As other AREA blog posts and pages on this website attest, Augmented Reality can be very beneficial but it doesn’t happen by itself. The preparation and delivery of AR experiences in professional settings involves the cooperation of many groups and investments from diverse points in a larger corporate information value chain. One of those groups is responsible for technical documentation.

As a professional technical communicator, I believe that introducing AR will also be rewarding to those people and organizations delivering their content in new, contextually driven systems. However, the development and delivery of AR-enriched content also comes with a new set of challenges.

From Topic-Based Content to Experiences

Changes in technologies, skills, priorities and procedures will be necessary. Accepting responsibility for and producing AR-enriched content will involve a shift in the mindset of technical communicators who, like most of their customers, are accustomed to developing traditional, topic-based or video content. In other words, technical communicators will have to embrace a more holistic view of content: experiences.

This means that, in addition to performing their traditional information development tasks, technical communicators will need to begin designing and supporting the delivery of content that changes in real time, based on the user’s context.

We Need New Approaches

When content is destined for use on AR-enabled systems, our technologies will need to change. We’ll also need to adopt new approaches designed to:

• Position and format the experience content so that it doesn’t obstruct the viewer’s line of sight to the real world target, as well as present other objects that could introduce risk or errors.
• Anticipate and correct error conditions in real time, under constantly changing light and environmental conditions.
• Design overlay information so that it doesn’t overload the user’s ability to process and use the information effectively.
• Leverage sophisticated software that produces and manages 3D models, and reduce current reliance on traditional 2D graphics and illustrations.
• Take into consideration the higher processing power required to render digital models, graphics or other supplementary data over the real world in real time, while taking into consideration its impact on battery life.
• Plan for both the user’s device to access high-performance networks (especially when the content is in 3D format and stored on corporate servers), and for when those connections have high latency or are interrupted.
• Work with the strengths and limitations of new end user hardware such as smart glasses or helmets, watches and other wearable sensors, and design new software tools that are unique to these, and rapidly evolving.
• Adopt still other types of new hardware and software to capture the objects, develop, view and test the experiences when under development.
• Design to comply with new yet-to-be-defined policies and tools for certification, data security and encryption.
• Notify users when their every action is being captured and recorded, and control this capture, while managing the changing acceptance (or resistance to) these technologies.
• Manage the use of cameras in restricted environments in order to reduce risk of confidential information being exposed and pirated.
• Measure benefits gained from, and additional costs and complexity associated with the delivery of AR experiences.

All of these changes and new skills associated with AR-enriched content development will require many years of testing, some of it by trial and error. Eventually refinement will lead to mature and widely accepted best practices.

New Standards in Augmented Reality

I believe that these skills and best practices must also be accompanied by the development of formal standards for technical communicators to follow in AR design and development. I’m co-chairing the OASIS AR Information Products Technical Committee in order to study what’s needed for the wider adoption of AR technology and associated experience development methods by technical communicators. Over time the committee members will also work together to develop standards that will guide technical communicators and improve their ability to deliver content in AR experiences. Then, the suggested benefits of using AR-assisted systems will be achievable across a great many industries.

Developers of Augmented Reality experiences select tools and technology for a project to match use case requirements. If the use case involves a page in a book or the side of a package, then in these cases 3D tracking is overkill. If the project accesses records in a company’s ERP, there must be plug-ins or a customization. If the customer needs reports (e.g., number of objects recognized, interaction of the user, etc.), then the platform needs to support their production. If the target is a movie poster, the security considerations are entirely different than if the target involves a proprietary industrial process.

After five years of Metaio’s dominance of the AR software provider landscape, developers’ options are changing dramatically. This post reviews the recent changes in this provider landscape, how these impact developers and suggests that those who license and purchase development tools could use this period of research and evaluation as an opportunity to communicate more clearly about their project requirements to all the tool and technology vendors.

A Rapidly Changing Provider Landscape

In early 2015, Metaio’s ecosystem ranged from dedicated individuals producing one or two experiences, to Fortune 100 companies. Some were researchers designing prototypes; others were automotive industry giants like BMW and Audi who used Metaio’s robust tracking algorithms for precision engineering and design. Then, in mid-May 2015, a message appeared on Metaio’s website saying that it would stop selling licenses immediately, and that support for its Augmented Reality services and software technologies would end on December 15 of the same year. The mysterious announcement took the company’s global developer ecosystem by surprise.

Many, if not most, of those developers’ authoring experiences for enterprise and industrial projects were using Metaio’s software tools. Metaio’s change in direction put developers in an uncomfortable position. Many were furious. Others expressed frustration. To this day there remain many questions about the circumstances that led to the announcement. Regardless of the changes to a company that the developer ecosystem had grown to trust, serious business issues remain:

• What will happen to the channels published in a platform operated by Metaio?
• What will developers use in the place of Metaio’s tools?

Many developers are now doing what more could have done consistently over the previous years: investing their resources to evaluate other potential tools and technologies. The best developers will resume proposing projects to their customers once they have thoroughly tested the alternatives.   

Gaps for Enterprise Augmented Reality

While there are alternate enterprise Augmented Reality technology providers with solutions and services worthy of evaluation (see table below), none offer the breadth and maturity, the professional documentation and support that Metaio provided for its SDK, Creator, Suite, Cloud and Continuous Visual Search matching system.  

