The real battleground for Safety Training is creating a culture of safety accountability.
It’s the ultimate outcome in a minefield of tasks. Tasks like hazard identification that make us think we are doing our part when, unfortunately, the only thing we are improving is our ego.
A recent LinkedIn exchange really stood out for me. I was having my daily catchup/update on LinkedIn when a contact of mine commented on a post. The post was a picture of someone at heights without the appropriate safety gear. The person had been travelling to work and, thanks to a great/authentic attitude towards safety practices, was able to identify a safety problem: A powerful skill. They took a photo and posted it on LinkedIn with an important message like, “Workers at heights without harnesses. Be safe out there guys. Look after your people.”
Like lots of other people on the thread I applauded the post and fully endorsed the message. Be alert and aware and make safety something you actively look out for. Not just for yourself, but for those around you. Everyone deserves to go home safe. There were lots of comments of praise and lots of people who empathised with the post having too seen an incident that same day and how all too common scenes like this were. All you needed to do was be attuned to identifying safety issues and you could see them everywhere.
It was a 6-word comment from my contact that brought this illusion crashing down for me. He asked: “What did you do about it?” Wow! Exactly. What did you do about it. Did you stop and speak to someone on site? Did you go over to the worker and mention it? Or did you just take a photo and post it on social media?
I get it. It’s potentially complicated. There are people and emotions involved and it can be confronting. But it makes for a great discussion. If you are focused on safety and if that means ensuring that people get home to their families at the end of the day, when does the skill of identification actually deliver on this outcome? When you act on it and do something. And by do something, I mean something more than take a photo and share the message. That’s helpful and raises awareness, but in that moment, when that worker was at risk of not going home to their families, that’s when they most need you to be safety accountable.
Creating Safety Accountability is something that is hard to engender in people without them really appreciating the consequences of safety incidents, safety complacency and poor safety practices. This is exactly the types of outcomes that Mixed Reality (MR) Training is helping organisations of every size deliver to protect their people.
The ability to create MR Training experiences that let people experience consequence without being in a position of danger places safety identification in the context of action.
Imagine the following being delivered in fully immersive, gamified, 360, Mixed Reality:
You put the MR Viewer on to immerse yourself in a 360 MR Training experience
See your colleague working around cranes under a suspended load? What do you do? Walk past it and mention it in the next team meeting or stop the job and get them out straight away? You decide to walk past and speak scathingly of it in tomorrow’s meeting. Just after you decided to walk past it the lifting slings failed, crushing them. They died and the effect on family, friends and co-workers lasts a lifetime.
See your mate working at heights without the appropriate harness? What do you do? Walk past it and mention it in the next team meeting or go over to the guy and say something? Again, you make a note of it and look forward to tomorrow’s meeting where you can play your part in helping keep the site safe. Just after you took that photo and drove away they fell and might not be able to work for 6 months. That’s devastating for the family.
Instead of traditional training delivering these messages as a lecture/reading from a folder, you can experience it in MR and see the results of your decisions. You can see the accident and, critically, experience the effect and consequence of your action or inaction.
No-one wants to see a mate in hospital, be unable to be a dad or a mum to their kids, or see a family in financial trouble. So, when you use Mixed Reality Training to experience consequence without physically being there, you take a much larger step to creating armies of people who feel personally accountable for safety. And that accountability will drive action, not just identification.
Visit 360dgrees.com and get in touch with one of our Mixed Reality experts today.
Training is delivered in abstraction of consequence
And it’s not the fault of the training teams, the people taking part or the organisations: It’s a symptom of the tools at disposal not helping. Technology is to blame! But it doesn’t need to be. Mixed Reality (MR) Training is enabling organisations to reimagine training and pedagogies, to deliver improved results and a renewed enthusiasm on the part of the participants.
Let’s take a step back. Imagine a traditional training session at work. There are 10 people who are attending the 2-hour session away from their desks/jobs. Despite the very best of intentions of participants and trainers, too often the below is the real outcome:
4 people are thinking about what they are going to do after work or at lunch
2 people are consumed by the thought of all the work they could be doing if they were back at their desk
1 person is reminiscing about the time they saw the Wallabies win the Bledisloe cup, on the siren, with a John Eales conversion in his very last game
1 person is fading in and out of consciousness and is lucky to have the support of their colleague next to them who is providing some well timed ‘nudges’ to keep them from being noticed
2 people are listening
I exaggerate to emphasise… but you get my point. In this example, there are 3 main problems:
Participation is low. In this example, only 20%.
