Bring Out the Talent: A Learning and Development Podcast

The Future of Learning: AR/VR’s Evolving Role in Corporate Training

• Maria Melfa & Jocelyn Allen • Season 5 • Episode 62

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AR and VR are no longer a trending novelty utilized by the top 1%. These immersive technologies are rapidly being embraced by organizations worldwide. In fact, a recent survey found that 82% of company executives anticipate incorporating immersive technologies into their business models within the next three years. In this episode of ‘Bring Out the Talent,’ we are joined by Jason Morris, Extended Reality (XR) Manager at CrossTrainer, to discuss the future of learning and AR and VR’s evolving role in corporate training. So, tune in for an insightful journey into the future of workplace!

SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to

SPEAKER_02:

Bring Out the Talent, a podcast featuring learning and development experts discussing innovative approaches and industry insights. Tune in to hear our talent, help develop yours. Now, here are your hosts, TTA's CEO and President, Maria Melfa, and Talent Manager, Jocelyn Allen.

SPEAKER_03:

Hello, everyone. I

SPEAKER_04:

know it's an everyone today. I know we have one extra person, another partner in crime, joining us for the first time in a very long time. Mr. Well, I guess you can introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so thank you. Yeah, my name is John Lavager. I'm the Senior Director of Learning Solutions. Thank you for including me after this very long time.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, we're happy to have you back, Johnny boy, supporting us in the non-technical ways that Maria and I have yet to catch on to in our several years of doing the podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, we're very excited to have you back, John. I know you were on our podcast probably about a year and a half ago, and it was very good to have you and joining the conversation. So it's about time we have you back there. I don't know why we haven't. sooner no

SPEAKER_04:

i know i'm excited it'll be a good good little trifecta or a quad rather because we do have a guest that we're interviewing today that's what podcasts are right so we do just

SPEAKER_03:

making sure we remember after the year is that what the gentleman in the cowboy hat and sunglasses is that who he is yes

SPEAKER_04:

yes and that is a true story yes I know we're going to have to put a picture of this up when the episode launches because people should not be missing this, Jason, this outfit choice today.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, this is just all in a day's work. I mean, you got to be flexible, right?

SPEAKER_03:

Exactly. Exactly. We like that a lot. So AR and VR are no longer a trending novelty utilized by only the top 1%. These immersive technologies are rapidly being embraced by organizations worldwide. In fact, a recent survey found that 82% of company executives anticipate incorporating immersive technologies into their business models within the next few years. In this episode of Bring Out the Talent, we are joined by Jason Morris, Extended Reality Manager at Crosstrainer. He will discuss the future of learning and AR and VR's evolving role in corporate training. So welcome, Jason, and thank you for being our guest today.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure.

SPEAKER_03:

So, Jason, I'd love to learn more about your role at Crosstrainer. I know we've worked with you for the last several years. You guys do amazing work. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do as an XR manager?

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks. Yeah, so just to unpack XR a little bit, It's funny because the X could be a lot of things, right? So the technical definition is extended reality. I always thought of it from a math standpoint as it's just X, right? It just stands for anything. Anything that's reality-based, that's what it does. And then the 90s kid in me is like, extreme reality. This ain't your grandma's reality. And so there's a little bit of all that, right? So I'm an XR evangelist, which means that I... I am constantly learning about the different things that are out there and trying to spread excitement and kind of understanding. So in a lot of ways, it's a teaching role where I'm trying to kind of demystify and bring some of this new tech to people that think, yeah, that's just so far away. That's so many steps removed from where I am right now. And just kind of show them, well, it's only really one or two steps. And then, yeah, maybe that thing over there is really far, but there are ways you could get there and get some pretty cool stuff too. And so just being able to kind of spread that kind of understanding of the different technologies and augmented and virtual reality and mixed reality and spatial computing and all that stuff. It's just an AI and 3D and just, there's so many different technologies out there right now that it's just a lot of fun. That actually ties into another one of my hats, which is research. So I'm kind of a I lead research in as many areas as I can because as a consultant, you need to know what else is out there to be able to offer those ideas. All of these fields are rapidly expanding. There's so much growth in AR, VR, AI, and the convergence of all of those things. It's probably the biggest driver in tech right now. Just kind of keeping on top of all that is a full-time job in and of itself, you know, aside from experimenting with things and getting up and running. So you really have hands-on experience with, you know, what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03:

Certainly sounds like an exciting place to be. How did you get into this? What's your background?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. My background was actually in artificial intelligence. So I have a kind of, I went to UF and got my computer science engineering degree and then kind of wasn't sure what else to do after that. So I just kind of stuck around and got a master's in AI. And then I was always interested in those kind of bigger questions about how do we think as humans? What really are we? How do we learn? And I thought kind of as an engineer, the way that you really figure that out is by reverse engineering it. So I wanted to kind of get into how people actually learn How do we think? Why are we the way we are? And the more I did that, the more I realized that AI is such a powerful tool that I didn't want to contribute too much to bringing it early because I felt like it's the kind of thing that you need a lot of wisdom for as a society before you're ready for it. And so after college, I kind of just decided to pick something else creative in tech and I'd been using Flash a lot. in previous work. And so just love being able to work with creatives and artists and build things. And now that AI kind of has caught up, it's really interesting to be able to take some of that old kind of knowledge and be able to reapply it and see how far it's come since I kind of left the field a while ago.

SPEAKER_03:

Very cool. So that's why you're wearing your cowboy hat and your sunglasses because you're doing cool things.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm kind of on the digital frontier, if you will. So yeah, you could say that.

SPEAKER_04:

I was going to say the same thing. I was like, well, there you go. You want to make things fun and exciting. I feel like it doesn't get More fun and exciting than a cowboy hat and sunglasses while we're, and pixelated sunglasses at that while we're talking about AR and VR. I have to say every time I see work that includes this type of modality or this type of technology, it's so inspiring. Like really, it gets people excited to see things in learning that looks the way that AR and VR does. And I mean, down to We're using it in places that I don't even think we recognize that that's what it is. Like Amazon, you will go to buy a piece of furniture and they're like, hey, see it in your room. I know. that that's augmented reality from what I learned from Cross Trainer. And it's just, it's really cool to see things like that being integrated in our day-to-day because then you can see how it applies to corporate level learning and obviously the trends that are taking place. So can you talk a little bit about those latest developments that kind of we may not know about? How is AR and VR going to look in 2024?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we're seeing huge changes right now. A lot of it's brought in by a lot of the AI integration that we're getting that's able to do face tracking and object detection, image detection so much better than it used to. And so now we're seeing this kind of explosion of applications where people are able to integrate the digital and the physical world a little bit better. And so obviously for teaching and training, that's huge to be able to give real world examples and actually show what you're doing. So this February, the Apple, their Vision Pro is coming out. So they don't call it augmented reality. They call it, and they don't call it mixed reality like Microsoft did to get the M in there. They are calling it spatial computing. So they're trying to completely separate from the whole X reality paradigm, but it's still the same thing. They're mixing a camera that kind of sees the world And they're trying to mix the pass-through camera, so seeing the actual world that you're seeing, and a digital overlay on top of it. It should be the best version of that that we've seen so far. And the way that they are changing the interaction model to be something where it's about where you look is your cursor. So being able to look at something and select it just by looking at it, essentially, it's a powerful interaction change. And I'm really curious to see what that will do. It reminds me of the gaze-based interaction of early VR, where you'd put on a headset and whatever you looked at, that would get selected. And it was an early way of intuitively moving through an experience, but it lacked some control. Well, Apple's kind of upping the game there. So I'm really excited to see what 2024 holds for spatial computing, for being able to interact with things in your physical environment. But also on the web, we are able to do a lot more with things like SCORM integration than we previously have. So we are really excited about the ways that we can integrate XAPI and different kind of SCORM tracking with spatial computing to be able to accurately determine what are people doing in training and be able to then take that data set, give it to AI and be able to get more accurate kind of feedback on the larger data set of user interactions. So I think there's going to be this kind of crossover between metrics, having really good metrics, which have always been important, but the problem is interpreting the data. Well, now with AI, we actually have tools that can do that interpretation for us. So I think we're going to see a lot more metrics-based training with actual results behind it that can be driven by these kind of systems. Yeah, and in general, I think it's also going to be the creation process for all of these things is getting changed by AI as well. I mean, at Crosstrainer, there are projects that we couldn't have taken on before that as the tools are rolling out, it's almost hard for us to keep up with how quickly AI The character creation process, the avatar creation process has evolved from being something that when I first started with Cross Trainer was extremely intensive and had to be done by hand. And now you can generate a character from a picture. You can apply animations to that character. You can do all kinds of things to really build out rich experiences and instructors too. So yeah. Building virtual worlds for learning to take place in is, I think, about to explode this year.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's certainly exciting. So, Jason, I think back and spoken with hundreds of learning and development leaders over recent years, and there is, I mean, there's a huge variety of positions on AR, VR, and VR. Some organizations haven't really started dabbling yet. Maybe it's just a thought down the road. There's some that have actually built out entire departments around getting some of these solutions in place, but I think the vast majority are hovering somewhere in the middle. They're just starting to dip their toe in and understand what the outcomes would be from this technology and how to utilize it effectively and what the use cases are, et cetera. What advice would you give to companies as far as the courage needed to take the next steps with AR,

