What if you could wake up tomorrow, switch on your computer and with a few clicks attend your board meeting in your pyjamas?
In three clicks, you've chosen a nice shirt and pair of shoes for your avatar. You run a program, open a window, and your avatar is in Port Louis. On your screen you select a building, click on the 6th floor.
You join your other colleagues' avatars in the boardroom; interact with each other, controlling your avatar’s movement and speech.
No traffic, no parking... you've just gained an hour or more. A virtual reality?
A new era in workplace communication might be coming our way.
The use of avatars and virtual workplaces are already common in many of the largest U.S companies. During the last three years, thousands of employees at companies like IBM, Cisco, SAP and Boeing have been using avatars to interact with colleagues and customers around the world.
While avatars are a practical way to work across physical borders, they could also represent considerable efficiency gains in terms of time and productivity.
The movie Avatar has fascinated over millions of people across the globe, and while it represented a world and technologies that might be light-years ahead of today’s reality, avatars themselves are nothing new.
The avatar, a cartoon or stylized likeness of an Internet user, has been around for years. It can take various forms: a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional picture or simply a one-dimensional username.
At the origin, Avatar is a Hindu term for the manifestation or appearance of a deity. The use of the term "avatar" as a user’s on-screen representation was coined in 1985 for the online role-playing game Habitat.
Avatars have taken front-and-center in the video game industry and the age of Twitter and Facebook has fueled an appetite for these personal renditions amongst users.
They’ve also been gaining popularity in the workplace. Virtual worlds might change the way people work tomorrow. It might even become a key factor in creating best employees and competitive businesses.
Working as avatars would require little training for those used to playing computer games. You have to log on to the software, you have to get an avatar, you may spend some time customizing and personalizing it, then you jump into a virtual world. Within minutes, you're manipulating your presence with a group of others in a virtual environment, scooting around left to right, up and down and walking around.
For Stanford University Professor Byron Reeves avatars are extremely appealing for businesses because they allow employees to cross continents and time zones for work interaction but also because they are a lot of fun to manipulate. The notion of self-representation in media is incredibly interesting and gives users a new sense of power. Professor Reeves believes that the use of avatars on the job will boost interest and engagement in work activities resulting in increased productivity and satisfaction for employees.
Businesses are becoming more and more open to letting their employees experiment with virtual alter-egos. “That notion of doing something serious, but with an element of gaming and playful representation, is what's interesting to many companies right now”, Professor Reeves explains. “Three years ago, the notion of having fun at work wasn't widely accepted. You could get fired for having fun at work. But fun is not the opposite of work. Fun comes from engagement and it's the reason you work well. When you add the game element, you add a big sense of collaboration. You feel like you're playing with a team. To win in these games, you've got to encourage your colleagues. You can't win by yourself.”
A lot of questions still remain though on feasibility, ethics and technology reliability. We would need an extremely reliable and fast internet connection to interact seamlessly in the avatar workplace.
Will using avatars at work redefine social codes, or just reinforce the rules of real life in a virtual world? How do you monitor and control the actions of avatars and their operators at work?
How will we represent ourselves as avatars: Is it OK to be taller and more attractive? Is it OK to make my face look a little bit like your face? Studies show that you're more likely to like me if we look alike, but is it fair to take advantage of that with an avatar?
What will happen to human interaction? Will we be going out for virtual cups of coffee?
These are all questions that will need to be figured out as this concept develops.
In any case, the avatar wave has already spurred a new profession. Avatar artists are already in demand as people start looking for original, engaging and unique virtual representations of themselves.