Enterprise AR authoring providers and products
Source: © 2014 – 2015
Company	Platform
DAQRI	4D Studio and AR Toolkit
Wikitude	Wikitude SDK
Inglobe Technologies	AR Media (and other)
BuildAR	BuildAR
Catchoom	CraftAR (and other)
NGRAIN	Vergence (and other)
Diota	DiotaPlayer, DiotaConnect
EON Reality	EON Studio (and other)
Bitstars	Holobuilder
Fraunhofer IGD	Instant Reality
Kudan	Kudan SDK

Metaio’s dominance wasn’t limited to breadth of offering and AR developer mind share. Among its peers, it probably also generated the greatest revenue from licensing its software tools and providing services. To deliver value to customers and drive development of its technology suite, Metaio employed over 75 of the world’s most qualified and experienced enterprise AR engineers.Table 1. Enterprise AR authoring providers and their products

Those that can have been furiously hiring engineers to write code and build out their teams and offerings but breadth and depth like what Metaio offered doesn’t happen in a matter of months. 

Vuforia’s Focus on Consumer Use Cases

No one knows precisely how much of the Metaio developer ecosystem overlapped that of Qualcomm Vuforia, but anecdotal evidence suggests that developers who had use for both, leveraged their qualities for entirely different projects. 

Vuforia is strongly optimized for delivery to consumers on smartphones: entertainment, cultural heritage, education and marketing use cases. For this reason, developers who explored its use for their enterprise or industrial projects did not place Vuforia’s current offerings at the top of their list of preferred enterprise-ready AR tools.

In an October 12 press release, PTC, a global provider of enterprise platforms and solutions for creating, operating, and servicing connected objects, announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire the Vuforia technology, and its developer ecosystem, from Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated.

The acquisition of Vuforia by PTC suggests that while Metaio technology is probably being integrated into a platform and tools for consumer-facing solutions, the tools most popular for consumer-facing AR experiences (i.e., the Vuforia SDK) will evolve to better meet the needs of developers seeking to address enterprise use cases.

The Landscape Continues to Evolve

The reversal of relative positions of the two popular Augmented Reality SDKs with respect to their target markets and one another is one of several trends.

First, the list of developer options is expanding. Firms that were previously quiet have the opportunity to engage with developers who are more interested in learning of their offers. Google is getting closer to its Glass at Work 2.0 release. Microsoft is showing HoloLens and the tools it has designed for authoring (aka “Holo Lens Studio”) to more developers. Some firms with significant experience and investments in enterprise Augmented Reality are becoming more attractive, or at least more visible. For example, Diotasoft, a French technology provider with loyal enterprise customers including Renault, PSA Peugot Citroen, Total and Dassault Aviation announced a rebranding (the company is now called “Diota”) and launched a new platform for enterprise Augmented Reality.

Another trend is a shift in positioning. PTC and Vuforia’s statements in their October 12 press release emphasize where they see the greatest potential for impact. They draw a line between Augmented Reality and the need for people to visualize data stored in and managed by PTC’s Internet of Things-oriented systems. This echoes the suggestion made by Gerry Kim, professor at Korea University, in a meeting of the AR Community on October 6: Augmented Reality is the human interface for IoT.

As the number of options increases, so does the potential cost of integration. In a highly fragmented market one large enterprise could easily end up with solutions addressing different use cases based on multiple different and incompatible SDKs.

An Opportunity to Mandate Open Solutions

A unique opportunity lies in the middle of the increasing fragmentation and investment in new technology providers.

What if, instead of accepting the status quo of many competing and incompatible AR platforms, large enterprise customers and their developers were to clearly demonstrate their need for open systems?

Developers can seize the next few weeks and months to prepare a campaign describing new or existing systems with which they would prefer to create and manage enterprise content. They can document the barriers to interoperability and mount pressure on enabling technology providers. What if, prior to a purchase or licensing decision, the provider of an AR authoring platform were required to demonstrate interoperability with content generated from Metaio’s SDK?

Openness does not mean Open Source. Openness is a condition that is based on explicit or implied agreements between vendors. Providers of technologies must agree upon common data formats, and provide interfaces and APIs that are well documented and designed for interoperability with solutions of potential competitors.

Without issuing a clear mandate for AR technology providers to support a greater level of integration and interoperability with enterprise IT systems, developers should not be surprised if their options remain highly rigid and difficult to integrate. Unless some forward thinking people don’t take action, developers and their large enterprise customers must be prepared to face many more years investing in brittle transcoding systems or other approaches to “work around” the lack of openness and interoperability.

How are you going to respond to this rapidly shifting AR technology provider landscape? Are you taking this opportunity to share your requirements with new vendors? 

Have you asked any IT professionals or business managers what they’re doing with Augmented Reality? A small fraction can share how they’ve considered using AR for improving their workplace processes, but most inquiries about how companies are using AR begin with a blank stare and end in frustration.  

The AREA and its members are developing high-quality content that can be the basis of more precise and fruitful dialog than we often have today. Once there is a shared conceptual foundation, we’ll be able to discuss the concrete benefits as well as the risks of introducing Augmented Reality in the enterprise with our audiences.

Explore the Audience Knowledge Level

Casual discussion between acquaintances or between a supplier and a potential customer can’t evolve gracefully if they must begin with deep explanations or clarifications of confusing terminologies. Don’t start with a dry definition. Focus first on either a known or shared challenge or potential benefit and make sure you can squeeze a few terms in casually in the first minutes.

“Isn’t it frustrating that we can’t significantly increase our productivity?” you can inquire. Be specific about the use case, if you can. You can substitute “increasing productivity” with other metrics such as reduce errors, reduce risk or increase safety. Drop in some keywords to make sure they understand that you feel new technologies could help. Avoid buzzwords such as wearables, IoT, Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality in the first five minutes. Try to avoid bringing up Hollywood movies or popular science fiction books that have Augmented Reality.

