Blog
March 13, 2020
How spatial computing enables remote work — at scale
More people than ever are working from home at least part of the time — 43% according to Harvard Business Review — so much so that the model has evolved to working from anywhere. However, Magic Leap’s Chief Product Officer Omar Khan recently pointed out two core challenges to remote work at scale: availability of technical infrastructure and openness to new ways of working. Spatial computing helps overcome these challenges.
Communication, collaboration and co-presence at scale
Setting up a personalized, productive workspace is often the first step people take, but it’s only a small part of working remotely. The ability to collaborate effectively is also imperative for success. In fact, a study from Babson College revealed companies that “promote collaborative working were five times more likely to be high performing.”
Spatial computing takes collaboration to a new level with its ability to enable copresence. For example, in early 2019, BNP Paribas Real Estate, a leading real estate business, implemented spatial computing technologies across Europe.
Using Magic Leap 1 and the communications and collaboration platform from our partner, Spatial — a cross-reality collaboration platform which enables holographic meetings and turns any room into a 3D workspace — BNP Paribas Real Estate has enabled employees from around the world to be digitally copresent, interacting as if they were all in the same room. Since implementing, BNP is aiming to decrease employee travel costs, reduce its carbon footprint and change the way employees work.
Digitizing productivity
In addition to Spatial, there’s a rich ecosystem of collaboration and productivity applications from which to choose — both built by Magic Leap and by third-parties.
Jump by Magic Leap, allows people to work 1:1 with colleagues in offsite locations and bring realistic holographic co-presence into their physical space. In December we announced a number of strategic partners already working to implement Jump by Magic Leap as a platform for their enterprises, and this rollout continues this year.
Meetings by Magic Leap is launching in beta with the next Lumin OS update and allows for both group and 1:1 discussion. Participants can be located either remotely or locally (in-person) via avatar copresence, and all participants can jointly view and manipulate 2D and 3D content for collaboration purposes.
__Nomtek’s Whiteboard__ replicates a traditional whiteboard experience and allows you to invite other Magic Leap users to view the same content. To read more on how Whiteboard could be used to support remote work, check out this recent review by Next Reality.
__Bridge by Immersiv__ is a multi-platform collaborative solution launching soon that allows multiple people to see the same 3D scene in real time and interact with each other through spatial computing.
__Arvizio__ allows Magic Leap 1 users to walk through life-size designs for collaborative design, planning and review in industries such as architecture, engineering and construction, energy, mining and manufacturing.
Building the office of the future
Justin_ tech explored “the office of the future” through the lens of spatial computing — building the ultimate home workspace on Magic Leap 1 and detailing technical capabilities and behavioral collaboration benefits.
Without the limitation of screens, Justin created and edited graphics in Photoshop, tiled images in Dropbox to simulate layouts, edited text for scripts in Google Docs, referenced multiple videos simultaneously on YouTube and managed his Spotify playlist, all at the same time — accessing each application by changing the direction of his gaze.
It's easy to imagine how this type of setup could benefit creative teams and individuals working remotely. The broader enterprise possibilities are even more exciting to consider.
Analysts and programmers, for example, typically use multiple monitors and struggle to maintain productivity without easy access to information. Moving interfaces into spatial environments not only enables easy reference across multiple monitors but allows this data to live in 3D environments.
To enable the environments described in these examples, three spatial computing tools will be essential.
- __Helio__ is Magic Leap 1’s web browser. It allows you to browse the web and have multiple concurrent windows open, with the ability to resize each screen to allow select content to be more dominant in the physical space.
- The Desktop Companion App will be released in the next Lumin OS update. It acts like a bridge between the PC and Magic Leap 1 for easy file transfer. For instance, files from 3D modeling software can be easily transferred, viewed and annotated from Magic Leap 1.
- Bar will be launched soon. It’s a customizable search interface built specifically for spatial computing that makes it fast and easy to open applications and maintain workflow.
Whether teams have worked from home for years or have been catalyzed by current events to a new remote work approach, spatial computing helps ensure business continuity through productive, collaborative workspaces anywhere and at scale.
References:
- Harvard Business Review, “Is It Time to Let Employees Work from Anywhere? ” December 15, 2017.
- Raconteur, “How collaboration powers productivity ” August 14, 2019.
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