Knowledge retention rates are low. Retention rates from learning by lecture are as low as 5% when compared to retention rates of 75% when you learn by doing.
This training very rarely lets people really understand and experience consequence of actions – what is the outcome and why is it important. So it becomes task focused, not outcome focused.
A lot of effort and a large commitment by everyone, that deserves a better result.
Fast forward to the same training delivered using MR Training.
The training is a game delivered using Mixed Reality. They put on the MR Headset, then get immersed in a game that shows them real people, asking real questions and each decision they get to see the same people show them what the consequence of that decision is. As if they are right there and it is happening to them in the 1st person.
Each participant can go through the training as part of a team or on their own, when it suits them.
The training team and organisation get access to the rich analytics of the MR Training for each individual and as a team/organisation to identify trends and think strategically about training needs.
The training can take a fraction of the time and the team are pretty excited about taking part in MR Training!! Let’s not kid ourselves… it’s cool!
MR Training solves problems we saw in the traditional approach.
100% participation rates. By its very nature, MR Training is fully immersive. Try thinking about lunch or what you’re doing after work when you have an MR Headset on and are playing a Training Game!
Retention rates through the roof: from 5% retention rates for a lecture to 75% retention rates from ‘Learning by doing’ as a result of the gamification of the training.
Consequence brought to life: MR Training lets people experience consequence, without being in a position of danger! Outcome focused.
So, you’re left with more people participating, retaining more, with an opportunity to experience consequence.
These are exactly the sorts of outcomes360DGREES.COMare helping enterprises achieve by challenging and innovating the way they deliver training. No longer a tick in the procedural box… training that delivers real outcomes. But it’s hard to explain… get in touch with us and we can show you so you can experience it for yourself.
1 Source: National Training Laboratories, USA
Banner image modified from original by Patsy Lynch @ FEMA Photo Library
You know what VR is, you think understand AR…but what is MR? As Virtual Reality and related technologies become increasingly widespread and commonplace, they are also developing and evolving at an incredible pace. There is a lot of confusion regarding the differences between the various incarnations of these technologies and the jargon surrounding them. For the most part, understanding these terms is all in the name and is somewhat intuitive if you break down the language. Understanding the phrase Mixed Reality and how you can use it is crucial for anyone who wants to stay on top of the latest waves of innovation, but more importantly in order to understand how a business can use MR to achieve to their greatest capacity. However first we need to understand some other terms.
Reality:
Starting simple, reality refers to our experience of waking life – non-simulated, non-virtual. When you film something with an ordinary camera, you are capturing reality. Any unaltered flat video or film fits into this basic category.
VR:
Virtual Reality – Virtual Reality or Virtuality is completely constructed from computer generated graphics, and contains no real-world elements. It is best experienced using a headset such as the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus or the Samsung Gear VR, to create the experience of being immersed in a completely virtual world. Though there are many applications for VR, the most obvious and well known being gaming.
360:
360 degree video uses either omnidirectional cameras, or a collection of cameras stitched together in post-production, to create spherical videos. These videos wrap around the viewer so that they can move their point-of-view to look in every direction. 360 degree video can be viewed using a VR headset to create a similar experience to that of Virtual Reality – however the user is immersed in a completely real world. 360 degree video becomes even more exciting when it is augmented to become Mixed Reality, but we aren’t quite there yet.
AR:
Augmented Reality – AR takes the real world and overlays virtual components on top of it. Digital information is added to reality which can be viewed using a sensor-packed wearable device, such as Google Glass, the Daqri Smart Helmet or Epson’s Moverio brand of smart glasses. Augmented Reality was popularised by, and known to most people, the mobile application Pokemon Go. Augmented Reality is a form of Mixed Reality.
AV:
Augmented Virtuality – this is the inverse of AR. Whereas in AR Reality is the base layer with Virtuality overlaid or added on top; AV means Virtuality is the base layer with real life components overlaid. This also qualifies as Mixed Reality.
