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At A Glance
The experience of 2020 — in which numerous organizations turned to augmented and mixed reality out of necessity — nally sets the
stage for broader acceptance and growth for these technologies in the future.
Virtual reality and virtual worlds help improve training e orts, increase employees’ empathy, and connect employees to one another in
rich, barely tapped ways.
Augmented And Mixed Reality Fill The Role Of Zoom For Frontline Workers And Their
Collaborators
The COVID-19 pandemic put into stark relief the needs of frontline workers. Various sorts of travel have become challenging (inside
individual countries) or impossible (across national borders). Frontline workers such as eld service technicians have therefore been
inhibited from their usual work of going out into the eld to service and x complex systems; even if third-party eld service techs are able
to travel, their customers' corporate policies have often barred them from entering the site. In many frontline worker scenarios,
collaborations have been strained: For example, with knowledge workers at home, frontline factory workers have had to nd new ways to
interact with them.
Enter augmented reality (AR), which virtually overlays contextual digital information onto a physical-world object, augmenting the
understanding and capabilities of an employee in real time. Augmented reality has seen adoption in the enterprise for years, but COVID-
19 has acted as a catalyst to accelerate the growth of both AR and its cousin, mixed reality (MR), in which that virtual overlay uses a head-
mounted device, holographic objects, anchoring points, and six degrees of physical freedom for movement. AR and MR are overcoming
market inertia in 2020, and we anticipate even faster growth ahead:
Enterprises used AR out of necessity, overcoming reservations. Tools such as PTC’s Vuforia Chalk, an AR application that can be
downloaded for free on any mobile phone or tablet, became a go-to innovation for frontline workers in 2020. By April, over 5,000
companies had downloaded Chalk; by August, that number had grown to over 10,000. “Augmented reality is like Zoom or WebEx for
frontline workers,” the CEO of PTC, Jim Heppelmann, told Forrester.(1) With a worker on site and a remote expert collaborating through
“see what I see” camera views and “writing on reality,” remote assistance solves the collaboration problem — but in situ at a work site.
The inertia that had kept organizations from trying these technologies was quickly overcome by the need to connect under emergency
conditions and keep critical infrastructure running. And this direct experience will drive expansion in those rms in the months and
years ahead.
AR and MR helped organizations adapt to COVID-19. The pandemic created new problems that needed to be solved rapidly. Sheba
Medical Center used Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 mixed-reality interface to remotely train 60 physicians and other clinical personnel on
operating ventilators for COVID-19 patients. A consortium of companies, including Ford, GKN Aerospace, McLaren, Airbus, and
Siemens, used AR and MR tools to aid knowledge transfer on manufacturing ventilators in the UK. RealWear, a maker of ruggedized
head-mounted displays, highlighted examples of eld service organizations shipping the company’s wearable devices to customers so
that expert engineers could circumvent lockdown restrictions and walk their customers through servicing and repair tasks from afar.
These lighthouse experiences proved that, under life-or-death circumstances, AR and MR could be used in frontline medicine and
manufacturing.
Customer-facing scenarios helped frontline salespeople. In other instances, lockdowns and the subsequent need for social
distancing mean that employees can’t always interact with customers in person — even though buying a car is, traditionally, a highly in-
person experience. Lincoln turned to AR to help franchises continue making deals and to help customers who can’t or don’t want to
visit, partnering with SightCall to create a virtual experience center: Customers schedule 30–45-minute appointments with the Lincoln
Experience Center, where an agent uses a stabilized camera to give a virtual tour that customers can watch on a PC, tablet, or
smartphone.(2) This experience center concept will persist into the future and o ers a model for how salespeople and customers can
adapt to remote sales experiences.
Sources:
The Experience Of 2020 Will Initiate Long-
Awaited Growth In Enterprise Augmented,
Mixed, And Virtual Reality
September 3rd, 2020 | J. P. Gownder, Paul Miller, David Johnson, James McQuivey

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(1) Interviews with PTC, April and August 2020.