Then you can say that you’ve heard or that you’re exploring how this new technology could play a role by overlaying digital information on the real world. Let your prospective customer or partner, or whomever you’re speaking to, be the first to mention wearables or AR.

When asked if they’ve heard of it and what they’re doing or planning to do with Augmented Reality, an IT professional will respond in one of two ways. The younger the person, the more likely they are to have heard and understood the potential. That said, they may not have thought to apply it to their job.

“That’s technology for your smartphone. I’ve seen it used in a museum, once” they might say. Then they either describe how the AR experience failed or just didn’t bring value to them.  Such conversations often conclude with the person dismissing the whole idea.

“It’s probably good for entertainment, but we’re not that kind of company,” is not an uncommon conclusion.

A more knowledgeable audience may remember Virtual Reality and the promises it held but didn’t deliver. Then you will need to reprogram them to understand the differences. 

Others will have had no exposure at all to Augmented Reality.

Light Bulb Moment

Once you’ve decided if the conversation is worthy of continuing investment, you’re going to aim for a “light bulb” moment: a look in their eye that shows that the person with whom you’re meeting has had a breakthrough in understanding.

To get to that moment of realization may take several steps. As already suggested, if you’re in conversation with an IT professional or line manager with a lot of engineering experience, you will get there more quickly.

Begin by building upon something very familiar. Everyone has seen and almost all have personally used video conferencing. AREA member David Doral, Director of AERTEC Solutions begins his education process by suggesting that when trying to understand a problem at a remote location, it would be valuable to be able to see things as if from another’s eyes.

“We suggest to the customer that we support the technician in the field or on the shop floor with an expert who is somewhere else,” explains Doral. He doesn’t say where that expert is, but makes it perfectly clear that they are the key to solving a problem and there’s not time for that expert to personally fly to the location. In AR, this use case is known as the “remote expert,” but this term doesn’t need to be introduced.

“Then, if they like this concept, we can suggest that the expert could draw arrows, point or otherwise indicate steps with animations,” continues Doral. “Imagine that the person who is in the field or on the shop floor is providing the remote hands, performing tasks as directed and under the supervision of the expert.”

Up Close and Personal

Another approach to reach a light bulb moment is to demonstrate an Augmented Reality experience right away. Sometimes, this can be performed using a tablet and an object that you’ve brought with you. Choose an object that is likely to be professional and slightly complex in nature but with a very simple user interface, such as a pocket projector. A virtual interface can appear with Augmented Reality to help the user with configuration and operation.

Three-dimensional objects are nice and have a big “wow” factor but a photo will also work well and may have higher performance. Lighting, and reflections on a glossy surface, may have a big impact on your ability to track the target, so test your sample photo or object well before using it. Be sure to give the other person the device to hold and move around, to interact with the content in the experience.

Often people try to simulate this effect, and reduce the risk of failure, by showing a video of an AR experience recording, but your audience will assign lower credibility to a video because they understand that special effects as seen in the movies are now commonplace.  Hasn’t everyone seen Minority Report and Iron Man?

From a shared understanding of the benefits of Augmented Reality, you might be able to progress to talking about a project and the potential of implementing AR in a few use cases.

What techniques have you used to successfully start a conversation about enterprise Augmented Reality?  Share your methods with others in the comments below.

There’s a lot of attention currently focused on how NASA is planning to send Microsoft HoloLens hardware to space to help astronauts perform tasks. According to a post published on the Trove blog in June 2015, the first use case being tested will permit NASA professionals on Earth to see what the astronauts see on the International Space Station (ISS). In Remote Expert Mode, HoloLens will be valuable when the astronaut encounters undocumented situations. It will also be possible for HoloLens to provide procedural guidance, for example, to retrieve objects or to put objects away in their correct place after use.

Tests of HoloLens, both on the ground and in underwater laboratories simulating space, will certainly validate the latest technology components Microsoft provides but will not be the first tests of Augmented Reality in space.

A First Use Case for Augmented Reality in Space

According to David Martinez, a simulation and visualization engineer and member of the European Space Agency (ESA) Software Systems Division, Augmented Reality was first evaluated by ESA for space use in a project beginning in 2006. Using the ESA-designed Wearable Augmented Reality (WEAR) system, Augmented Reality was tested on Earth and, eventually, on the ISS in 2009. The use case was for an astronaut to inspect and, if needed, to service ISS air quality system components. Before examining and changing filters on the air quality system, an astronaut had to remove a panel on the floor. Then cables and hoses needed to be repositioned. Once the filter was accessible, the color of an indicator had to be examined. 

“We learned a lot about what was and wasn’t possible with the technology at that point in time,” recalls Martinez.

Exploring Guidance and Remote Expert Assistance

ESA works with payloads designed for a wide variety of different purposes. Some of the payloads end up on the International Space Station. As astronauts on the ISS cannot be trained on all the possible payloads in advance, they would like to have clear and compact Augmented Reality-assisted systems that make sure the astronauts conduct experiments consistently and correctly, even when they are not trained on them before going into space.

In 2014 the ESA team collaborated with the Technical University of Delft to explore the use of Augmented Reality using hands-free and head-mounted displays to provide remote expert assistance for performing experiments. The study used a payload representative of what’s on the Columbus module, a science laboratory that is part of the ISS and one of the most important contributions to the ISS made by the European Space Agency.

