Now the Metaverse can connect workers around the world in virtual reality
What seemed futuristic a few years ago is now happening. In the midst of a pandemic, the world has seen and embraced major transformative innovations that have changed the way people work and live their lives. It stands to reason that people can buy almost anything they want on Amazon and receive it the same day. Groceries are picked by an Instacart worker; dinner is delivered by a DoorDasher and teleworkers interact with each other on Zoom.
Founder and CEO Christoph Fleischmann and his team created Arthur, a virtual and augmented platform for companies to do business in the metaverse. While the metaverse is currently dominated by games and other non-corporate activities, Arthur offers solutions for companies and their employees with virtual reality.
Fleischmann named the venture after King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, believing it was “a nice parallel of meeting in a specific space.” They are also "big fans of Arthur C. Clarke, a futurist and science fiction writer who has been predicting things like Arthur for decades."
Arthur offers a robust and realistic feeling of being in a virtual office space. It allows workers to meet, interact and collaborate together. The sophisticated, technology-driven platform enables a wide range of businesses in industries such as energy, pharmaceuticals, consulting, insurance and finance and organizations including the United Nations, Nestlé and Societe Generale, to maximize remote productivity. There's no need to travel the world, risk your health, and get expensive when there's an easier and better way to carry on the conversation in the metaverse. Arthur's platform meets the needs of a wide variety of global industries. In 2021, business users spent around 1.6 million minutes on Arthur.
The site can accommodate a large gathering of professionals, who wear photorealistic avatars in a VR meeting space. Buying or renting physical real estate or booking a conference room is no longer necessary. The platform offers businesses endless virtual real estate to replicate a physical office. You can collaborate on 3D flowcharts, write on whiteboards, embed videos on virtual monitors, and have one-on-one conversations just like in a real office. By reducing travel, consolidating a distributed remote workforce increases productivity and helps create and maintain company culture.
Fleischmann said, “Virtual reality offers innovative solutions that no other technology can accomplish. Arthur provides businesses with a solution capable of delivering deep and meaningful collaboration. Companies looking to solve their internal communication in a hybrid workplace can do so by reducing office and travel costs, as well as reducing carbon emissions. Its virtual reality encourages collaboration and engagement without being limited by location. Businesses can create environments that would be impossible to simulate in real life. The new uniqueness will serve as a much-needed attitude to the two-dimensional video calls we've spent the past two years on.
Leading investment bank Morgan Stanley wrote about the Metaverse in a note to clients: “Think of the Metaverse as a digital domain of the future, as the next evolution of the internet. Fully developed, it could one day allow people to interact, work and play in immersive virtual spaces. And as major tech players embrace the idea — and, in some cases, fix their company's future on it — it also creates opportunities for investors, especially in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) . In fact, as these technologies evolve to create increasingly connected digital experiences, total VR/AR spending worldwide is expected to reach $72.8 billion in 2024, up from $12 billion in 2020.”
Currently for individuals, gaming and entertainment are the activities of choice in virtual reality. We are now starting to see concerts, fashion shows, live musical performances, museum visits and other commercial applications. This includes the ability for customers to virtually try on clothes or check out an automobile before buying it.
In manual sectors that require working with heavy machinery or in hazardous environments, it makes sense to use virtual and augmented reality to train people on machinery and have them learn it safely before driving. activity in real life. Health will also benefit. New Web3 technologies have been used in intensive care units during the pandemic to bring additional expertise to the ward.
Another use of VR/AR is hosting interviews. We're zoomed out and could use an alternative. The Metaverse offers a new, fresh, innovative and fun way to interact with colleagues, especially when working remotely. It seems logical that the next step is to have virtual interviews. A hiring manager and a candidate can sit in a virtual room and conduct an interview.
A big problem for HR departments is dealing with unconscious bias. A well-suited and suitably qualified candidate may lose a job offer due to preconceived biases on the part of the interviewer. In real life, you can't hide your identity. However, in the Metaverse, you can choose an avatar that doesn't reveal your gender, race, and other defining characteristics that could potentially hurt your chances with a biased hiring manager. Converting speech to text could also hide biases, as people are judged on how they speak.
A virtual interview can be more relaxed and comfortable by having an avatar. You may not be as embarrassed as you think when it comes to a face-to-face conversation. It's like when an actor or writer uses a pen name, which makes them feel more comfortable acting or writing, as if they were a different person. For some people, this will feel liberating and liberating.
