alan: Yeah, that was the other

    day. We’re getting this mainstream adoption; mainstream media
    coverage! Beat Saber is just an amazing game, but it is now its own
    IP. There’s a really great opportunity for developers to not only
    develop with the existing IP, but create new titles that are made for
    VR. You’ve seen a few of them that have taken off, Beat Saber being
    one of them.

    Carter: And I think the Star

    Wars experience that Oculus has announced they’re working on; it will
    be definitely be interesting to see what the business model is, what
    the length of the experience is, because I think we have seen the
    non-game experiences haven’t really taken off… outside of a few
    notable exceptions, like Tilt Brush, things like that. A lot of the
    interest in the consumer space has sort of shifted from experiences,
    to people wanting full-fledged games. I think it’ll be very
    interesting to see if that’s more of a interactive movie, more of a
    game. Definitely interested in seeing more about that, because
    obviously – consumer-wise — there aren’t many things as big a Star
    Wars, so that’ll be potentially a very big interest driver going
    forward.

    Alan: Yeah, I think there’s also

    going to be… one of the very first VR things that we were showing
    as demo was The Avengers, and then, it was just a 3DOF kind of scene
    where you flew through the Avengers Tower — and it was mind-blowing,
    flying through the scene, where things are going around you in slow
    motion all around you. I must have shown that demo to 700 people, and
    everybody’s reaction was the same. Just like, “wow, this is
    amazing.” And that was three and a half, four years ago; I can
    only imagine how much that cost to make then. Oh, my God.

    Carter: Yeah, I think it’s

    interesting. There’s still obviously a lot of consumer interest —
    maybe not as much hype as there was a few years ago around consumer
    VR — but I was at Pax East, and you go and there’s still massive,
    massive lines around the Oculus booth to try out the Quests. So there
    is definite consumer interest. It’s just about getting the
    convenience right, getting the content right. I think the standalone
    does have the potential to be a sort of restart moment for the
    consumer side of the industry. If the brands are there, at least.

    Alan: With these standalones —

    these powerful standalones, the VIVE Focus Plus and the Oculus Quest
    — being able to use it for training; $400-$700 headset, which is
    really cheap if you consider how much it costs to have a trainer
    train individual people, fly them around and one-on-one. You can have
    now, one-to-unlimited; you make one great experience, and now you can
    train everybody, and they all get the equal best training. I think
    enterprise is going to adopt these much faster than consumer. And in
    that case, what’s going to happen is people are gonna use it at work,
    and then they’ll bring it home maybe. It’ll be that cross pollination
    between work life and home life.

    Carter: I think that does have a

    lot of potential; people try it out for the first time and then
    think, “you can play games on this?” Yeah.

    Alan: [laughs] Where they just

    download a game and go, “Oh, this is awesome!”

    Well, I want to thank you so much,

    Carter, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us on
    the show today. Is there anything that you want to say to people
    listening who are considering creating an XR strategy in their
    business? What would advice would you give them?

    Carter: I would say, in the long

    term, AR and MR probably has the biggest potential for use; but I
    think VR definitely will count for the majority of enterprise
    interest in the very short term. So, I think looking at ways the
    companies that need training applications can be served is very
    important in the short term. We have seen sort of a contraction in
    investor dollars, and it gets very important to show a concrete
    business use case and revenue potential in the very short term for
    some of the VR projects. And really, to demonstrate to investors that
    there is potential for that business is, I think, one important area.

    39 min
  • The Down-Low on What You Need to Know (To Be Competitive in XR), with SuperData's Carter Rogers
    If you need well-researched info on
    the trends and changing tides of emerging tech to feel confident
    dipping your toes into the XR sea, SuperData's Carter Rogers has you
    covered. As their chief analyst, Rogers specializes in turning data
    into actionable intelligence, tailored to the needs of businesses who
    are just starting to explore the space. In today's episode, he chats
    with Alan about what all the data can mean.
    Alan: Today's guest is Carter
    Rogers, and he's the principal analyst at SuperData, a Nielsen
    company. He regularly advises Fortune 500 brands and Triple-A game
    publishers on how to succeed in the interactive media space. As
    SuperData's lead XR analyst, Carter is responsible for the company's
    reports on immersive technology. A sought-after authority on
    interactive media industry, Carter has presented at every event
    around the world, including Casual Connect, the LA Games Conference,
    and the VR/AR Global Summit. His commentary has also appeared in USA
    Today, Variety, The Guardian, and Verge. He creates and oversees
    interactive reports and segments, including virtual and augmented
    reality, eSports, mobile games, and he's really amazing at pulling
    together all the data that businesses are using to make real business
    decisions, on where to invest their capital. You can learn more about
    this data at superdataresearch.com.
    I want to welcome Carter to the show.
    Welcome!
    Carter: Thank you very much for
    having me, Alan.
    Alan: My absolute pleasure. I'm
    really thrilled and excited to have you on the show today. I know
    personally, we've used your reports for our company several times,
    and every time it's been pragmatic, not pie-in-the-sky numbers;
    really validated, well-thought-out reports on where the industry is,
    where it's going, who the players are. I really want to start
    digging into this, and learn more about SuperData. For the people
    listening, I want them to walk away knowing more about the industry
    and know where they can find more information. So, what is SuperData?
    Carter: Well, yeah, glad you
    read all our reports; that's what we like to hear! To give everyone a
    overhead view, we're a market research firm. We're part of Nielsen as
    of late 2018, and the original focus of the company was on digital
    games -- video games, primarily. But we since branched out to cover
    other areas, like eSports, game streaming, and of course,
    augmented/virtual/mixed reality. Started covering those areas when
    they were very tied to games, especially when the original Oculus
    Rift was launched. But as the XR space has broadened to include more
    enterprise-focused applications, we have also adjusted our research
    accordingly, and really cover the enterprise space as well; providing
    things like market estimates and things like that, to a wide variety
    of companies in VR and AR.
    Alan: Ok, so, you provide market
    estimates. Where is this market going? What's one stat that's going
    to blow everybody's mind?
    Carter: I'd say the main thing
    is augmented and mixed reality are growing fast, but mainly in the
    enterprise space. I'd say that through at least 2022, the enterprise
    will account for the majority of augmented and mixed reality headsets
    like Hololens and Magic Leap. Enterprise will account for the
    majority of those through at least 2022. It's really going to be the
    enterprise that drives this very hot space in the XR industry.
    Alan: You think it's following a
    similar trend to mobile cell phones? BlackBerry started off kind of
    as an enterprise tool, as well. Is that what we're seeing here? The
    technology's maybe not quite ready for the mainstream adoption, but
    it has very real, very useful business use cases that can't be
    ignored?
    Carter: I'd say that's certainly
    the case in the AR/MR headset space. We're
    0 min
  • Zambezi Co-Founder Jenna Seiden Partners Up with Jimmy Fallon and Captain Marvel to Showcase Hit VR Game

