Let us face it: we’ve both seen plenty of AR/VR experience that made us think, ‘Why does this exist?’ The short and gimmicky AR apps that children play for thirty seconds, before they switch to Peppa Pig on YouTube. The clunky and nauseating VR games that proclaim that they are the future of enterprise training, as employees retch in the office corner. The companies buoyed by a wave of hype before the wave crashes and employees are scattered across the coarse sands of unemployment. For all the good this industry brings – and yes, there is a lot of good– a sludge of poor-quality experiences rears their shrivel heads from time to time.

Weaker companies are standard in competitive industries. In a normal market, healthy companies rise to the top while poor-performing start-ups are sifted back to the bottom of the fast-moving river. The market mechanism has largely worked, and over the last few years we have made some great progress. Gimmicky AR is replaced with integrated AR campaigns that enhances the brand’s storytelling. VR training and education is one of the healthiest areas of immersive, fulfilling its promise of cutting costs and improving efficiency. Our progression is not quick; both CCS Insight and Omdia predict that it is a few years out from high-end adoption. But we are getting there, and weak companies still crop up.  

Why is progression so slow? Any person proposing a grand theory of failure is wrong, for a start. No overall trend can explain its slow adoption across so many disparate industries and technologies. Price is certainly a barrier for most consumer-facing VR companies – but try suggesting that to enterprise companies who have the budget, but are unwilling to commit anyway. Accessibility is solved by running AR easily on smartphones, which billions of people have in their pockets… yet so few use AR regularly, despite how easy it is to use.

I do not want to push an overall view that covers everything. An industry is far more complex than a throwaway line an article. But I want to propose an additional factor that is plaguing many companies. Something that has become so common that it burns potential clients from adopting the technology again. I suggest that the design principles we use to design many experiences is back to front, and we are looking in the wrong places. When we design products in VR/AR, we are valuing the wrong parts of the process and leaving behind customers in the dirt.

Alright, let us step back a little. What do I mean by design principles, and what does that have to do with VR/AR?

Design thinking is a human-centred ethos of constructing a product. The process is about identifying the wants and needs of customers, and designing something for that. It is not about creating a flashy product that dazzles – all sizzle, no substance. Rather, it directly services what a person wants (or did not know they want).

The classic example is Edison inventing the lightbulb. Yes, the lightbulb itself revolutionised indoor lighting – but what is the point of it cannot run on the transmission of electricity? Solo inventions by themselves do not work; Edison also identified the customer’s need of access, and developed that as well. Edison created the invention and conceived the marketplace, together. Revolutionising technologies also needed additional work to service the additional needs of potential customers.

Let us take the same principles and apply them to a lucrative part of VR: enterprise training. Projects can differ in aims and scope, but most clients are looking to improve a few elements that directly service their goals. A ‘need’ would be something they want to be serviced for their project; the ‘design approach’ covers how the ‘need’ would be addressed. Largely, enterprise companies succeed in delivering them:

The needs and design responses above are a drastic summary, but reflect the one-two approach the companies use. If a client wants X, the company responds to it with Y. Over the last few years, VR enterprise companies have been some of the healthiest companies in the industry, partially because of happy customers that see the impact of their work.

Now let’s take AR as an example, in this case an AR marketing campaign. Again, needs and desires may change depending on the client, but here are some broad strokes:

None of this is rocket science. Many companies have this in mind, and correctly apply the right design approach to reel customers in. But a few companies invert their priorities – and that is when the trouble begins.

A common issue in many businesses is that they do not understand their customers. They try to, of course – monitoring customer emails, interviewing some people, and conducting research into what they want. But some companies take a customer want, misinterpret it, and provide the wrong design.

A classic example is user experience, and what they first see when they see a company for the first time. I will use one example, and strip the company’s name and details; but bear in mind that this is a VR software provider currently operating in the industry, and this is the first thing people see when they enter the website:

The first reaction of many browsers would be confusion. The first few seconds does not outline what they do, how they can help, and what kind of technology they provide to service the customer’s needs. The company is deep within themselves, keen to talk about what they do rather than how they can help. But most importantly, I am unsure why I would need a discovery map, or even what it is; what is the need being tackled?

If I were to re-work the website, I would step out of the company’s services and think about what the customer would want, and why they would use the VR software provider. What is the need that needs to be addressed? For the sake of argument, let us say it is to provide an online way of presenting a portfolio – an easy, clickable way to see what their portfolio includes. In which case, I would reword it as:

Additional details can be added as a cascade-effect on the website, filtering information by prioritising the most important details downwards via a cascade of relevancy. Address how the need can be solved, then pen down the details with the technology and services that would be used. Because ultimately, most customers do not care how it is solved; they just want the job done. The key learnings can apply to both VR and AR.

Many companies in VR/AR present themselves in the wrong way. Companies are so preoccupied with the services they provide, and the cutting-edge technology they use, that they lose sight of what their customers may want. Clients do not necessarily want to do something because it ‘looks cool.’

As I said earlier, I am not proposing that this is a wide-spread issue across all companies. Design thinking is a wide area, and a few companies are having issues expressing themselves. But in my view, the issue is widespread enough to stall our pick-up of new clients. On one level it is a communications issue, as potential customers are unsure what a particular VR/AR company may do or be able to help them. For others it is more fundamental, misunderstanding what their customers want and providing the wrong solution.

For example, one other fundamental issue is feeling sick in VR.  While companies are pushing how ‘revolutionising’ VR is, users are still feeling nauseous. We cannot sweep them away – how can we push a technology when there is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed? We cannot go in blindly and ignore the evident issues; the best approach to address them as much as we can.

So grab an outside, invite them behind your doors, and listen carefully to what they say. Pop your bubble, take the feedback to heart, and change aggressively. You will not regret it.

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