How to implement a smart glasses program in 7 easy steps.

Transcription

1 How to implement a smart glasses program in 7 easy steps. By Richard Gerardi April 4, 2017 In 2013, Gartner research predicted that 2017 would be the year the smart glasses could increase field service profits by a billion dollars. Juniper Research predicted that smart glass sales would jump up to about 10 million units annually by Why is that important to you? Because, smart glasses are finally ready for prime time, and if you re company is not in at least the exploration phase yet, you re already behind your competition. Over the last few years, innovation departments in transportation, healthcare (surgery, ambulance, telehealth, education) and field services have all been exploring how smart glasses could impact customer satisfaction, increase service revenue, improve patient outcomes, and reduce travel costs. That s just to name a few metrics to consider. The results are coming in from all industries, and in most use cases, smart glasses deliver on their promise. The question is What are the options, and how do I get started? Table of Contents Pick Your Tech.2 Virtual Reality. 2 Augmented Reality.3 See what I see Vision Sharing 4 Need Do you need cellular coverage?..5 Summing Up 5 7 Step Checklist..6 Page 1

2 Pick your tech Just like most new technologies, smart glasses have tons of potential, but not everything is quite ready for prime time yet. What can you use right now, that will help you improve processes that are costing you time and money? If you re looking for smart glasses to be used in healthcare, maintenance, transportation, field services, education or remote collaboration, you ll be thrilled to know that for most uses, smart glasses are ready for your use right now. Lets clarify the options first. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, or See What I See Vision Sharing? Virtual Reality Virtual reality, usually using a headset or helmet, creates an artificially designed environment that you can interact with. Coming from the 80 s error of video games, I can clearly remember playing Halo on my new Xbox for the first time. I was about ten hours into the game, in the dark, and freaked out by what was going on in the game. Now imagine you re surrounded by everything in the game, like you re really there. That s virtual reality, and the kids in your house, the old ones and young ones alike, are going to love it. Some of the most common uses of VR in business are in design, and training. For example, a manufacture like Ford can design a product, and experience using it before they actually build it. In training situations, a trainee can learn how to accomplish a high risk task before doing it in real life. It s amazing technology, but ideally for companies that have huge budgets and large teams to implement it into their ecosystem. Page 2

3 Augmented Reality Augmented reality adds something to your world that isn t really there, and in many cases, allows you to interact with what you see. If you were asleep on a beach someplace last summer, away from all media and technology, you may have missed a little game called Pokémon Go, which took over the minds of the youth of world for a few months. The app uses augmented reality along with the GPS in your phone to locate, train, and capture virtual creatures called Pokémon, who appear on the screen as if they were in the same real-world-location as the player. For those first few months, a significant portion of my day was spent yelling at the millennials in the office, who kept leaving to go look for Pikachu on someone s front lawn. Home to one of the largest student populations in the world, you literally couldn t walk around the Boston area without seeing dozens of people using the app, day or night. I remember my friend Alex, a millennial from my days at Apple, posting on Facebook that he had walked over 35 miles the first weekend the app came out! In business, companies are using augmented reality in smart glasses to bring data up in the viewer of the glasses that the wearer can interact with. Imagine a repair person walking up to a piece of equipment in a factory and looking at a special QR code stuck on it. The scanner in the glasses sees the QR code, and pulls up the repair instructions that the worker can scan through and complete a task with. Like virtual reality, AR is a more involved process that requires more start up costs and infrastructure, but it s very cool for many uses. Typically, augmented reality only works in Wifi, so it s not ideal if you need to use it outside of a closed environment. Page 3

4 See what I See, Vision Sharing Solutions Vision sharing, or See What I See smart glass solutions allow a remote observer to see a first person perspective of what someone else is looking at. With smart glasses, you add the benefit of being hands free, which is essential for many use cases. It s this first person point of view that allows the glasses wearer and remote observer to collaborate in a way that you can t do without smart glasses. An example of this, would be that the glasses wearer might be a newer field service technician that doesn t know how to fix a specific piece of legacy equipment. Instead of making a second appointment to come back, or sending the expert to the site, the expert on that equipment can log into a browser from anywhere in the world and walk the technician through a set of instructions to fix the problem. The expert can do this without having to travel to that location, and in cases where your experts are needed in multiple locations on a regular basis, they can stay centrally located so that they can help several technicians in minutes, not hours, or days. This allows better allocation of the experts time, and that time saved can significantly impact downtime rates, travel costs, and customer satisfaction levels. Here s a great example of how vision sharing is used by the Commuter Rail in Boston and how it s used in healthcare in rural hospital settings Some solutions will even allow you to take a picture, and have both the observer and glasses wearer collaborate by annotating that Page 4

5 picture in real time to confirm how a task should be performed. This collaboration can be a key contributor to long term retention rates, especially when used in training scenarios. Vision sharing can be the easiest and most practical way to currently use smart glasses effectively. Costs and capabilities vary and it s important to know if you really need hands free or not, because that will determine if you really need a smart glass solution to begin with. Vision sharing also offers the fastest return on your investment of the three, and can be used right out of the box without building a huge infrastructure around the program. Do I need cellular coverage? Are you going to use smart glasses in areas that have Wifi only, or are you going to need a cellular connection? Many glasses only work in Wifi networks. If this is for field operations for example, you ll want to look at companies that offer solutions that work on cellular networks as well as Wifi. Make sure that the solution works in low bandwidth areas too and has options that allows multiple ways of collaborating in areas with little to no bandwidth. Summing Up Now that you have an idea of what the options are, here are the 7 easy steps on how to implement your smart glass program. Page 5

6 7 Step Checklist 1. Pick the type of solution you need. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality or Vision Sharing and figure out if you need Cellular and Wifi or Wifi only. 2. Educated yourself on the providers. Look for companies that have been around for a while. You want to make sure they will be around in two years, or you ll have to start over with someone else. 3. Figure out what you re trying to fix or improve. Start thinking about metrics that you want to improve on. If you don t have metrics yet, pick a company that will help you figure out what they should be. Don t think you re the only one if you don t have them. We ve spoken to fortune 500 companies that want to start programs that don t quite know what they want to measure yet, they just know smart glasses are going to save them money. That s great but when you ask your boss to renew your program the following year, you re going to need to back up that request with some data. 4. Pick a company that puts their money where their mouth is. Some companies only demo their solution on the web or with video demos. After you ve vetted a company and think they might be a good fit, ask to see a demo on site. It s an investment in your company, and you want to make sure that the solution really does what the provider says it does. We ve replaced competitors solutions that had really cool videos on their website, but didn t really work when actually deployed on site. 5. Pick the right glasses. Different glasses have different strengths and vary greatly on price. Pick a company that offers multiple styles of glasses. Do you need simple vision sharing? Google Glass works great. Do you need safety glass compatible glasses like the Vuzix M100 s or do you need a larger viewer in the glasses to share big mechanical schematics? ODG might be the right choice. You might even choose different glasses for different applications. Most of our customers use multiple styles for different use cases. 6. Select your internal team - Pick early adopters in your company to test your proof of concept. I usually give customers the example of my dad, who just got his first smart phone last year. He s not the right personality to test new technology. I want the guy that stands in line every time Apple releases a new product. That s the person that will be excited about your project and give it the best chance for success. Once they show it works, everyone else will fall in. 7. Execute and measure your success. Test a solution for a minimum of 12 months. Long term data is essential to the success of your program. Your chance to become a superstar at your company is right in front of you. Measure your success and document it. You ll be thrilled with the results. REQUEST A DEMO Page 6