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Facebook Reimagines Remote Work with VR-based Horizon Workrooms.
The outbreak of the ruthless COVID-19 pandemic has propelled our lives into a virtual space, significantly altering the way we socialize, interact, or work. It has been an inflection point bringing about a drastic and dramatic change in our everyday lives.
In light of the shift from physical to virtual spaces, Facebook has introduced a new virtual collaboration experience called Horizon Workrooms.
Why Now?
While a chunk of the global workforce was already familiar with remote work experience, the pandemic steered this way of working into the mainstream. In this way, we are witnessing the future of work and education shape right before us while we are keeping up with the technology constantly making headway.
Some essential virtual collaboration tools have now become household names for people, including Zoom, Google Meet, Google Docs, and so forth, bringing about revolutionary changes in how people work together.
While the pandemic has accelerated this trend towards remote work, the trend is not likely to completely reverse once things become normal again. According to a Gartner survey, around 80% of company leaders are willing to let their employees work remotely to some extent even when the pandemic is over.
Zoom Fatigue
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the corporate world, altering the work methods we employ on a regular workday. As people’s workday mostly revolves around team meetings and conferences, they were forced to work remotely and hold these meetings via cloud-based video communication apps like Zoom.
Eventually, this video conferencing culture became tedious and mundane over time, making people struggle with a state of weariness, now coined as zoom fatigue.
What is Zoom Fatigue?
Do you ever feel like you are more exhausted while working remotely? Or your physical and mental stress levels augment by the end of the day? Do you feel distracted or drained during a zoom meeting? If your head is nodding yes to all these questions, you probably too have zoom fatigue like many other users do!
Meetings in Virtual Reality
New technological breakthroughs could make it possible to eliminate the digital friction that causes Zoom fatigue and other negative aspects of remote work. The development of advanced meeting technologies through virtual reality breaks the tediousness of web conferencing
The participants of the meeting donning a VR headset do not have to keep their gaze glued to the screen anymore. Rather, they can walk around a virtual space, talk to their colleagues’ avatars, and engage in a more visceral way.
Facebook Fuses Virtual Reality With Conference Calls
It may feel isolating at times when a person is working remotely which might have an adverse effect on their performance. To survive and work effectively in this era of remote working, Facebook has launched the open beta version of Horizon Workrooms
Facebook has caused the indistinct concept of ‘metaverse’ to snowball into a vivid reality by revealing its plans for a virtual collaborative future in the form of Horizon Workrooms. The CEO of the tech giant Facebook explained this feature as “an embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at”. Lately, Mark Zuckerberg, ostensibly the vanguard of virtual collaboration, has been touting Horizon Workrooms as the successor of the mobile internet.
Horizon Workrooms is a free app for the users of Oculus Quest 2 headset, Facebook’s virtual reality headset, that enables 16 headset users to join a virtual conference room and interact with the customizable avatars of their colleagues.
Horizon Workroom’s smart features create a different kind of productivity experience by bringing everyone on the same page as ‘getting on the same page starts with getting in the same virtual room’.
This feature is a true face of cutting-edge technology and a real-world manifestation of techno-optimism. However, is that all we can gain from this trailblazing, state-of-the-art technology? Maybe not!
Virtual Collaboration in the Realm of Corporate Training and Capacity Building
It appears that many corporations are oblivious to the potential offered by virtual collaboration experiences. These organizations would do well to begin looking into adopting virtual reality for their employee learning and development programs, as a number of Fortune 500 companies have already implemented VR to upscale employee performance.
Corporate Training Transforms From an Expense to an Investment!
Corporate training, commonly known as workplace learning, is a system of activities used for vocational training of the employees. The expense contributed to the Corporate Leadership Training Market is projected to swell to more than $10 billion (USD) by the year 2025 according to the Global Corporate Training Market Research Report 2021.
Costly but crucial procedures like conducting workshops, seminars, and conferences for capacity building develop and strengthen the resources and abilities required by organizations to prosper. However, it would be smart to turn this expense into an investment.
Virtual collaboration is a game-changer in terms of cost and convenience. Corporate organizations can utilize VR collaborative tools to teach just about any skill imaginable. What’s more, they can do it without incurring additional expenses, and they can make collaboration possible from anywhere in the world.
Moreover, there are numerous vocational activities in corporate training which cannot be performed via Zoom but can smoothly happen in a virtual space where the participants can gesticulate in VR while their avatars will mimic their movement and speech in lifelike ways.
The aforementioned facts make it evident that VR collaboration is the next step in work evolution as it;
Step into the metaverse with CitrusBits, the leading augmented reality mobile app development company. Whether you’re an organization seeking virtual collaboration or a technology provider shaping its future, we’re here to help. Explore the possibilities and discuss augmented reality app development cost with us today. Let’s build the future of virtual collaboration together!
Interested in shaping the future of virtual collaboration? CitrusBits builds game-changing Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences for companies ranging from DuPont and Zoetis to some of the savviest startups in the world. Ping us to start a conversation about making your project a reality.
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