“We demonstrated that the remote expert was able to support the hands-on use of the various dials, buttons and knobs,” explains Mikael Wolff, a senior software manager who manages several projects in the domain of crew informatics. 

“The remote expert could speak to the user and also annotate the object in the astronaut’s field of view with arrows and text messages that would remain in place with respect to the payload,” clarifies ESA engineer Sérgio Agostinho.

Technologies are continually advancing and ESA is testing systems for their ability to track targets in 3D with far higher flexibility than earlier generations. “We’re not using fiducial markers on any of our current projects,” assures Agostinho. He feels that if a system it is to be deployed on the ISS, it can’t rely on markers.  “We’re aiming for the Iron Man quality of experience,” he says enthusiastically.

Long List of Use Cases

“We know that there are many ways Augmented Reality may bring value to projects and people on the ground and in space,” reports Wolff. “We’re always coming up with new ideas.”

In collaboration with partners in industry and academia, ESA is currently focused on several use cases it considers to be relatively low hanging fruit. One of these is support for complex product assembly, integration and testing on Earth. ESA and European aerospace industry engineers are routinely involved in, support or perform the final assembly and integration of parts procured from aerospace industry suppliers. Components include everything from printed circuit boards to large payload systems and harnesses that eventually go into space.

Augmented Reality could assist technicians during the assembly of telecommunication satellites. Currently the manual procedures take days or weeks to complete. By highlighting for users the steps directly on the parts of the satellite with Augmented Reality, the assembly, integration and testing processes could be performed with fewer errors and more quickly.

Barriers Remain

The ESA team has segmented its current and potential future Augmented Reality projects into those that could provide value when engineers perform tasks on Earth and others that could lead to AR being deployed in space for use by astronauts. This is due to the fact that systems or components that meet requirements on Earth are not immediately ready to go to the ISS. Not only is hardware certification for custom built and commercial off-the-shelf devices required, but software conflicts or bugs simply aren’t tolerated in space.

Before anything is sent to the ISS, it must undergo extremely rigorous testing and validation. “This means that almost everything on ISS is at least one generation behind what’s available on Earth, in terms of technology maturity,” explains Martinez.

“We also have real challenges with lack of interoperability,” says Wolff. “As an industry and as a public agency we can’t rely on a single supplier for any technology component. The Augmented Reality ecosystem needs to expand and different vendors need to provide components that are comparable or else we could put the agency or a mission at risk.”

Despite delays and the complex testing environments, ESA engineers continue to study AR use cases and to evaluate the latest technologies. As commercial solutions mature and pass required reliability and accuracy thresholds, having them in use on the ISS and on complex space assembly and integration projects on Earth could become commonplace.

The single most compelling reason to invest in enterprise Augmented Reality is to improve the productivity of people while on the job. Workplace performance is a broad concept that can be measured in many ways, and the impacts of a new user interface providing contextually sensitive information are new to most technology managers.

During the ARise ’15 conference, Matt Kammerait, Vice President of Products at DAQRI, presented some of the methodologies currently in use for gathering metrics and assessing the full impact of introducing Augmented Reality. This post builds upon experiences shared in the presentation and offers project leaders suggestions for how to quantify the impacts of enterprise AR.

Consider the Organizational Attitudes and Experience with Innovation

Before selecting the metrics for an AR project, consider the attitudes and experience of the various stakeholders in your organization. Aligning the project objectives with stakeholder goals and adapting available best practices or existing metrics from other projects can boost the chance of success. It will help when you want to expand the project beyond the pilot stage.

In parallel, those defining the parameters of an internal study need to take into account industry-wide metrics or constraints. Time savings is very important, but may not be the most important or best metric for all industries. In industries where workers’ lives are at risk, safety is almost surely a more important organizational metric. If an industry is heavily regulated, then compliance is likely to be at or near the top of the list.

It’s important to prioritize potentially valuable metrics. Take into account the time requirement and cost of studying each type of metric as an organizational constraint during the design phase.

If capturing detailed or complex metrics will increase the need for specialized staff and otherwise exceed the study resources, compromises based on the original set of priorities will need to be made.

Detect the Broad Patterns

Human-computer interfaces are key to the digital economy. Screens, keyboards, speakers, cameras and microphones provide faster and more accurate ways to acquire information or knowledge or, conversely, to quickly develop and communicate it. Knowledge workers build value with computers and networks by manipulating pixels that form meaningful symbols such as numbers, letters, lines and even virtual 3D objects.

In contrast to the tools in use by knowledge workers today, Augmented Reality is most useful when and where people interact with, or perform tasks with objects in the physical world. In the use cases that guide workers, Augmented Reality-assisted visualization provides individuals who lack information or encounter obstacles a means to retrieve and use digital symbols directly, without losing focus on the physical world.

Before any Augmented Reality introduction project begins, the objects with which people interact and the interactions themselves can be inventoried. The most frequently manipulated objects are going to be most familiar and the least likely to benefit from an AR-assisted interface. On the contrary, it is those processes or objects that are infrequently encountered and yet complex where the greatest potential for Augmented Reality can be tapped.

Which tasks or objects frequently present obstacles in terms of inexperience, limited human cognition or memory lapses? For example, in a warehouse, nearly every order or the contents of every truck is unique. There’s very little that past experience or strength can do to help humans perform their job better, but a digital guide for where to find an object or how to pack it on a palette, can reduce the need for search, trial and error.