SPEAKER_00:

VR? I mean, it's a great point. And I think some companies are unsure about what to do. So a lot of companies, their first AR, VR project is really not part of a strategy, but more of an experiment to see where it fits in with their training. And so what I would recommend when you start out is not to take too big of a chunk in the beginning. But to start with something that is an area of your training that you know is underperforming or that you would like to improve or that just really lends itself to something physical and to kind of try to find those low hanging fruits as the first kind of experience that you build. So I would also say that if you're a smaller company, you probably feel like you don't have the resources to do something custom or to kind of perform your own training. If you're a larger company, it's hard to feel like you can develop the infrastructure to build a whole VR training simulation for the amount of people that you have. And so it would make sense that medium-sized companies, and this is something that gets borne out in the details or in the numbers, medium-sized companies kind of have that right kind of combination of resourcing and desire to be kind of more efficient and and the ability to be flexible and kind of change. So I would say all of those factors are things that will kind of contribute to the success of the project because you do see a lot of very effective campaigns come out when they are targeted and they've got a strategy behind it with metrics and measurement in place. And we actually just did a project with someone and they... we're kind of awarded an innovation medal, which really to me is, that's bravery. Your ability to take on new challenges, to identify possibilities, and then to say, we think we can make the world better by taking this chance. It takes some bravery. So it's one of those things that it's not for everybody in every position, but if you want to make a splash and you want to do something that's going to maybe change things and get some people talking, It's a really affordable option. And what people don't understand is that there are so many different types of AR, VR, that there's something that basically everybody could do to get the ball rolling and to start integrating with their training. But what you see so often are these really cool, huge projects. So maybe it's daunting for some companies to kind of get started with that.

SPEAKER_04:

I like how you phrased that, too, by including company size and seeing... kind of looking at scale, how these things can be integrated, what you can do with them, etc. So It brings up a good point because we had looked at a report from training industry talking about these midsize companies, what they're doing and how frequently they're using AR and VR versus smaller or larger companies at the same scale. And while they're using it more than these smaller and larger companies, they're also spending less on training costs. It's underscoring the scalability factor of XR training. So I know that you had mentioned a couple of things, but can we talk a can gain from integrating this technology, even things that we're not necessarily thinking about up front?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. Every company is dealing with a number of issues in kind of our work environment right now. Things like the work from home kind of shift that is making people feel a little bit more disconnected and like they're all kind of in their own space. AR, VR can help to unify that. people and make them feel like they're all in the same space. So there are meeting tools for being able to have coworking meetings and things like that in VR, but also just being able to take 360 pictures of a beautiful office or work sites that are specific to you and being able to kind of put those on the web, be able to show other people, clients and people within the company It all helps to kind of create that sense of connection and physical unity that I think a lot of us are kind of missing sometimes in this kind of fractured environment. There's also the idea that a lot of people in today's workforce and just in general are used to kind of video game style things, right? Everything is trying to entertain you and be something that is gamified. And so it's really hard to keep people's attention with something that's kind of the same old training, unless it's got some other hook or you're kind of relying on the training's importance to kind of drive it. But I know we've done trade shows where we were just doing entry level training for a company. And we had, because it was in VR, we had a line. that went past the three other booths that were all empty because it's a new technology that people see and they react to. So no matter what you do, you immediately get this benefit of having people pay attention to you because it's something novel that they haven't seen before. Or hopefully it's something really cool that they want to see more of. But at the very least, you have that entry level, what is this curiosity? So it does kind of help to drive motivation at a very basic level. And there are all ranges of experiences, like I said, that you could create. You could do something simple that's just like a 360 spatial experience and kind of point things out. You can have models that are actually like if you have 3D models, CAD models, products that you sell, you can have them exist in someone else's space and let them interact with it. so that they can feel like it's actually there, like you were talking about with Amazon. That's actually fairly straightforward application these days in terms of augmented reality. So people might be surprised to realize that they can take existing product catalogs and essentially make a digital catalog that does a lot of the same stuff and has an extra wow factor. So there's just a big part of this is really about learning and getting the solutions out there. so that people know what's available to them. And that's a big part of my job. I see it as kind of a creative technologist to be able to say, okay, well, what are your needs? And more than just what you're asking, what other technologies exist that maybe you didn't know about that might be able to apply to your problem space?

SPEAKER_01:

So Jason, as organizations make the decision to go ahead and integrate an AR, VR learning solution, What are some of the challenges or pitfalls that you've seen them run into? And have there been some pretty effective ways to address those?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. It's very easy in XR and AR to get overwhelmed by the idea of kind of getting the technology done and to lose sight of kind of the forest for the trees, right? So... The most important thing I would recommend to companies when you get started with XR, AR training or experiences is to clearly define what you want the outcomes to be. Because just like any training course, it's about effectiveness at the end of the day. You want the wow factor, you want the aha, but you also want to make sure that you're making effective training. And one of the benefits of this kind of spatial way of doing computing is that you can record absolutely everything that a person is doing while they're interacting with the training. So in terms of understanding what people are, say you had a repair simulation and you can actually track what are people reaching for? How long is it taking for them to get something, to take one element and put it somewhere else where it needs to be? You can, do all these kind of metrics and measurements that will kind of really help you get fine-grained understanding of effectiveness. So one of the biggest pitfalls I see too is that there are companies that are doing this as an experiment without full understanding of what they want to get out of their training. And so the training ends up evolving as more and more people kind of get their hands around it. So It's really important to clearly define what you want at the beginning, to develop a set of metrics that you want to measure, to define what success looks like, and then also to clearly express what you're building to the person that you're building it for, to the team and client that you're building it for, because so much of this is kind of an unknown. And so the quicker you can make it tangible, and get the people who are going to be using it, get it into their hands and get feedback on how it should be improved, how it should be made, the better the product's going to be. And a lot of times when I have seen these kind of pitfalls in AR, VR development, it's often because they didn't know what they were really getting until it was too late. Or some key decision maker didn't know what they were getting. And so that's the other side is not just people within the project, but everybody who is going to be looking and addressing the accountability of the project and the effectiveness of the project. They also need to be, all the stakeholders need to understand what the project is because oftentimes you'll see this whole project done really well. And then it goes to a couple levels above them and they don't really get, well, what is this new technology? So making sure that you've expressed that idea and kind of concept throughout the organization is really helpful in kind of ensuring long-term effectiveness and adoption. And that's really what we're looking to do is just kind of build systems that we can keep integrating and kind of perfecting so we can have a better training system.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's really where we're at right now is we've got all these AR VR tools that are so close to being ready for prime time for enterprises, but they've just been, they've been done as experiments and as small projects. And so now we need to really solidify them and build on everything and make bigger architectures out of AR VR. And I think that's what 2024 is going to be.