MR:
Mixed Reality – MR is an umbrella term of sorts because it applies wherever there is a mix of both Virtuality and Reality. In this way both AR and AV can be said to fall under the umbrella of MR, because they are both a combination of virtual elements and real elements.
How Can You Leverage This Information?
Now that we understand these terms, how can we leverage this information for a business or sole trader?
360 Degree Video
falls into the bracket of Mixed Reality when it is augmented with virtuality or/and interactive components. This includes virtual hotspots that allow the user to navigate in the virtual plane or to open links to websites, forms, or videos. It can also include virtual objects such as icons, badges, or computer generated objects or characters.
360dgrees.com is the only end-to-end service for 360 degree video, a platform which empowers anybody, regardless of skill set, to transform their basic 360 degree video with interactivity into a fully functional, highly immersive piece of Mixed Reality Content. As 360 degree video increasingly becomes widely available, the 360dgrees.com platform means that creating Mixed Reality can be done quickly and easily by anyone. 360 degree mixed reality videos have unlimited application, including gaming, entertainment, and training. Visit 360dgrees.com now to find out more – or try it for yourself!
Learn the skills required to create a great 360 video
360dgrees video is growing in popularity, but that doesn’t mean that it is easy to get right.
Filming in every single direction and creating a clip that people will enjoy watching requires patience, experience and talent. When done well a 360dgrees video is a powerful tool for boosting your marketing and increasing your revenue.
Here are five steps to pull together a great looking 360degree video and leveraging it to boost profits.
1. Work out your ‘story’
Planning makes perfect in video production. For 360 video, make sure that you work out your storyboard in advance so that you know all the shots you want to get.
Do some location scouting and make sure the light will be in your favour. It’s also important to check that you have the necessary permission if you are filming in a public place.
2. Engage a professional team
Like drone footage, 360degree video is best shot by someone who knows exactly what they are doing. There are certain techniques that are important to make sure that every angle is captured property and that the viewer gets the most out of every shot.
If your video has a presenter, make sure they are well briefed and experienced so that you can minimise the number of retakes on the day.
Having a qualified team add voice overs, music and effects will put the finishing touches on your footage.
3. Distribution
Once you have your video edited and ready to go, the next thing is to get people to watch it!
Fortunately youtube and facebook both allow for 360 video so you can upload to these platforms and share to social media if you have a B2C product with a broad audience. Invite your users to check out your clip using their phone so that they can play around and look at all the different angles.
4. Call to action
There’s not much point in creating a beautiful 360 video without any purpose. You should design it with an action in mind, be it booking tickets to a show, shopping in an online retail outlet or planning a holiday.
Decide early on what the plan is for your video and make sure that the call to action message is included in the content.
5. Point of sales
Consider using your video to generate sales. How?
For example, a restaurant with a 360degree video experience can allow customers to click to book the exact table they’d like to sit at.
A retail store could have ‘click to buy’ over popular items.
New technology has the potential to make catching public transport a more convenient experience
360degree video is already revolutionizing the entertainment and gaming industries, but it has some much more practical applications as well.
The busy team at 360dgrees is constantly looking for new ways to leverage this technology to make people’s everyday lives more convenient. This is why it has made perfect sense for us to throw our hat into the ring as an entrant into Transport NSW’s Future Transport Beacon Innovation Challenge.
This challenge came about after Transport for NSW began working with Sydney Trains to trial the use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacons. These beacons enable vision-impaired customers to find their way around Sydney’s train stations. Working on this project inspired TfNSW to look for other ways that BLE beacons can benefit travelers.
Contributors including 360dgrees were invited to come up with an innovative product that uses BLE beacons on trains and at stations to benefit the commuter experience.
Rising to the challenge, what we came up with was a way to help customers to find their way around train stations, to better connect them with the commercial providers at the station and to improve their overall experience of catching trains in NSW.
“These beacons enable vision-impaired customers to find their way around Sydney’s train stations”
Thanks to 360 degree video technology, we were able to respond to the Future Transport Beacon Innovation Challenge by putting forward the use of 360 degree video as a way for travellers to familiarise themselves with a train station using an app or website before they leave home.