In a field service scenario, every part has had a unique life history with respect to use, environmental conditions and other factors. Workers can better use past experience for rapid diagnostics when the track record of the part is rapidly and clearly available. 

Learning or training organizations are often good partners for project managers who want to document patterns across a workforce when performing key processes. These groups have a unique perspective on the tasks that are the most difficult to teach or retain, and may also have well established methods for measuring performance in the lab and on the ground.  

Capture Ground Truth

Prior to introducing Augmented Reality, perform a systematic measurement of the un-assisted process. Interviews with those who will participate in the project are always beneficial to assess attitudes about the new technology, but the documentation of ground truth must include actual task observations.

Accompanying a person and observing all their activities is one way to document their existing processes but this is likely to introduce a variety of errors in the data. If possible, automatic measuring tools that are completely invisible to the subject and do not interfere in any way with the normal flow of tasks should be explored.

Frequently, when a person needs assistance and cannot easily find the information in a manual, there is a need to consult another worker. Since AR could reduce the need for a person to seek assistance from others, the impacts on other workers’ productivity should also be considered.

A representative sample of people with different training or experience levels is key to getting good ground truth data. By observing the methods of a novice as well as a highly skilled journeyman and people between the two ends of the spectrum, it may be possible to narrow down a limited number of steps that are most likely to benefit from AR support.

Build Recording and Capture Tools into the System

When designing AR experiences, it may be possible to record the achievement of specific steps or the entire session of use. This may require mounting an independent camera into a workspace, or adding components to the AR delivery platform.  To get the highest fidelity recording may require adjustments to ambient lighting since the AR experience setting may not be suitable for the camera that is recording activities. If using a mobile platform to capture activities, the additional task of recording interactions will impact battery life and, if network-based storage is part of the design, the communication needs (in terms of coverage and bandwidth) will certainly be different than those of the AR-assisted application itself.

Another key component when recording the user’s interaction is to have permission in advance for the project to use the recording in documenting the impacts of the AR-enabled system. Usually a simple release is adequate but in a unionized work setting, having the cooperation and support of the union might be necessary for successfully documenting the impacts.

Be Flexible

In some projects, the additional information provided by an Augmented Reality-assisted system introduces new opportunities to save resources, to catch un-discovered errors or even to document entirely new methods to complete a task. It may also enhance the work experience of the employee, which may be an important “soft metric” that is difficult to assess. In general, these are all important factors to consider, even if difficult to quantify.

In order to reduce the likelihood of overlooking the qualitative (as well as unanticipated quantitative) impacts, projects should include an in-depth exit interview.  This can be conducted either online or face-to-face. In the interview with study participants, invite discussion and feedback on all aspects of the experience. Something valuable is likely to shed light on metrics collected as well as other obstacles to, or drivers of adoption.

Recommendations

Every organization has a unique approach to new technology introduction and different industries place emphasis on different performance metrics, but there are some basic best practices to follow, based on past experience of AREA members. When designing an AR introduction impact measurement system, project leaders can apply these best practices:

1. Consider the business setting and management priorities in order to design metrics that matter most to those making the final decisions.
2. Collaborate with different stakeholders and groups to identify and thoroughly document characteristics of bottlenecks or pain points that are common or similar across diverse professional skill sets, tasks, groups, products or facilities in the organization (e.g., transit time, down time, assembly errors and inspections).
3. Capture existing processes that are part of the proposed AR introduction use case, as performed by both novices and senior members of the workforce, without the assistance of new technology.
4. Build in or set up recording systems that do not interfere with or impact the user’s performance or the AR experience delivery.
5. Perform an exit interview and keep an open mind about impacts that the user may have perceived that were not originally part of the study’s measured parameters.

How have you designed your pilot to capture metrics, and have the measurements helped to estimate the impact the introduction of Augmented Reality will have in your organization? Please leave your feedback below.

Want to hear more? Watch this video…

Which of the many use cases for enterprise Augmented Reality should you implement first?

Selecting the best use cases for enterprise Augmented Reality introduction is arguably one of the most important steps that business managers will perform when exploring the technology’s potential to impact workplace performance.

During the ARise ’15 conference, Carl Byers, president of the AREA and Chief Strategy Officer of Contextere, presented key concepts and provided valuable recommendations for those who are planning to introduce AR in their organizations. This post builds upon those remarks.

Why Use Case Selection is Important

Careful selection of use cases for your company’s first AR project is critical for several reasons. First, the project will be used to choose the tools and to pilot the selected technologies while learning their benefits and limitations. Second, successful results will illustrate AR’s potential and help obtain buy-in for further investments from other groups and management.

The enterprise IT department is frequently involved with vendor selection and assessments of new tools. Since hardware is almost always involved in the delivery of AR experiences, the IT department may consider support for enterprise mobility management, connectivity and data security among other processes and objectives. The evaluation of a vendor’s training and support programs may also be performed during or in parallel with the development of the first project. Consider use cases that leverage prior positive experiences with IT introduction projects. A use case in a department that has not had prior IT-assisted technology introductions may introduce unforeseen problems.

Other departments, for example, human performance support and training organizations, also frequently feel they have a stake in how Augmented Reality is introduced.  Their interests need to be weighed and considered when selecting initial use cases.

Driving Internal Rate of Return for AR

The ultimate goal of introducing a new technology is to improve operational efficiency. Efficiency might be improved by driving down costs or time, or improve workforce productivity. Sometimes capturing the full value of a new technology involves organizational change.