(2) Interview with SightCall.
Employees And Leaders Turn To Virtual Reality And Virtual Worlds To Mimic Real-World
Human Experiences And Connections
In 2020, the pandemic has disrupted longstanding patterns of work, forcing more employees to work remotely. As a result, business
leaders need new ways to transfer knowledge, train employees, and — perhaps most of all — create connections between teams. Enter
virtual reality (VR), which has only become an enterprise-ready tool in the past few years. Now, the market is maturing beyond hype or
novelty. Hardware o erings — previously a pain point inhibiting enterprise adoption — continue to mature: From Varjo’s human-eye-
resolution high-end VR and “pass-through” camera XR-1 to HTC Vive’s enterprise-focused, mass-deployment-ready Cosmos Play,
enterprises have more options than ever before. Though not able to address all needs yet, enterprise leaders can already con dently test
VR as a still-emerging category of technology innovation that can empower these scenarios:
Train in VR. Walmart’s large-scale deployment of Strivr-based training gave legitimacy to the VR training market. But more complex
training scenarios continue to appear, even as the science of VR training gathers proof of its e cacy. In medicine, a double-blind study
recently proved that VR training could increase procedural completion and accuracy for surgical training. Ninety-four percent of
radiography students in Dublin said they would recommend their VR coursework to other students; a professor said the “tool will be
invaluable to our students during the COVID-19” pandemic, during which remote, online learning is the norm. And students using virtual
worlds have been shown to outperform teacher-led instruction for collaborative problem solving. These examples show that training is
moving from simple scenarios, like retail sales associate onboarding, to providing training for complex, high-value jobs, such as a
physician position.
Empathize via VR. Virtual reality allows people to be placed into lifelike scenarios . . . as someone else. Startup Vantage Point created
VR simulations that “put people into others’ shoes” to help address diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias, and racial discrimination
in the workplace. In Scandinavia, Swedish rail operator SJ and Norway’s Vy work with local VR startup Vobling to familiarize sta with a
range of unfamiliar situations, from tackling on-train res to navigating a station platform in a wheelchair. To build compassion among
police o cers for members of the communities in which they work, Axon built a VR simulation that promotes empathy while teaching
skills in de-escalation. The goal is to deepen the empathy your employees have with each other, with customers, and with citizenry,
depending on their job role.
Connect in VR. Some 66% of surveyed global information workers say that their normal work routine has been interrupted by the
COVID-19 crisis.(1) A key area of disruption came in connecting with coworkers and customers; huge increases in use of Zoom and
Microsoft Teams has nevertheless left some people searching for more than the simple 2D videoconference. The crisis prompted a 19x
increase in users of Sococo, a technology vendor that provides a “virtual o ce space” that replicates an o ce environment and allows
employees to participate in speci c meetings.(2) Sococo aims to make connecting more impromptu — you can move from meeting
room to meeting room seamlessly — by recreating a small, abstracted, always-open version of the o ce in the cloud. Overcoming the
loss of connection should alleviate the loneliness associated with working from home, which will aid innovation e orts.
Simulate the o ce in VR. Other players hope to replicate the in-person experience to the degree of simulated presence. MeetinVR
o ers a full virtual world, like AltspaceVR or Second Life but with enterprise-level management tools.(3) Employees appear with avatars
in 3D and can navigate to various rooms, including conference rooms with presentation screens or more casual spaces. Users gain
“special powers” via 3D mind maps: They have a simulated tablet within the environment from which they can extract content, toss it
onto a whiteboard, onto screens, or even place them in “midair” for annotation. Immersive virtual worlds such as what MeetinVR is
o ering are growing in sophistication and user experience and may merit exploration for highly remote teams.
Sources:
(1) Base: 10,749 global information workers; source: Forrester Analytics Business Technographics® Workforce Survey, 2020.
(2) Forrester interview with Sococo, April 2020.
(3) Forrester interview with MeetinVR, August 2020.
Related Resource
The CIO's Guide To Augmented, Mixed, And Virtual Reality
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