Our proposal shared how commuters would be able to view the different platforms of any train station and look all around to see where the ticket machines are and what food is available for sale. They will also be able to see exactly where the train arrives and departs so that they can be comfortable that they are in the right place.
By helping commuters to plan their trips from home using complete 360degree footage, or to navigate their way around a train station they are already at, traveling will become less stressful and more convenient.
There is also a hidden benefit: data tracking and analysis that gives Transport for NSW deeper insights into consumer behaviour and activities.
Transport for NSW would be able to integrate helpful updates, timetable changes and advertisements to make travelling on Sydney and NSW’s rail system a breeze.
The winners of the Future Transport Beacon Innovation Challenge will be announced later this week – we have our fingers crossed that we will be able to share some good news very soon!
What’s the first idea that comes to your mind when you think about “virtual reality”?
A good 80% of you will tie VR to gaming.
The truth is, as technology progresses, VR is evolving and more applications surface every day.
The list of uses of virtual reality is long and it is becoming longer and longer day by day. I refer to “virtual environments”, new fields where this new technology is proving to be useful in a way which we had never been considered before.
There are a variety of applications for virtual reality that many industries are starting to use for job training, a better customer experience, to optimize time, to save money or to be more competitive.
The benefits provided by virtual reality are endless.
Which industries?
A few examples of the companies that are using virtual reality and how they are incorporating it to bring their business to the forefront.
Health care and surgery
Rehabilitation and treatment of phobias
Space
Museums and Art
Automotive manufacturing
Courtrooms
Shopping
Military
Entertainment
Education (I have already talked about it)
Entertainment
If it is true that gaming is the first connection with VR, it is also true that entertainment and gaming generate jobs for many workers.
When we consider “entertainment”, it also includes theatre and cinema where you can enjoy 3D shows and movies feeling deeply immersed in these experiences. You can transport users to see a Cirque du Soleil performance or watch a movie, creating an illusion of exclusive preview for the viewer.
Same goes for sport and music fans. Virtual Reality give us the chance to watch a concert from the very first line, or next to the singer, or to enjoy a football match with your friends, from the comfort of your couch, experiencing the same thrill of the game as you were seated in the stadium.
Even the tourism industry (read the article link …) has started to use virtual-reality platforms, promising to take people all over the world. For example,you can go with a click to Honolulu in 50 seconds or visit the Giza pyramid from the top.
Remember to not consider all these just from a user’s point of view, but also from the perspective of employees who are choosing to adopt VR to make their business more effective and competitive.
Health care
Health care and surgery are widely adopting virtual reality tech for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. Thanks to VR simulations, it is possible to build 3D models of a patient’s anatomy and see inside the human body. Moreover, VR serves as an effective and engaging tool for rehabilitation of injury victims that practice virtual exercises and receive real-time feedback, making them more motivated and reactive.
For all these reasons, medicine is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Virtual Reality since the development of surgery simulation and 3D models.
It is also used as a training aid, as a diagnostic tool that provides a more detailed view of the human body compared to X-rays or scans.
Virtual Reality has also an innovative application for psychiatrists and cognitive behavior therapy to treat patients with phobias and social anxieties. The patients are exposed to simulations that give them the chance to cope better with their feelings.
Space
Scientists use cutting-edge technology to control robots and to help astronauts to de-stress. NASA has been using VR for years, especially in training situations.Researchers can simulate a walk on the Moon to prepare astronauts to potential human landing or experience what it is like onboard various spacecraft.
One recent use is connected to the mental health of astronauts on long-term missions: it is called “Virtual Space Station” and consists of a set of interactive behavioral health training and treatment programs with NASA support.
Museums and Art
Another alternative use of Virtual Reality for professional jobs is related to art and culture. Virtual Reality can add a lot of culture in our lives. Students, tourists, and normal people can be transported in few seconds to the MOMA in New York City, to the National Gallery in London or to Placa Major in Madrid.
The great number of museums have tied up with developers to create VR projects and virtual spaces. Through this people get to “experience” the artist’s works in a very different way or can take a tour of the museum with a smartphone and a Cardboard VR headset.