When evaluating possible AR use cases, it’s important to consider how deeply changes associated with AR introduction may impact a business process, or multiple processes. An initial, low-cost research project in a sandboxed environment or an isolated field support improvement for one specific piece of equipment may be just right. But if the organization’s management is exploring more dramatic changes, AR introduction may be part of a larger initiative.

When considering the details of the AR introduction project and calculating IRR, it’s important to examine the productivity changes that could, once demonstrated for an isolated case, be applied across an entire factory or line of products and customers. Consider how a few small and specific pilots could meet your long term goals.

That said, it’s well known that large-scale change is usually slower. Should an AR pilot be considered as part of a larger organizational transition, the project may have to cope with many more variables and could experience greater delays.  The good news is that, if proven in the context of a broader change management approach, AR adoption may be driven from within as “just an integral part” of the organizational improvements.  

Complexity that’s Easily Tracked

Early resistance to AR projects has, in some organizations, been traced to the fact that the task or use case that was selected for AR testing was easy for an employee to perform unassisted. The lesson is that if there isn’t a pain point, AR isn’t needed.  Don’t waste valuable time, money or political “capital” of an organization.

That said, there are also risks in overreaching with respect to the current state of the art of Augmented Reality. If the user pain point proposed for a use case involves conditions that are difficult for current AR systems to identify or objects that are difficult to track, the technology may not perform reliably. Lack of reliability and repeatability fuels doubts and generally reduces the user and management’s appetite for the new technology.

Leveraging Existing Enterprise Data Stores

Developing the first AR experiences for a pilot requires new skills, methodologies and tools. Rather than adding to the project workload by developing new content as well, a use case can reuse or leverage existing enterprise data.

While some assets may need to be modified or adapted for mobile delivery platforms, overall project complexity will be lower and less costly when new AR experiences are based on existing enterprise data.

Involving Mission Critical Systems

Whenever mission critical or other high-impact enterprise systems are involved in an AR pilot project, the project may be escalated to management levels that are more risk averse: the CEO doesn’t want to do anything that might impact sales and stock prices, and the C-suite frequently shares that aversion to risk. On the other hand, if you can gain their support, their subordinates will be on board with the project and there will be fewer delays due to internal doubts.

The need for deep testing of any interface with a mission critical system, if that’s the route that’s recommended for an early AR project, is more costly and time consuming and may introduce unanticipated delays. If testing fails, integration with mission critical systems may cause the project to be cancelled.

Recommendations

1. Choose one or a few use cases where value can be measured clearly. For example, reduced down time, increased safety or compliance.
2. Focus on simple, practical, quick value capture. In the figure below we show how seven different factors can be weighted:
   1. Use a standard network architecture
   2. Design for bursty communication for longer battery life
   3. Identify where there’s large differences between novice and expert performance
   4. Make it easy to capture and repeat best practices
   5. Find use cases where some network services (e.g., videoconferencing with an expert) or special equipment (e.g., safety glasses) is already required
   6. Solve a current or recurring pain point
   7. Provide access to enterprise data systems via mainstream (legacy) interfaces
3. Thoroughly document all assumptions, steps taken and feedback, and share these with your technology partner.

Source: APX Labs

Choose and Choose Again

There are potentially hundreds of interesting use cases, and we’re currently building a use cases listing on the AREA site.

Choosing the initial AR use case is, as we’ve discussed, important but not the end of the process.

Frequently there are multiple AR use cases that can impact the operational efficiency of an enterprise. As a result, it’s not unusual for an AR pilot project to take workflows of multiple departments or processes into account. If this is the case, make sure the different use cases are well defined and the lessons learned in one project are captured and applied to others.

What are the initial use cases you’ve considered for evaluating whether Augmented Reality is right for your organization?

Want to hear more? Watch this video…

Shipbuilding has been the perfect environment for industrial innovation for hundreds of years. Sails to steam, wood to iron, rivets to welds, blueprints to CAD, stick-built to modular construction–all major innovations to building extraordinarily complex vehicles. At Newport News Shipbuilding, we constantly seek new innovations to improve our safety, quality, cost, and schedules. Since 2007, we have explored Augmented Reality as a means to shift away from paper-based documentation in our work.

Since we began looking into AR for construction, operation, and maintenance workflows, we’ve come up with hundreds of use-cases to improve tasks or processes. These range from assisting shipbuilders in painting, ship-fitting, electrical installation, pipefitting, and more in several ways – on new construction ships, ship overhaul, facility maintenance, and decommissioning. Every use-case improves our ability to deliver nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, but at different degrees of improvement.

We’re always adding new use-cases to the list, and we’ve needed to devise an adaptable framework for organizing and categorizing existing, proven uses and prioritizing future, potential use-cases.

Genesis of a Use Case

Augmented Reality should be employed first in places where it creates the most value – and that actually can be subjective. Sometimes, this is helping people become more efficient and working more quickly, sometimes this is about helping to reduce errors and rework, and sometimes it is all about improving safety. At Newport News Shipbuilding, a dedicated team of AR professionals help determine where AR is best suited, whether the technology is ready for the use-case, and how to best implement and scale a solution.

The first step in defining a use-case is performed by an AR industrial engineer, who determines where AR brings value in a workflow. She first meets with a skilled craftsman, and understands their challenges and needs. The industrial engineer identifies pain points in processes, such as when and where shipbuilders must consult paper documentation to complete a task. She must also consider human factors and always balance the needs of the craftsman against the capability of the AR solution as it can be delivered today.

