How Virtual and Augmented Reality Can Enhance Remote Work
Radburn said that Dell is not planning to fully return to the office and will be embracing the possibilities of remote work. He acknowledged the challenges with managing and training employees remotely, but he also highlighted the potential of innovative technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality as tools for those tasks.
“Here at Dell, we’ve democratized the systems. Before, you used to have to have a really expensive rig to be able to drive a VR headset. That has now been reduced in price along the years. They’re now much more affordable and accessible, and we’re seeing that really ignite enterprise into how you can use that in your commercial environment,” Radburn said.
“The learning inside of a VR headset has been proven to be more beneficial than an audiovisual presentation,” he continued. “Inside of VR, 75 percent of what you’re seeing and doing actually comes in. It's a great learning medium for transmission of information, and I think that’s really driving the innovations that we’re seeing in the landscape.”
One of the greatest advantages Radburn sees in the use of VR in the workplace is a sense of presence. “As human beings, we love microexpressions, we love face-to-face contact. We’re losing a lot of that inside of conference calls and whatever else, and people are starting to get that fatigue that people talk about. If we can actually enable people to interact in different ways, then we start to get that engagement again as well.”
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Radburn mentioned that Dell is partnering with HTC to use the company’s headsets on a platform called HTC SYNC Manager. “We’re actually using that for conference meetings. You can actually set up a conference room in 3D. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a boring four walls; you can do it with a vista that looks out onto the ocean with bridges and whatever else,” he said. “And if you’ve got things like eye-tracking going on as well, you can actually see where people are looking. You can actually see that people are engaged.”
AR and VR Are Scalable for Many Industry Uses
Radburn spoke with excitement about the scalability and accessibility of AR and VR. “The whole thing about VR is it’s really scalable. You can get headsets now for a couple of hundred dollars, or there are headsets out there that are in five figures, depending on what you want to do. Some headsets actually incorporate VR and AR.”
He explained the difference between the two technologies by saying that VR is everything that’s computer-generated. AR, on the other hand, enhances existing computer imagery by superimposing images on top of it.
“When we’re starting to see people using VR, it’s across every single industry. I mean that completely: There is no vertical out there, whether it be media or entertainment, whether it be construction, whether it be healthcare, whether it be education — all of those different areas are using VR for engagement,” Radburn said.