The e-commerce world is growing day by day. Virtual Reality will add more value to online shopping websites and completely change customers’ experience. How? There are apps on the market that provide a virtual tour of the store and the opportunity to try on clothes, shoe and bags and finally, do real-time shopping even with your friends.
The next step will be a partnership between developers and big online retail companies. Buying something there will be as easy as drinking a cup of coffee.
Courtrooms
In a short time, crime scene evaluation will be revolutionized by Virtual reality. Crime scenes will be analysed through 3D tours replacing bi-dimensional photos. This will help jurors to understand the details of the case and to visualize how people and objects were moving in at that point in time and space. They can also track the path of the bullets in the air! The results will be faster and more accurate than using the traditional techniques. It will also allow jurors to make right decisions regarding a suspect’s innocence leaving no room for speculations or errors.
Automotive Industry
For car industries, virtual reality is a consolidated technology they have been using for a while. Ford, for example, has made virtual reality central to its automotive development. You can inspect the prototype of the car inside-out before the car exists for real. This process allow engineers and designers to test their products, inspect different elements, check potential problems and make modifications.
Another benefit would be to make all the product development process faster, without having to wait for the physical prototype of a new model.
Moreover, virtual reality applied in car industries is useful to educate teenagers and parent about distracted driving, thanks to the distracted driving simulator. Such an unforgettable experience!
Military
Military often handles virtual reality to train soldiers before they are deployed, preparing troops for combat. Through VR simulators the team can practice and work together in a very realistic environment with real equipment too. This kind of training is also more effective than the traditional one because what you learn from a “real” experience is easier to remember, training sessions can be repeated as many times as needed. Thereby you know better how to avoid mistakes.
What is the impact of Virtual Reality on business? What will it mean for enterprises?
The Benefits of Virtual Reality at work
Good VR will have a huge impact on business.
Firstly it is a way to differentiate themselves from the competitors and secondly a means of creating connections with customers, making them feel that they are trying out a product, a car, a dress, a smartphone, before they actually purchase it.
Third it is a better way to work with employees that are located remotely.
“Think about employees being able to work from home , at the same time, working from virtual offices, surrounded by their virtual peers,” said Enderle.
“This could make the worker feel more like a part of the meeting or a part of the team,” leading to possible productivity boosts.
“If you are more tightly coupled, it can be instrumental to make your boss more confident that you actually are working and not just goofing off at home,”Enderle said.
What will that mean for all those employees who generally work in their jeans or sweats? Well, if they use an avatar, they won’t need to change their attire at all.
Another advantage of use Virtual Reality at work is connected to business travel. Instead of taking a flight to go to Melbourne for a meeting, business managers and officers can use VR videoconferencing.
That means you can make it seem like a manager is talking face to face to you in the same room, while you are alone in the office. This is an effective method to save time for workers, money for the company that can reduce costs in business travel and pollution as well (less flights). VR helps scientist and health care professionals, like dentists, to do periodic updates for their work and to keep relationships with workers and engineers remotely. As we said before for “Shopping”, Virtual Reality can completely change the customer buying experience.
Thank to this technology, you can compare two different products before buying one, after testing them both. The same advantage can be applied for all the goods like car, mobile phones, dresses, rings, bikes, and houses. With Virtual Reality, the buyer can really experience what they are going to buy and make the best decision without regrets. Virtual Reality is not just in the shops, but in restaurants too. Imagine doing your order not on the phone anymore, but via a 360 video. With this you can see the list, choose your dish and see the food before it arrives on your plate. Probably in few years, we will be also able to smell the food. The key of this example is to give more value to the customer thanks to VR and improve the level of your business through a real investment in technology. The possibilities are endless. How it could change and improve your business will depend on how soon you embrace and adapt it.
Instead of traditional training delivering these messages as a lecture/reading from a folder, you can experience it in MR and see the results of your decisions. You can see the accident and, critically, experience the effect and consequence of your action or inaction.
Thanks to 360 degree video technology, we were able to respond to the Future Transport Beacon Innovation Challenge by putting forward the use of 360 degree video as a way for travellers to familiarise themselves with a train station using an app or website before they leave home.