    What better publicity could a VR

    company ask for, than to have an Avenger demo your product in prime
    time, on one of the most-watched talk shows in America? That’s
    exactly the kind of lucky break Beat Saber had, and today’s guest –
    Zambezi Partners co-founder, and long-time occupant of the XR space,
    Jenna Seiden – was instrumental in making that happen. She regales
    Alan with the tale at the top of this new episode of the XR for
    Business Podcast.

    Alan: Today’s guest is Jenna

    Seiden and she’s an entertainment and emerging technology consultant
    in VR, AR artificial intelligence, and IOT, and she’s a social impact
    investor. Jenna has a proven executive leadership in
    entrepreneurship, with demonstrated startup and high growth business
    experience. She has broad experience in traditional film, TV, digital
    media, augmented reality, virtual reality and video games. She has an
    innate ability to lead diverse groups, including creative, financial,
    and engineering teams. She has outstanding content and business
    development, success on a global stage, and a sophisticated board of
    directors, to production-level experience. She’s worked for some
    amazing companies; Venture Advisor for LUMO Labs Beat Saber,
    Springboard VR, Felix & Paul Studios, Baobab Studios, Exit
    Reality VR. She’s the former head of content acquisition and
    partnerships for VIVE Port at HTC VIVE, and she used to be the V.P.
    of content development and strategic partnerships for the worldwide
    business development for Microsoft Studios. It’s my absolute pleasure
    to welcome Jenna to the show. Welcome, Jenna.

    Jenna: Thank you so much for

    having me.

    Alan: And one thing I failed to

    mention; people can find you at Zambezi Partners.com. Welcome to the
    show. You have done so many amazing things in your career; where do
    we begin?

    Jenna: I’m exhausted, hearing

    you give me such an amazing intro there. I’m just this person who
    likes to help people tell their stories. And I started off in sports,
    then went into traditional Hollywood, and somehow found myself being
    an explorer in all these new tech platforms and went, “wait a
    minute, these great storytellers have all these other places to tell
    different branching storylines. They can do this on YouTube, and they
    can do this on an XBox. They can do this now in VR.” And I sit
    right in the middle of the tech side, and the storytelling narrative
    side, and the business side. So I’m thrilled that I now have a
    narrative, because once upon a time I had employers go, “you
    make no sense, you move around too much.” And I go, “well,
    I’m not my grandfather that worked at IBM for 50 years.” This is
    a world where people do bounce around every two-to-four years, and we
    get to try things. And I love that I had such great experiences with
    some of these amazing consumer products companies. They were all
    challenging — sometimes were great, sometimes were not so great. And
    now, it’s the first time I’ve been on my own. But I’ve never been
    happier.

    Alan: So, Zambezi Partners is a

    small consulting firm, but it seems like you’re consulting for some
    really big brands. I mean, let’s just take Beat Saber. Beat Saber was
    just on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Here’s a VR/AR game that
    is now in the forefront of mainstream media. How did that happen?

    Jenna: I’m thrilled how that

    happened. I will caveat it with, I was on Jimmy Fallon’s team of
    agents back in the day. I worked on a mobile game with him. I used to
    work at NBC. But none of that was initiated when this opportunity
    came up, which is what I love so much. It was a nice thing to throw
    in there, when people who didn’t know me were like, “who are
    you?” But from the beginning, the Beat Saber team has always
    believed that their product is for the mainstream, and that’s what’s
    so great about it. And there was outreach directly from The Tonight
    Show, from some of the producers there who knew about it. Obviously,
    Jimmy is a gamer, and he’s been using VR to play Pictionary-like
    games and other fun things on his show. And there are times where —
    obviously — there are paid segments, and then there are times where
    Jimmy — and I know him personally to do this — just generally likes
    something. So, long story short, they did the outreach. Our head of
    marketing, Misha, and I spearheaded making sure we delivered to them.
    We worked with some other tech partners on our side. LIV, for
    example, to help them do the mixed reality. We played around whether
    or not we can do some custom songs for them and whatnot, and it was
    hard because we only have two developers. So our resources are very
    limited. But we were patient. They kept trying to find the right
    talent, and make sure the tech worked. They were really amazing in
    followthrough. And it all came to be that we got an Avenger, and she
    hit it out of the park. So we were very thrilled. And then three days
    later, I met at a Dave & Busters, and people are looking at our
    test stand-up arcade unit that plays Beat Saber. And I’m hearing
    people in the crowd go, “hey, you gotta see this; I saw this on
    Fallon last night,” and I was… I couldn’t have been more
    pleased. It was pretty awesome. And that machine at Dave &
    Busters in Denver, Colorado, was back-to-back booked, and families
    were playing.

    Alan: Yay!

    Jenna: It wasn’t anything like

    the families were like, “oh, not sure they should play this…”
    [It was] “oh, I want to do it now!” And people kept coming
    back. And it was so awesome.