Then, the AR engineer works with an AR designer and an AR developer to deliver a product. The AR designer determines the available data, components, interfaces and models for the system to satisfy requirements. Once the use-case is fully defined and the data is assembled, an AR developer implements software solutions, tests the system, and ensures reliable and adaptable development tools. At the end of the process, a new use-case is addressed, and a high-value product is delivered to the skilled craftsman.

A Classification Scheme

Over the years we’ve devised hundreds of use-cases and needed a way to understand and prioritize them. We started by categorizing them into a taxonomy that we think of as general, but we admit they might be specific to our business. We call these our seven use-case categories.

These 7 categories then are applied across three additional axes. These variables create a volume of exploration, or “trade space” for each use-case. The three application axes are as follows.

Return on Investment

When investing in new technology, it’s important to find those areas offering the highest return on investment (ROI) for every dollar spent. At the same time, there are potentially high value use-cases that are simply not conducive to an AR solution today. As a professional AR team, we pride ourselves on understanding when we can have an impact, when we can have a really big impact, and when AR technology simply isn’t yet up to the challenge. We primarily focus on advancing the seven use-case categories, and use the three variable axes to ensure we are maximizing customer value and ROI. As our expertise has grown, and as the technology matures, we have steadily increased value and readiness of AR throughout the entire trade space.

Today, we assess highest potential ROI and use that as a metric for scaling priority. Our model shows the greatest ROI in use-cases for inspection, work instruction, and training. Our focus there is now on scalability. We also know that the ROI is really tied directly to the technology readiness levels (TRL) of AR for those use-cases. While we are certain there will be benefit, maybe even higher ROI, on workflow management, operations, safety, and logistics – the readiness levels of AR for those use-cases within our trade space simply isn’t as high (today) as for the first three mentioned. You can’t scale what doesn’t yet work. So for the latter four uses, therefore, the investment isn’t in scalability, but rather in improving the TRL.

As Augmented Reality technology becomes more capable and less expensive to implement, enterprises will find ever-increasing uses. We’d like to learn how others in different industries have been developing theirs. Please share your comments and experiences with us.

Data is the glue that connects customers, products and departments—the living tissues—of an enterprise. Without data and new methods of producing, collecting, storing and using life-giving data, companies and markets shut down. And, for the past decade we’ve been hearing how some companies transform themselves and their industries with more and better data, and how systems that leverage enormous amounts of data—Big Data—continue to receive huge investment.

Some of those who were successful in introducing Big Data are now surrounding themselves, and building new businesses (or new opportunities for old businesses) with “smart, connected products.” You might’ve read about early versions of such products. These are physical objects built with connectivity and embedded sensors that pump out and ingest real time data for a specific purpose. Bruce Sterling coined the term “Spimes” to capture how these physically real objects also have a strong sense of their place and time. They are fundamentally important to a generation of 21^st century businesses that see a future based on Big Data, but they are hard to make and use.

A Framework for Answering Big Questions

Few question the need for smart, connected products. The big questions for which many managers would like simple and clear answers are how to design the best smart, connected products and how to develop new businesses (or better, more efficient business processes) around these.

In my opinion, few business leaders have been able to better communicate the necessary ingredients and steps for designing, building and using smart, connected products for business transformation than Michael E. Porter, faculty member at Harvard Business School, and James E. Heppelmann, president and CEO of PTC.

Originally published in Harvard Business Review on November 2014, their first article on smart, connected products defines the domain and the new technology stack upon which the domain is based. The new technology stack Porter and Heppelmann define is composed of:

• New product hardware
• Embedded software
• Connectivity
• A product cloud consisting of software running on remote servers
• A suite of security tools
• A gateway for external information sources
• Integration with enterprise business systems

The authors then explain how these smart, connected products are exerting pressure on businesses by changing the competitive landscape for those companies who adopt and deploy them, and those who don’t. Essentially, the focus of the article is on how to use smart, connected products to manage or change the competitive landscape.

Building a Bridge between Smart, Connected Products and People

In the October 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review, another article by the same authors provides insights into the internal use of smart, connected products. It focuses on their use in transforming businesses and their value chains.  For those of us involved in the introduction and deployment of Augmented Reality in enterprise, this is a highly useful guide and conceptual resource to study and have handy.

“How to Smart Connected Products are Transforming Business” adds concepts that utilize and build upon the previously defined technology stack and the original framework while also examining the human side of smart product introduction.

Porter and Hepplemann explain that smart, connected products require a new design discipline. The use of Augmented Reality is one of the ways that changes in design are transforming the value of limited resources, primarily by reducing task execution times by humans by displaying specialized knowledge in the field of view.

Augmented Reality is also making other processes more efficient. From configuration of unfamiliar instruments to after-sales services, the authors repeatedly illustrate how having data accessible and visible in context is reducing the time and the errors that can increase the cost of complex processes.

Many industries will be transformed by smart, connected products using new, contextually sensitive user interfaces. Although they never use the buzzword “Industry 4.0,” the authors give a wide range of examples and conclude that manufacturing companies (or manufacturing departments within other industries) are the first to tap this potential in a meaningful way.

People Remain a Limited and Valuable Resource

The adoption of Augmented Reality in enterprise fundamentally builds upon the successful introduction of smart, connected products. It will not be able to deliver on its potential without parallel investments in other enterprise IT systems, in particular those that produce, collect and store data in the new products.  

Investments in technology are required but not sufficient. One of the take home messages of the second installment of Porter and Hepplemann’s smart, connected products series is that people trained in the new design disciplines, and in the development of experiences and systems built upon them, are rare.

