Anthony Onesto argues that 2024 will see renewed investment in augmented reality for workplace training. Apple Vision Pro, Meta Ray-Ban sunglasses, and HoloLens enable practical onboarding for dispersed teams and manufacturing floors, with AI assistants providing real-time feedback and remote collaboration.
I believe that companies in 2024 will be investing a lot of their learning and development efforts in augmented reality. Everyone, this is Anthony Honesto and welcome to burn the box 2024. Today we're looking at the future, but going back to the past. Actually we're going to go back to 2017 blog post that I published on LinkedIn on November 21, 2017. So imagine you're sitting in a coffee shop and you work for a global organization that has workforces all over the world. And these workforces are different because they're not in a headquarters. They're actually dispersed in different places. Coffee shops, at home, co working spaces. Now remember, this is 2017. When I wrote this, this is pre Covid, the prediction was that we'd be in a dispersed setup. And obviously other than some of the companies that are bringing people back into offices, a lot of companies are now fully dispersed. But in this coffee shop, you slip on a pair of augmented reality glasses. Now back then it was the HoloLens, there was nothing else. But we are a couple of weeks away from Apple announcing Vision Pro and the launch of that product. And when you're sitting here, you put on these glasses and the next thing you know, all of your applications pop up in front of you. You can still see what's happening. You're not immersed like virtual reality, but you can see what else is happening in your space. But what you're seeing is a transparent view of Chrome or whatever it is that you're working in, Gmail, whatever, whatever the solutions are. And then you virtually see your, you know, your colleague in finance avatar walking by and you could potentially tap them on the shoulder. This is what I envisioned in 2017 and I believe with the, with the launch of the Vision Pro, it's going to re. Accelerate the focus on artificial intelligence. Excuse me, I'm sorry, Augmented reality AI is on the brain, but we're talking about augmented reality. And so I believe there's going to be a space. Now I was gifted a very cool pair of meta ray bans and I have to be honest, I am obsessed with these things. The great thing about these meta ray bans is that you get a augmented reality type of scenario. Now there's nothing on your screens or on your shades at all, but through augmented reality and through the speakers and the cameras, you can actually do a whole bunch of things. I believe this is a step forward one because they, it looks normal. You're wearing a pair of sunglasses. Now you're obviously not going to be sitting in a coffee shop, wearing a pair of sunglasses. But I can see the next evolution of these things being a regular pair of glasses or, you know, the Vision Pro or whatever it is now, I think it's Vision Pro, probably version two or three, where they bring it more towards what I'm wearing today, which are regular glasses, just making it feel normal when you're wearing these things. And I think this is going to be the future. Now, the, the step between that setup and where we are today is that potentially these things are going to be pushed into, let's say, a manufacturing floor. So you're a new employee, you just joined this manufacturing company and to your station, instead of actually seeing any sort of product near there, you, you see a pair of some augmented reality glasses, you throw them on. You're now in your onboarding session, you're training. It's almost, you know, augmented situation that's put in front of you, like getting you trained up, looking at certain things in that manufacturing setting in a, in a augmented reality type of way, and you're getting trained and the company is measuring you on your, on your training. Now back then in 2017, these things are really costly. But, but if you, the vision Pro at 3000, that's like a MacBook purchase, frankly, for a lot of companies. So I could see this starting to make its way into organizations from a learning and development perspective. You throw on these augmented reality glasses and as a new employee, you see your virtual buddy and they come up and they greet you or, you know, with each movement you're learning, especially on a manufacturing setup, you get real time feedback on your performance and inputs from the device. So I believe we're going to start to see really a focus on augmented reality, particularly in the workforce. Now, I don't think it's going to happen immediately with the launch of the Vision Pro, I think we're going to be probably a couple of iterations of that device. But I think there's going to be a renewed focus from the time when I predicted this in 2017 to Today that we're. There's going to be an almost like an Iron Man. If you're familiar with the Marvel movies, Iron man or Tony Stark would throw up an augmented reality type of screen and he would have Jarvis or eventually what he called Friday as an AI assistant. You know, these two worlds are going to start coming together and they, they already have. With the meta sunglasses, you have meta, you, you say, hey, meta. And it can answer questions for you. You ask it. You know, I'm part of the Beta AI program with Meta, it can say look and tell me what I'm looking at and it gives me a good idea. Now, it can't do landmarks yet. It can't really. But if I say, hey Meta, if I'm driving in the car, look and tell me what I'm looking at, it will tell me. You're looking at a dashboard and there is cars outside and in some cases it the car that's outside. So this space, I think in 2024, which wasn't one of my predictions, but when I was looking back at this post, I think this is going to be the start of really a revolution now with a dispersed workforce. I think this is going to be incredibly impactful. So I am working from home today. Imagine if I had my augmented reality glasses on. I'm working and I can see my all my co workers, their avatars and I can almost like, you know, nudge them or tap them on the shoulder. That opens up FaceTime or opens up some Sor of Slack or Zoom instance where we can chat one on one. I think there's going to be some really interesting EVOL innovation around augmented reality, especially with Apple being at the forefront of, of of this movement. So I'm really excited about this. I, you know, like this is not going to be Google Glass again. I think it's probably more like the Meta Ray Ban sunglasses. I think that it's going to be more of like regular glasses. The technology is not quite there yet. You can see with the Vision Pro, it's a little bit bulky. I think this is going to be a really fun time to think about how augmented reality is going to impact our organization. So my quick drop, we'll see you next time.