    Alan: It’s so fantastic to see

    this just becoming part of our daily paradigms. VR has been accused
    of being isolating and stuff like this, but I don’t think —
    especially when you have the mixed reality part, where people can see
    what you’re doing in it. I think that’s really amazing. You mentioned
    LIV.

    Jenna: Mm-hmm.

    Alan: I had the opportunity to

    hang out with Cix, the founder of LIV… what, a few times? Great guy
    and amazing at taking a green screen and turning it into something
    magical on camera, giving people the ability to be in a video game,
    be part of it.

    Jenna: Yeah, absolutely. When I

    was at HTC, yes, my job was a quote/unquote, “sit behind a desk”
    kind of thing. My favorite thing to do was work with all the other
    hardworking folks in our Seattle office and New York office, who were
    running around doing demos at conferences and events. And I would
    love to go to those, because seeing someone — once you were able to
    show them, whether it was on a screen, in the green screen, or put
    them in the headset — and they walk out, you can’t do it any other
    justice than letting people see what it is. So mixed reality is
    crucial, I think, for people to understand what it can be; not only
    in hitting music blocks flying at you, but also in training, and in
    all these other enterprise examples and educations. It’s very
    approachable. And once people start to not be scared, and there’s
    less friction in putting a headset on — with tetherless coming, with
    Quest, and all these other things — it’s really important that VR is
    not only mainstream for games, but also for everything you do in your
    life. Everything. So I mean, until that happens, when people start to
    see more content and headsets in schools and it’s just everyday that
    you’re going into your job to design a car or fix a heating unit,
    you’re putting on an area VR headset. That’s happening and it’s
    coming. So it’s fantastic.

    Alan: My last interview earlier

    today was with Jonathan Moss, the head of learning for Sprint. And
    they’re using AR — mobile-phone-based AR — to create new education
    modules, and they’re seeing millions of dollars in savings already.

    Jenna: Amazing.

    Alan: Millions of dollars in

    direct transferable… because I asked him about his KPI. “How
    are you measuring your KPIs?”

    Jenna: Mm-hmm!

    Alan: They said they’re

    measuring it in four ways; through sales, customer experience,
    turnover of new stuff, and then operating expenses. And when you look
    at it from that standpoint, they literally have shown a direct
    correlation to millions in sales and millions in savings, in travel
    and stuff. I asked him how much it cost. And it was under $100,000.

    Jenna: Just as in enterprise or

    in entertainment; keep it simple. I am always saying — and I learned
    this really well at Microsoft, and worked at XBox — that we were
    developing the Kinect camera. The folks who created it had so many
    things in their bag of tricks that you could do with just the Kinect
    camera. And I’d say, “hey,” — I’m raising my hand here —
    “the audience that you need to adopt this right now? They’re not
    leaning forward so much as they’re falling off their chairs. They’re
    leaning forward a little bit [too much].” Just self edit. The
    simplest thing… Beat Saber, the simplest mechanic. You don’t have
    to overwhelm people with all these things. You can still have them,
    and I think you should build the product roadmap that way. But I
    agree, that it’s the simplest thing, and you don’t have to spend
    millions of dollars on the narrative piece — on the experience — to
    be able to communicate what you want the tasks to be, or the feeling
    you want to evoke. So yeah, I love hearing that. And I think in
    enterprise, those are amazing KPIs, to be able to judge the
    effectiveness of that. It’s a little different, I think, on the
    entertainment side. But on the enterprise side, I’ve seen it time and
    time again with many, many organizations.

    Alan: We actually built AR

    platform, so that people could make their own AR, and we included 3D
    models and animations and all the stuff. And 99 percent of the people
    used it just adding a video to an image.

    Jenna: Yeah, yep. I’m not

    surprised.

    Alan: If we had known that, we

    would have saved ourselves a year of work.

    Jenna: But it’s hard if you

    don’t know what they wanted. I work with Springboard as well, you
    mentioned that. And they are an amazing team based in Oklahoma, and
    have a lot of people who work remotely. And when I started working
    with them, they were very big into, “well, let’s ask the
    operators, because they are a content management and distribution
    platform for our commercial operators. Let’s ask them what they
    want.” And that’s not wrong. But you’re asking people for things
    that they don’t know about. So they’re going to go back to like, “oh,
    I want comedy, I want fashion.” And you’re like, “well, we
    don’t have a lot of that. We shoot a lot of zombies.” It’s not
    that you’re throwing spaghetti out there disingenuously, but you sort
    of — from what you did, and what a lot of people do — is like,
    “let’s give them everything, and then we’ll see what they want
    that they don’t know right now.” And so it’s sort of like, hey,
    you got a little bit of an edge ahead of them. Let’s see if we tell
    them and then hold back. It’s hard.

    Alan: It’s really hard to sell

    everything, to anybody.

    Jenna: It is. It’s like getting

    a Cheesecake Factory menu; it’s too much. And so even though you have
    all these tools in your box there, you have to look and then go,
    okay, who is my audience, and what can they digest? I mean, you’re
    doing that now with arcade operators. And there’s a difference
    between those mom & pop, independent, location-based
    entertainment folks, who are going online and informs, going, “hey,
    what headset should I use? What PC? How do you daisy chain these
    together? Blah, blah, blah?” And then you’ve got the tiers that
    are above that, of the family entertainment centers who are… I say
    more of a legacy business, because they’re used to buying a Pacman
    arcade unit, and they’re like, “what, you mean price per
    minute?” You have to adjust to what you’re selling to all these
    folks who are brand new. And so for you to have all that skill set
    and breadth of experience is great. But then at the same time, it’s
    like, all right, which is the most lucrative for us to scream about?
    It’s tough.

    Alan: [laughs] You know what I’m

    working on next, so… it’s not been announced yet, but that will
    take all of that learning, and all of that experience, and put it to
    good use. I hope.

    Jenna: Good. Good, good, good!