SPEAKER_03:

Jason, any particular success story that you could share?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I can't share the company's name, but we actually just had a really successful launch of a couple of different products for a company. And they were a, it's a large company that had training to do, but it's really training people that need to understand what this condition is about. So it's for a medical condition, you're trying to build empathy for people. who are undergoing this kind of condition. And we were able to build an experience for them that was something that their team internally was thrilled by. All of the feedback was extremely positive. They actually won an innovation award. It was a company that I kind of mentioned earlier about being able to take steps in training to go further than just talk about what the interactions were, but being able to actually walk in the shoes of patients, that's something a little bit different. So yeah, it's kind of fun to be able to provide that.

SPEAKER_03:

Sounds like a great case study, especially getting the innovation award. That's very cool in this space. An innovative product. And to have an innovative product getting an innovation award, that's like double innovation.

SPEAKER_04:

Right? Innovation squared.

SPEAKER_03:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

Innovation-ception. I

SPEAKER_03:

like that. You got to coin that word.

SPEAKER_04:

So as we're looking beyond... 2024 or even at 2024, because here we are right now and we know this technology is ever evolving. How do you envision the actual role of AR and VR in the corporate learning space evolving year after year after year?

SPEAKER_00:

I think Apple is going to be a huge driver for companies to finally be the canary in the coal mine that says, This is here to stay. And the experience is going to be magical enough that it will bring other people on board and kind of see what the rest of us who are already in this space have seen for so long. That there's just something different about spatial computing than every other kind of computing. When you put on a VR headset, you are in a different place. when you have something that's tracking your face and changing who you are, it's really cool. It's been cool for a while. All the kids get it with their filters and their TikToks and their whatnots. But I think Apple's kind of going to break the door down in terms of mass adoption of the idea of XR. And then once that idea is there, then I think there will be that desire to really start building out these systems to adapt to enterprise level needs, which it's been such a big system and such a hard nut to crack and such a kind of divergent tech technology stack for so long that it's been a tough kind of area to really solidify to a point where enterprises can use it. But It just needed, I think, the right players and the right level of sophistication. And 2024, with Apple's involvement with meta, stepping up their game significantly, they've got a whole kind of network they're building for being able to distribute meta threes and twos and be able to have kind of kiosk modes and other ways of distributing VR headsets that make the process easier for the people on the ground. All of those kinds of sophistications are really going to lead to a higher level of enterprise adoption. And then I'm really just excited for the AI side, too, to kind of take off and let content generation really open up. I think so much of training is limited by what you can really do within your budget. And as AI makes those possibilities more within our grasp, I think we're going to have some really exciting times in terms of being able to offer things that people never thought they were possible and be able to roll it out in a very quick way based on other things that we've built in the past. So I'm excited for 2024. And honestly, none of this is going away. It's only it was kind of I was worried about COVID. I did not see COVID coming. And the fact that we are where we are after COVID is And AR and VR are as strong as they are, despite the fact that we had a while where people went from having VR kind of stadiums to everything shutting down. And now it's all back here again. I'm excited for the future. I think there's really kind of no stopping the spatial train. And yeah, all aboard.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you. I love that wrap up. It's a really good transition because now we're going to get all aboard. The TTA 10 training, because it's that time of the show, Jason. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00:

Let's

SPEAKER_02:

do it. It's the TTA 10. Ten final questions for our guest.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, Jason, you know how this works because I told you about it before we started the show. Okay. So TTA 10, 10 fun questions. The goal is to answer them in 90 seconds or less, and there will be some sort of celebration at the end, depending on the outcome and your results. So before we get started, I just have to ask you the first question, which is, are you ready?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, my friend, David, can you put 90 seconds on the clock for us?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, 90 seconds begins now.