New expertise needed for smart product design and use is in desperately short supply. Before those with the expertise are available in numbers sufficient to meet future demand, business leaders need to develop new cultures that place value on collaboration between people in different product and service life cycle phases. New incentive models will be developed to reward productivity without errors and higher compliance levels than have ever been possible.

In the end, or at least for the next transformation of business, people using data in better and faster ways remain more important than simply producing and storing more data.

Has your organization defined roles suitable for the next transformation of business?

The AREA has a vision and, at the same time, we must remain pragmatic. Let me explain.

We’re all familiar with the myths about the industrial revolution: it happened overnight, right? Coal leapt out of the ground and formed coke. Iron became steel and the rest is history. Then, 100 years later, in the late-20^th century, computers profoundly changed what people could do with their knowledge and, using networked computers, silicon-driven industries revolutionized how people communicate and how just about everything—human and machine—works.

In the future, businesses will experience another transformation that will have a big impact on workers who have spent far less time behind computer screens than knowledge workers. Largely without the assistance of silicon-based computational devices, they move themselves and materials around; they build, transform, maintain, use, repair and even take apart objects in the physical world.  They are pragmatic when it comes to the introduction of new technologies.

Soon, the procedures these workers need to follow will leap into their line of sight and at their fingertips, endowing them with the knowledge of those who benefited from the previous cyber revolution.

Improving Workplace Performance

Augmented Reality-assisted enterprise systems will drive significant improvements in many operations, as measured by lower costs and higher productivity. Those whose work requires guidance, decision support or collaboration concerning objects and places in the physical world will, through contextually relevant visualization of information: 

• Be more productive
• Operate more safely
• Consistently comply with all policies and procedures
• Perform tasks with the lowest possible number of errors

But first, some innovative leaders have to take risks and make investments that may, as when Matthew Boulton continued to finance the research of James Watt, appear imprudent.

Who Are We Talking About?

The steam engine and industrial revolution did not happen overnight. It was only many years after entering into partnership with entrepreneur Matthew Boulton that the concepts and hard work of James Watt produced significant efficiency improvements by comparison with the earliest model steam engines.

The AREA recognizes that many investors will take risks before Augmented Reality is mature. There will also be many engineers whose brilliance of conception and practical know-how will be needed to improve the productivity of workers.

Who Are We Talking To?

We’re talking to you: the developer, the business manager, the IT group, the learning department manager, the innovation group, and the executive office.

You each need different arguments to persuade you of the value of investing in enterprise Augmented Reality.  Our content and informational programs are being designed to match the needs of these diverse groups of stakeholders.

Our target audiences are not limited to those in enterprises that are implementing Augmented Reality for their internal operational needs. We also recognize target audiences in organizations that provide goods and services to enterprise customers. These include the providers of core enabling technologies and vendors of enterprise IT hardware and software, as well as systems integrators of many kinds.

Pragmatic, Like Our Members

Everyone wants to quickly achieve goals towards AR introduction. But hype builds up unrealistic expectations. Disappointed decision makers may not shoulder the risks again.

In order to help all these different groups present their offers and, on the other hand, understand what they are acquiring or introducing into their businesses, the AREA is pragmatic.

The AREA’s programs are designed to simply and consistently:

• Reduce the myths and mysteries associated with Augmented Reality
• Help customers to establish reasonable expectations (where they can be met with existing technologies)

Pragmatism with practical information—not  hype—is as important as vision.

The AREA offers unique content about enterprise Augmented Reality that you won’t find elsewhere. This post shows you how to find and take advantage of all that the website provides.

When you know what you’re looking for, we suggest entering a few keywords in the search box.

Learning about Augmented Reality and Staying up to Date

We offer different types of engaging content yet navigation is easy. There are only six items on the menu.

If you are new to enterprise Augmented Reality, browse the pages under the “Why AR for Enterprise” menu. They are packed with articles on technologies, use cases, getting started and more basic information about this exciting field.

Visiting the AREA website is a great way to stay informed about trends and happenings in enterprise Augmented Reality. AREA blog posts, news and events are easy to find using these menus along the top of the screen.

AREA members are industry leaders in Augmented Reality and regularly contribute their opinions, ideas and insights to the AREA blog. We make sure you know about relevant industry news on enterprise Augmented Reality topics from around the web through our curated news pages. Finally, we keep you looking ahead by sharing highlights of upcoming member and industry gatherings through postings to our events calendar.

Member Portal

Some parts of the site are only accessible by members in good standing. Here all classes of members will find targeted content that helps them to get ahead in the Augmented Reality space. Examples include case studies, research, time-sensitive information under development by AREA committees and other upcoming features.

Currently member-exclusive content is found in the “Resources” menu. Join the AREA today to help drive changes in your organization and reserve exclusive access to our member network, content portal and more.

About the AREA

Finally, under “The AREA” menu at the far right, there’s a wealth of information about our organization. This includes in-depth profiles of our members and their achievements, our board, information on being a member, AREA committees for marketing and defining upcoming technical frameworks, the newsroom and our FAQ.

Our board members invest their time and financial resources towards the successful achievement of the AREA’s goals by serving on the board of directors and as committee chairs.

Our committees are listed on a dedicated page and members will use this page to access committee deliverables.

To learn more about membership plans and the process for joining, visit the membership information page and FAQ.

We Want to Hear from You

We welcome your feedback and comments. Do you have questions about the AREA or enterprise Augmented Reality? Can we help clarify any mysteries or myths you’ve heard about Augmented Reality?

Please register to leave a comment on this page or send us a message using our contact page.