    That’s all we can do. I think everyone in the space is passionate and
    figuring it out. And those who are not are quickly schooled by those
    who are.

    Alan: [laughs]

    Jenna: And then we all sort of

    — it happens — because it’s just… it’s new. Even though VR has
    been around for 40+ years. But now is the time… heh, that’s funny.
    I literally was looking through — I am old, and I still read Time
    Magazine, in the paper version of it all, I don’t read it digitally
    — and there was an ad from the Postal Service with a generic VR
    headset. And I stopped in my tracks and went, “oh my goodness!”
    It’s getting there. Everyone’s still figuring it out. But I sort of
    doubled back to that page, because I see VR headsets in my dreams. So
    when I see it in a Time Magazine, you’re like, “wait a minute,
    is that real?” So, we’re all learning. And whether it’s
    opportunistic to throw it in a nice four-colors paid ad in Time
    Magazine (that has very few circulation at this point, but still),
    it’s pretty cool.

    Alan: I think as an industry, we

    are always looking for the newest, greatest, latest, best thing.
    What’s coming next? What’s coming next? And one of my podcast
    interviews this morning was with Caspar Thykier from Zappar, the AR
    platform. And his mantra is, “do what’s possible now.”
    Focus on what’s possible now, and what’s possible now is, like,
    incredibly amazing to 99 percent of the world. The rest of us in this
    industry are a little jaded. We’re like, “what you mean, it
    doesn’t work on web?” And we’re so concerned about what’s
    happening in the future that we kind of forget that today, we can do
    all of these cool things, and most people are really excited about
    that.

    Jenna: Now, I agree with Caspar.

    We’re looking at VR right now, and people are all excited about 5G.
    They’re like, “oh, we got to go and get the telcos.” And I
    said, “listen, they are currently — if they are doing anything
    — that they support 360 video. We all have a list of what the
    opportunities are in 5G. So many things! But you have to build for
    today’s current technology first and foremost, and then think, how it
    does scale. Think strategically. What features can be leverage?
    Social features? Holograms? Who knows what? But you have to build for
    today’s current technology. If you start trying to jump ahead when no
    one really knows really what that is yet, it’s a problem. So Caspar
    makes total sense.

    Alan: Let’s look at some of the

    business use cases. What are some of the best of this technology that
    you’ve seen so far? That made you go, “wow!”

    Jenna: Business use cases? Let’s

    say… I’m trying to think from outside, because I work mostly with
    people who like to shoot zombies.

    Alan: Fair! One of the zombie

    shooting games, Brookhaven Experiment.

    Jenna: I love that game.

    Alan: The police force in

    Toronto asked us to come in and do a conference. And we’re like,
    “well, we don’t have anything. We have no idea.” It was
    during the times where we would just say yes to everything, and hope
    for the best. And we went to this conference. We brought Brookhaven
    experiment to it, and we put these huge police guys in Brookhaven.
    And one of the guys was shooting zombies, and it was getting really
    intense. And I grabbed his leg. Oh, my God, the guy FREAKED out.

    Jenna: Yeah. Rule number one:

    don’t touch people when they’re in VR. Don’t do that! Come on.

    Alan: True! But I couldn’t

    resist myself.

    Jenna: No, I hear you. I think

    the horror and — I’m saying this in quotes — shooting scenarios. I
    come from video games where there’s a very big difference between
    Call of Duty, that shoots humans, versus Halo, that shoots aliens. I
    like the notion of targeting and shooting, per se. And zombies. Who
    doesn’t want to be prepared for the end of the world and shoot
    zombies? Absolutely. That horror sort of… you don’t know who’s
    coming around the corner. And so, I think that mechanic, in that
    environment, makes a ton of sense.

    Alan: It’s terrifying, to be

    honest with you.

    Jenna: It is terrifying! It is!

    You don’t know who is behind that door. You don’t know which way to
    look. Spatial audio is so important in a game. So important. How do
    you discern and distinguish between a sound to your left? To your
    right? And so, I have heard… I have worked with the military on
    some things, and others that were tactical training. I had someone in
    from one of the branches of the military the other day, who was
    asking about something I am working on, which is a… ironically, it
    was built as a game — a full body, free-roaming, VR, SDK and suit,
    if you will — and we built it to make it into a multiplayer game,
    for a potential of VR eSports, whatever that can and might be. At the
    same time — to your point of using Brookhaven Experiment for real
    police training — we have now taken this SDK and the suit and the
    gloves that we have, and we are working with a couple branches of the
    military, and some European countries are using it for so many
    things, where you definitely need to figure out, how can you train
    25-500 people? And that’s what we’re able to do with this, and do it
    with a VIVE Focus. You can do it with an Oculus Quest. It’s been
    amazing for the military. Security training issues. I’ve seen a lot
    of things in that. And I’ve also seen a lot that we did at HTC and
    their folks — who can speak much more articulately about this — but
    warehouse, and teaching people how to do supply chain, and how do you
    go and find that item, and train someone literally with a forklift.
    It’s so important. Or teach a firefighter a simulation of what it’s
    like to hold a hose, with that pressure, but see what it’s like in
    the fire; what it looks like. All of these organizations are–

    Alan: I think that was probably

    back when you were at HTC. There’s a company called Raymond.

    Jenna: Yep.

    Alan: They do forklift training.

    Jenna: That’s who it was, yep.

    Alan: They won an award that has

    nothing to do with their industry. Was like, “the best
    technology” award. And here’s a forklift training company that
    won best technology. It was mind-blowing.

