Out of nowhere, hundreds of thousands of employers had to turn around quickly and facilitate employees performing their tasks from home as smoothly, effectively, and comfortably as possible. It was an abrudt and forced shift that demanded the people to look after good solutions and technology when working from home or out-of-office, The release of Oculus Quest 2 will possibly be one of them
2020 has been a challenging year for the human race. Both on a personal level, societal, and in business,
the entire planet has been faced with many new and sometimes overwhelming challenges.
While the debates regarding the benefits of working from home office vs. corporate offices have been ongoing for decades, the pandemic abruptly made this decision for most companies.
Out of nowhere, hundreds of thousands of employers had to turn around quickly and facilitate employees performing their tasks from home as smoothly, effectively, and comfortably as possible.
Companies that specialized in video conferencing and other virtual communication tools saw a significant rise in usage.
And even though we might miss alot of the aspects with having an office to go to in the morning, working from home also has its advantages:
You save time from not having to commute.
The average commuting time in the U.S. is 27.1 minutes each way. This adds up to nearly 1 hour each day. In a year, this adds up to quite a significant amount of time that could be spent on better things.
Flexibility in where you work from.
Working from home doesn’t necessarily mean working from one single location. As long as you have the required equipment and access to the proper facilities you could be doing your job from anywhere in the world.
Great for the environment
Travelling less means a smaller carbon footprint
More trust and independence
Employers will learn to measure the work their employees do more by deliverables rather than traditional workplace monitoring.
As we ourselves started to move towards having our awesome team members working from the safety of their homes, we hoped that our customers would be able to transition and get the maximum value out of our software and services.
Undoubtedly, we saw an increase in awareness regarding the power of Dimension10 as a communication tool. Our platform for communication sets itself apart from video conferencing in many ways.
You do not look like yourself, - your colleagues and you look like generic, brightly colored humanoid avatars. Yet, it gives you a sense of being present and together that is impossible to achieve with video.
One of the arguments against working remote, is the limited personal interaction or lack of human connection. This is something that will be improved vastly over the coming years.
You will look more like yourself in VR, with your facial expressions represented perfectly and conveyed between people in a way that is exactly like in real life.
That is not to say that it is already good enough to day to provide significant value. In fact, the strongest selling point for communication through VR and Dimension10 is a major one:
We are not merely a backup solution, or a second choice to be used when physical attendance is not possible. Sure, it is a fantastic tool for that too, don’t get me wrong.
More importantly, we are one of the few communication tools that customers still want to use when they are in the same room together.
I know some might have heard me say this before, but it is a fundamentally important point:
If you are having a conversation with someone sitting across the table from you, it would never occur to you that the conversation is better had via video conferencing.
The need for that would only arise if there was a third party participating from another location.
Yet in our case, users in the same room will happily get up, load a 3D-model, put on their VR-headsets, and meet each other virtually to reap the benefits of the added communication level.
If we can add value even when people are together, surely, the value proposition is multiplied tenfold as far as remote collaboration is concerned.
Based on this fact, the home office situation seemed like a great opportunity for us to shine and double down on the strengths of working together in Dimension10.
We did, however, face a challenge that most other software and tools did not;
The fact that our users needed access to a VR-headset, but few of them had one at home. Most of our customers had the VR-headset set up at the office, shared between multiple users.
Even if a few did have access, it didn’t help because the person in the other end did not.
Personal Headsets
A few days ago Oculus had big news, that will help pave the way and change the perception of vr-headsets from being something that is shared between multiple users to being personal.
Oculus Quest 2, is a highly capable device that does everything you need it to do and costs only 299usd. This is fantastic news.
A high end device, with a price that is so low, companies can start looking into purchasing a headset for every user that needs it.
It is also small enough, and simple enough to pack and set up that users can bring it more or less everywhere they go.
This way, they will always be ready to utilize the highest level of communication available everywhere they are.
Other than vastly improved communication, there are other ways to benefit from VR when working remotely.
I highly recommend getting some workouts in by playing Beatsaber.
Not only is it super entertaining, but its also super motivating. As a result it really gets your heart pumping and will quickly get you into shape
If you are not familiar with setting up VR at a remote or home office situation I do have some tips for safety:
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