SPEAKER_04:

All right, Jason, what inspires you the most about the work that you do?

SPEAKER_00:

My creativity.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay. Little Bo Peep lost her sheep. She doesn't know where to find them. Where do you think she should look?

SPEAKER_00:

Next door.

SPEAKER_04:

What's three times two?

SPEAKER_00:

Six.

SPEAKER_04:

The Kool-Aid man just busted through the wall. What does he say?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

What's the first thing that you hope to do with your time when you retire?

SPEAKER_00:

Sale.

SPEAKER_04:

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed it is.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay. New year, new you, as they say. What's something that you hope to leave in 2023? 2023.

SPEAKER_00:

Just goodbye.

SPEAKER_04:

In general. Her name was Lola. She was a showgirl. Where did she work?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, man. A strainer.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Maria. I'll take that answer. A

SPEAKER_04:

little assist. What type of cuisine would you be completely content eating for the rest of your life?

SPEAKER_00:

Ooh, Italian.

SPEAKER_04:

Italian. If cowboy hats didn't exist, I'm sorry to even put the thought in your head, what hat would you be wearing right now?

SPEAKER_00:

Ooh, I'd like to think an astronaut helmet, but probably a dunce cap.

SPEAKER_04:

Awesome. Well, that is 10 questions with an assistant there. So, David, can we get the final results, please?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, indeed. One minute, 13 seconds. Well under the threshold of

SPEAKER_04:

90 seconds. Nice, Jason. Winner, winner. Hot dog sandwich dinner. That's

SPEAKER_02:

right.

UNKNOWN:

So...

SPEAKER_02:

We do have a special treat for Jason for conquering the TTA-10. Since he deals in the future and technology, we will salute him in the style of slam poetry, which, as we all know, is the poetry of the future. And we do need some futuristic music of some sort here.

SPEAKER_05:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Here we go. VR, AR, has it gone too far? AI, what's that guy? RD, 3D, I'm talking about Jason, you see. In the heart of the digital domain where code dances and dreams go, there's a tinkerer, a seeker. His name is Jason Morris, yo. Born under the curious gaze of stars, his path intertwined with fate. A life of wonder, a legit tech pioneer pushing boundaries never too late. A digital cowboy. He's adorned with bling, sunglasses pixel bright. He rides the circuits of innovation, chasing mad dreams in the binary light. Jason. Hey, son. Take me to that world of zeros and ones. His heart beats in code. He's in virtual beast mode. Down an unexplored road, he'll spin integrated gold, and then the cowboy will reload. AI, R&D, like a two-character play, he pirouettes through the tech ballet. Face-tracking whispers in the wind, his sick magic unfolds in a futuristic way. A camera lens, his digital eye sees the world through a badass prism. A digital overlay, a dance of bits, mad skin. Beyond algorithm. Selecting with a gaze. A cursor in the air. The world at his command. A magician of the digital frontier. Conjuring wonders. A wizardry so grand. So let's salute Jason. He's given us a peek of a future not bleak. Where new realities we'll seek. We say, yippee-ki-yay, you digital freak. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05:

That was amazing.

SPEAKER_03:

That was amazing, David. Well, thank you so much, Jason. It was a true pleasure. I love learning more about this topic and we hope to have you not only come visit our TTA office and go out to lunch with you, but continue to do some incredible work with our clients going forward.

SPEAKER_00:

It was just it was a pleasure to be able to talk about something that I've loved so much and that other people are starting to kind of realize there's something here. There's something magical. And so just any time there's a platform for it, I just I really appreciate being able to be given that. And then I honestly, that was probably the best gift I could have possibly been given. And that poem, oh my God, like that was, that's next level, man. I have no idea. I have no words. I'm speechless. You left me completely and

SPEAKER_05:

utterly speechless.

SPEAKER_04:

For more information on bringing AR and VR into your organization, visit us at thetrainingassociates.com. We'll see you later.