    Jenna: I love being at CES,

    watching my colleagues — who did spearhead zombies, DeNA, everything
    else at the time — and just seeing the media come in, and people
    come in, and their eyes are already wide when they do do something
    like a Beat Saber or who knows what. But then, when they actually see
    the practical solutions that these headsets and this technology can
    provide? It’s heartwarming, because — like my background that you
    ran through [says] — I’ve worked at the NBA and I sold basketballs
    and jerseys to people, and I worked in television and I showed
    sitcoms to people. VR is great because I can go shoot a zombie, and I
    can hit blocks, and I can explore gnomes and goblins and things. And
    it’s amazing. But for the first time, I really feel that I was able
    to, with this technology, contribute to the school system. There’s
    amazing use cases. I love that the forklift company was something
    that we were able to show at HTC; I believe it was two years ago at
    CES.

    Alan: Yeah, actually, one of my

    very first interviews for this podcast was Alvin [Wang Graylin, China
    President, HTC VIVE].

    Jenna: Oh, yeah? Yeah… love me

    some Alvin. He’s a wonderful voice for all the things that HTC is
    doing. He has no fear in sharing. And it’s really great, though,
    because people don’t hear enough about all the different
    applications.

    Alan: The whole point of this

    podcast is… [I’ve learned that], in meeting with thousands of
    different business people, that none of them care or know anything
    about our industry. They’re like, “what the, VR? Isn’t that a
    game thing” I tried it at the rec room the other day. That was
    cool.” And they have zero understanding that it can be used in
    their business. Zero. I said, “well, we need to get this
    information out there. We’ll make a podcast.” That’s what this
    podcast is, is how do we tell the world about the great work that’s
    being done, that may not be out there in the public sphere. But, what
    is the most important thing that you think that businesses can do to
    start leveraging this technology? If you were to give a business
    advice, what advice would you give a business now?

    Jenna: I’m going to, again, put

    it in context of what I know. I don’t want to speak to anyone else’s
    business, but what I’m seeing… one thing actually does go back to
    what you mentioned with Caspar. It’s something that I was going to
    bring up; build for today’s tech. But you do need to start thinking
    about where things can be going. How does your business or your story
    scale? How do you take your Beat Saber — a single player experience;
    an anomaly in its success, because it is single player, where Arizona
    Sunshine is one of the other top games and obviously multiplayer —
    where do we take it with multiplayer? We need to think about that.
    Think about 5G and Edge Cloud computing, and split rendering,
    supporting people playing all over the world at the same time, and
    who knows what. So you need to think about all the things, and where
    things could go. But you also need to think about the hardware, and
    that it’s supporting front-facing cameras in AR. Think about the
    hardware, and think about how do we — from a transmedia point of
    view — tell that story, and leverage all the different technologies?
    If you think your story or your business warrants that; so, should
    there be an AR component to your VR experience? But if so, brainstorm
    for it now. Build for it — or at least put it in pencil, and you can
    erase it later. Working for today’s tech, but thinking about
    tomorrow’s possibilities is absolutely crucial, because if you’re
    just going to throw 3D on a movie after you’ve already produced it,
    it doesn’t play so well. You can’t layer that in after the fact. You
    have to build with that in mind from the beginning.

    That’s one thing I think; Thinking

    about your distribution channels is the other. A lot of people call
    me and say, “hey, I have this amazing experience. It might be
    about a moment in time that is perfectly communicated in VR; take you
    back to this moment that is so pivotal in our nation’s history, or in
    the world,” or who knows what. And then they go, “yeah…
    can you help us get it funded?” And I’m like, “didn’t you
    announce it already? With a bunch of people and partners?” And
    they’re like, “yeah.” You have to think about the
    distribution channels, because they are fragmented. You’ve got great
    stores with the Oculus Store, and Steam, and VIVE. Then you’ve got
    Out of Home. So what does that mean? Does that mean arcades? Does
    that mean schools? Does that mean universities? What age range?
    Museums? Global? Local? So you have to start thinking about where
    those channels are, and then, what are those business models? Even
    though it’s still the Wild West — and people say that all the time,
    but it is — you do have to think about that before, I think, you
    publicly go, “hey, you’ve got this great press release.”
    And then nothing comes of it because it hurts everybody. When you
    make a big announcement for a VR piece that was acquired at a
    festival, and then you’re like, “oh, it’s great. And here’s the
    money. And then, when/where have you seen it? No, I’m not a big fan
    of press releases. I’m a big fan of a press release after you’ve got
    all the pieces in place. Because people are going to able to poke
    holes in that, and it’s going to hurt a lot of other folks who are
    trying to create great products, and then go, “wait, but I
    thought… I thought this existed, or this existed.” No; do your
    diligence. Think about the distribution channels, and how do you take
    a legacy business and appropriate it, or how do you build something
    new? There are a lot of great channels out there now that could use
    everyone’s help in pushing great content through. But think about
    that before you go out there and pitch something, because then you’re
    going to hurt your investors and other folks and who knows what.

    Alan: Wise advice. On that note,

    if you’re giving advice to maybe startups in the industry who are
    looking to work with these big companies — because I know one of the
    things that you do is look at a product and say, “how does this
    scale? How does this get beyond, especially in a time where there’s
    not a lot of headsets in mass consumer adoption? It’s not like an
    XBox, where there’s one in every second household. A lot of it is
    location-based entertainment and stuff like that — what advice are
    you giving startups that are making either technology like LIV or
    Springboard, or content like Beat Saber?

    Jenna: It’s tough. I’ll jump

    around very briefly. So, the Beat Saber team; extremely talented. A
    lot to say that was there at the right time. And they released on
    Steam early access, even before they even wanted to. There’s a lot of
    pressure, because there was a great mixed reality piece that brought
    them a lot of attention. But it doesn’t mean that you throw something
    up on Steam, and you’ll get feedback, and now you have a great piece
    and you know exactly what to do with it. I don’t believe in that.
    Even though some people will say, “oh, just throw it up on Steam
    and you’ll get enough info to guide you in your product development,
    and you’ll make enough sales to fund your company.” Not
    necessarily true. Because not a lot of marketing there, and if not
    everyone is in a position to work tirelessly without being paid and
    whatnot… I guess the thing is–

    Alan: Wait a second. You mean,

    startups don’t love to work for free forever?

    Jenna: Yeah, I’ve learned that

    from some places. It’s amazing, when some people who have chequebooks
    go, “you know, I think they’re startups. They should be hungry;
    and then, we’ll pay them when they’re really successful.” It’s
    the opposite of logic to me. It’s like… it drives me nuts.
    Creativity and forward progress and innovation come from the
    startups, from those innovators. And that’s not to say that it
    doesn’t come from the big companies of the world, too, but that’s
    where it comes from.

    Alan: And there’s a difference

    between “hungry” and “starving.”

    Jenna: Exactly. I was always

    telling many of the companies I work with — because I’ve always
    worked with content creators, or I represented them — I’m like,
    “they have to eat, or make a gesture. Don’t take it for
    granted.” I have worked with a lot of people who eat just fine,
    and get paid a ton of money, and they don’t work as hard. I don’t
    fight as hard for those guys anymore. I don’t. I know them all. I
    come from Hollywood. I fight for the ones who are the startups and
    stuff. It’s really hard to tell them, “hey, think about
    developing AR, MR, and immersive theater. Do everything, because you
    never know.” But they can’t. They can’t. They don’t have the
    resources. So it’s a tough question to answer, and it’s tough to be
    able to say to them, “just focus on one thing,” when they
    are like you and have a million ideas and want to focus on
    everything.

    Alan: Well, I think the problem

    also is that you’re in an industry… you’re trying to disrupt an
    industry that is constantly and consistently disrupting itself. So
    how do you grow the product? How many startups get wiped out when
    ARKit came along?

    Jenna: Oh, completely,

    completely, 100. Easily. Hardware sales are growing. I am very
    bullish, and I’m not a rainbows and unicorns kind of gal, but I
    genuinely believe that. Let’s talk about what I think is very
    positive. I do think with the pending release of the Oculus Quest, I
    think it’s going to change a lot of things. I think it’s going to
    bring a lot of energy and opportunity back to the community, ’cause
    that friction that most people have, which is like, “oh, god, I
    gotta get a VR-ready computer and that’s X amount of dollars; I’ve
    got to set up these space stations, or Blah blah blah.” I really
    think now that Oculus is going to have a portfolio of products,
    people are going to be able to afford them, be able to find content
    that might be passive or slightly interactive, and then find the
    things that are sick stuff, really interactive. So I’m a big believer
    in that, and I’m a big believer in the opportunity. Again, I’m going
    to stick with the B2C World. The free-roam, full-body kind of
    experiences as well. You’re seeing that in the LBE space, where most
    people are going to experience and go tell their friends about VR.
    But what I would tell these folks is, you have to think about social.

    No matter which thing you’re building

    for — AR, VR or whatnot — you have to build social. I’m working on
    a lot of immersive theatre meets VR/AR. And the biggest challenge
    we’re having is they’re like, “oh, it’s a very intimate
    single-play experience.” That’s adorable, but it doesn’t scale
    and no one’s going to sponsor it because it’s throughput. How do you
    get more people through? It doesn’t benefit you if you only have like
    one person every hour. So think about social. Think about the
    experience of the people around the experience. Same thing for
    enterprise. Right? You have to build for scale, if you have a company
    of 10, to a company of 200. How do you do that?

    Alan: Actually, you mentioned

    something interesting. The ability to engage other people when
    they’re not in headsets is very important. I went to VR Park in Dubai
    and what they’ve done is they’ve… like, I went around the first day
    and I didn’t try anything in VR; I just walked around the place, and
    just walking around was mind blowing. They basically took a VR thing
    that you can buy for your house, but what they had done is they
    created this whole façade where you walk in. I played the John Wick
    game and you’re playing John Wick there. You’re in a big vault. ?

    Jenna: Yeah, you have to do that

    because I mean, if you can throw up beautiful walls that set up your
    periphery for a Vive AR and Oculus, right? You’re setting your
    chaperone system up and people can see the hardware, but that alone
    doesn’t convey the experience. You’re about to go in. So there is
    responsibility, I believe, on the part of operators… or if you’re
    at an event — I don’t mean full blown-out ComicCon multi-million
    dollar setup that a lot of the movie studios do, which are beautiful.
    I did. It worked on the Ready Player One partnership. I’ve been
    involved in a lot of things. And yeah. The action’s happening in the
    headset, but people need to be marketed to, and so they want to feel
    that experience the moment they walk through the door to either buy
    the ticket or go through the queue. So there is a little bit of
    pageantry involved in bringing people in, and VR Park does take
    something that they can now go home and go, “oh, I can do John
    Wick at home.” And they don’t need all the physical build out,
    but they have that. So I do think just like take a little learning
    tip from Hollywood and make it a big activation. If it isn’t an LBE,
    even now in the small indie side, the operators are desperate for
    marketing material, and that’s a lot of a burden on a small any
    developer. Just like I just want to build my game in code and I’m
    really good at that. I don’t know what to make posters or tchotchkes
    and things like that, but there are intermediaries of the
    Springboards of the world, and the Synthesises of the world and
    private label controlled… their parties that can help create those
    mixed reality videos, or help them create templates and posters. So I
    love that you bring that up, because the VR part is an anomaly. It’s
    ginormous. And everything there is very fabulous out in Dubai. But
    here, it doesn’t mean it has to be 100,000 square feet to do that. It
    doesn’t need to be, but still ninety five percent of the… I think
    it’s higher than that… of people walking into an arcade or
    wherever. If you’re going to see a Vive or an Oculus or whatever they
    had said. It will be in an AT&T store. I know they’re also
    selling Magic Leap. That’s a whole other discussion. But wherever
    they’re going to experience it, this person probably hasn’t tried it
    before. So what is it? They’re like, oh, let’s try this other piece
    of tech — no. You have to sort of make a show out of it. Sales; try
    to mix reality videos running on a monitor, are so important too. Or
    thinking about if I’m going into an immersive theater experience like
    Jack, which debuted to Tribeca last year without Baubab was amazing.
    It got such critical response, andis based on Jack and the
    Beanstalk, but it’s a single person experience. So what would you do
    to involve other people? Do we all, like, fight for that magic bean
    and we get chosen? Do we get to vote on how the person participates?
    I’m literally trying to figure that out right now. How do I take Jack
    and make it much more social? Anyone has any ideas? Please hit me up.
    It’s really important to involve other people or give them a reason
    to share it and tell other people about it.

    Alan: I think one of the things

    that’s missing from these movies or location-based experiences is a
    take home or a shareable, or some way to share the experience.

    Jenna: They’re working on it.

    You’re shooting down the roller coaster and they take that horrible
    picture of you screaming, right? And then you can buy it for
    whatever. That’s coming. LIV’s working on things like that. Mixed
    cast coming from blueprints. These are some technologies that are
    being integrated into a lot of the games such that an operator can
    offer up that video experience or even a director’s cut of your
    experience in that world. That’s an immediately-shareable mind show,
    which is one of the most brilliant VR experiences. I think that from
    day one, where people can actually create their own TV shows and be
    the star of their own sort of animated sitcom, if you will. That was
    immediately shareable. I think there’s some amazing things out there
    that people at home are gonna be able to participate in, and then
    there’re going to be some things at the arcades where there is a
    shareable video or there is, you know, with 5G we can all be watching
    360 movie together, and then participate, and then we can all maybe
    manipulate the scenes together or we can all go into a live concert
    together and then copy it quick and push it and share it. So you’re
    totally right. We need more of those tools. But I am actively seeing
    them happen right and left,and expect you to be out with the next one
    soon, too.

    Alan: My kids are very kind of

    spoiled. We have a Magic Leap, we’ve got a Hololens. We’ve got two
    VIVES. We’ve got all… we literally have all of the things.

    Jenna: Yeah. I mean, you have

    to. There’s a whole generation that has no idea what this is. We’ve
    got our generation that is like, oh, I think I know what this is. And
    then the next, which is like, what you mean — who doesn’t grow up
    without a headset?

    Alan: The problem that I see,

    and here’s what makes me a little bit concerned, is that we have all
    of this tech, and my kids don’t gravitate towards it.

    Jenna: Yeah, your kids are like,

    yeah. “What do you mean you didn’t grow up with your own Finch
    controller? I had like six you know.”

    Alan: We used to have two VIVES

    set up in the basement, so you could actually have two people in it.
    But there was never anything where you could both participate
    together, even though I had two VIVEs, set up a 20×15 space. It was
    like, oh, “can we both do tiltbrush, but not together?”

    Jenna: What do you think that

    is? Is it because, you know, this is dad’s business? Or is it because
    — I think it’s because — maybe their friends don’t have it. And if
    other people don’t have it…

    Alan: Let’s pivot this on a very

    high note. What problem in the world do you want to see solved with
    XR Technologies?

    Jenna: Ok, I love this question,

    because I didn’t realize this technology could make my dreams come
    true. I am a huge animal rights animal advocate, and Zambezi Partners
    — my consulting umbrella, if you will — my business partner and I,
    we built it out of our mutual love of saving animals. Specifically,
    big animals, because my partner is a trained safari guide, and my
    family’s been in sort of the animal rescue business for a long time.
    And I looked at my nieces and went, “oh my God, in 5-20 years,
    they won’t see rhinoceri (as I like to call them). They won’t see
    elephants or giraffes. I have to do something about it. A long story
    short, Zambezi NBC Partners was meant for us to help companies and
    our consulting practice practice such that we can bring tech ranging
    from AI, AR, VR, block chain, IOT — bring that to Africa, to
    sub-Saharan Africa specifically, and help preserve these animals by
    capturing them. Not in a bad sense that poachers do; but protecting
    them with drones, protecting them with amazing cameras, capturing
    great footage and making those documentaries, putting people in those
    worlds, supporting them with donations to these environments that we
    can create in a virtual world and tokenizing them. I believe XR and
    all the other emerging tech that compliments it can be used for the
    United Nations and their sustainable development goals, and
    specifically for me, animals in Africa. And so that’s what I am
    personally working on right now; bringing that tech over there, and
    raising a fund to bring alternative income sources to the
    communities, so that they don’t have to poach. But this technology
    can be used for security and all these other issues that are out
    there. But for me personally? You’ve worked in Hollywood for a long
    time, and you work in tech and you’re like, “I really love
    animals because they’re just innocent.” I’m going to work with
    them for a while. I’m excited to be on this mission where I never
    thought I could combine my passion with the technology. And that’s
    what I’d love to use it for. And I’m already well on my way in doing
    that.

    Alan: That was amazing. And I

    wish you all the most success with it. And if there’s anything you
    ever need, I’m here to help as well.

    Jenna: I can’t thank you enough.

    I’m a huge fan and get so much of my information from your very
    genuine sharing of it. And now the different channels and whatnot.
    And so I would love to pick your brain more about it. This is the
    case where I do want to know everything because information is my
    currency. And if I can help bring a little tad of information to a
    client or to a friend or for our social cause, I need it. You are
    amazing in what you’re doing with your podcast and with just sharing
    really relevant information. So thank you in advance.

    38 min
  • Zambezi Co-Founder Jenna Seiden Partners Up with Jimmy Fallon and Captain Marvel to Showcase Hit VR Game
    What better publicity could a VR
    company ask for, than to have an Avenger demo your product in prime
    time, on one of the most-watched talk shows in America? That's
    exactly the kind of lucky break Beat Saber had, and today's guest -
    Zambezi Partners co-founder, and long-time occupant of the XR space,
    Jenna Seiden - was instrumental in making that happen. She regales
    Alan with the tale at the top of this new episode of the XR for
    Business Podcast.
    Alan: Today's guest is Jenna
    Seiden and she's an entertainment and emerging technology consultant
    in VR, AR artificial intelligence, and IOT, and she's a social impact
    investor. Jenna has a proven executive leadership in
    entrepreneurship, with demonstrated startup and high growth business
    experience. She has broad experience in traditional film, TV, digital
    media, augmented reality, virtual reality and video games. She has an
    innate ability to lead diverse groups, including creative, financial,
    and engineering teams. She has outstanding content and business
    development, success on a global stage, and a sophisticated board of
    directors, to production-level experience. She's worked for some
    amazing companies; Venture Advisor for LUMO Labs Beat Saber,
    Springboard VR, Felix & Paul Studios, Baobab Studios, Exit
    Reality VR. She's the former head of content acquisition and
    partnerships for VIVE Port at HTC VIVE, and she used to be the V.P.
    of content development and strategic partnerships for the worldwide
    business development for Microsoft Studios. It's my absolute pleasure
    to welcome Jenna to the show. Welcome, Jenna.
    Jenna: Thank you so much for
    having me.
    Alan: And one thing I failed to
    mention; people can find you at Zambezi Partners.com. Welcome to the
    show. You have done so many amazing things in your career; where do
    we begin?
    Jenna: I'm exhausted, hearing
    you give me such an amazing intro there. I'm just this person who
    likes to help people tell their stories. And I started off in sports,
    then went into traditional Hollywood, and somehow found myself being
    an explorer in all these new tech platforms and went, "wait a
    minute, these great storytellers have all these other places to tell
    different branching storylines. They can do this on YouTube, and they
    can do this on an XBox. They can do this now in VR." And I sit
    right in the middle of the tech side, and the storytelling narrative
    side, and the business side. So I'm thrilled that I now have a
    narrative, because once upon a time I had employers go, "you
    make no sense, you move around too much." And I go, "well,
    I'm not my grandfather that worked at IBM for 50 years." This is
    a world where people do bounce around every two-to-four years, and we
    get to try things. And I love that I had such great experiences with
    some of these amazing consumer products companies. They were all
    challenging -- sometimes were great, sometimes were not so great. And
    now, it's the first time I've been on my own. But I've never been
    happier.
    Alan: So, Zambezi Partners is a
    small consulting firm, but it seems like you're consulting for some
    really big brands. I mean, let's just take Beat Saber. Beat Saber was
    just on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Here's a VR/AR game that
    is now in the forefront of mainstream media. How did that happen?
    Jenna: I'm thrilled how that
    happened. I will caveat it with, I was on Jimmy Fallon's team of
    agents back in the day. I worked on a mobile game with him. I used to
    work at NBC. But none of that was initiated when this opportunity
    came up, which is what I love so much. It was a nice thing to throw
    in there, when people who didn't know me were like, "who are
    you?" But from the beginning, the Beat Saber team has always
    believed that their product is for the mainstream, and that's what's
    so great about it. And there was outreach directly from T
    0 min
  • Meet Bobby, the 3D-Scanned Teddy Bear (XR News 8/15/19)

    If you didn’t think our 3-episode-a-week release schedule was dizzying enough, welcome to the XR for Business Podcast’s new weekly news rundown! The space is evolving so fast, Alan is devoting a few minutes each week just to talk about the newest, most interesting use cases hitting the trades!

    This week, XR is taking us everywhere, from the surface of Mars, to ritzy Audi showrooms, to the svelte form of Bobby, a teddy bear 3D-scanned in real-time by Samsung’s new feature on the Note 10.

    • NASA has used Microsoft’s HoloLens AR system to design its 2020 Mars rover.
    • The U.S. Army bought 100,000 HoloLens headsets to study how AR can help soldiers get ready for battle.
    • Walmart, Amazon’s rival, is testing new store managers with AR exercises.
    • Boeing uses AR to guide workers who build and service planes. So does Airbus.
    • Google has revived its Google Glass project for enterprise applications.
    • RealWear, a startup based in Vancouver, Wash., recently raised $80 million for a head-mounted AR system that’s designed for the workplace.
    • Snap is raising another $1B with a focus on acquiring and building more AR technology into the platform.
    • Samsung showed off their new Note 10 with full 3D capture, rigging and animation capabilities: check out my LinkedIn post.
    • Osso VR partnered with UCLA to do a Surgical Training Study Showing VR Beats Traditional Training by 130%
    • Audi, Unreal Engine & Mackevision introduce a new digital showroom in Web3D, VR and AR
    9 min
  • Meet Bobby, the 3D-Scanned Teddy Bear (XR News 8/15/19)
    If you didn't think our 3-episode-a-week release schedule was dizzying enough, welcome to the XR for Business Podcast's new weekly news rundown! The space is evolving so fast, Alan is devoting a few minutes each week just to talk about the newest, most interesting use cases hitting the trades!
    This week, XR is taking us everywhere, from the surface of Mars, to ritzy Audi showrooms, to the svelte form of Bobby, a teddy bear 3D-scanned in real-time by Samsung's new feature on the Note 10.
    NASA has used Microsoft’s HoloLens AR system to design its 2020 Mars rover.The U.S. Army bought 100,000 HoloLens headsets to study how AR can help soldiers get ready for battle.Walmart, Amazon’s rival, is testing new store managers with AR exercises.Boeing uses AR to guide workers who build and service planes. So does Airbus.Google has revived its Google Glass project for enterprise applications.RealWear, a startup based in Vancouver, Wash., recently raised $80 million for a head-mounted AR system that’s designed for the workplace.Snap is raising another $1B with a focus on acquiring and building more AR technology into the platform.Samsung showed off their new Note 10 with full 3D capture, rigging and animation capabilities: check out my LinkedIn post.Osso VR partnered with UCLA to do a Surgical Training Study Showing VR Beats Traditional Training by 130%Audi, Unreal Engine & Mackevision introduce a new digital showroom in Web3D, VR and AR
    0 min

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