The Metaverse.
As a person who loves the energy that comes from seeing people in person – sitting across a desk with colleagues, and the buzz from enjoying a good meal or a bottle of wine with friends, I didn’t really know what to expect when Mark Zuckerberg announced the Metaverse.
Don’t get me wrong – I fully embrace the power of all things digital and, used correctly, I think digital platforms can be a great force for good, and an exceptional way of building relationships with your customers. As a remote-first company, we spend 8 hours of our day infront of a laptop. Talking to squares on a screen in zoom, sending gifs from The Office in Slack, and briefing in projects and amends via Monday… you could say that we’ve got this remote working thing nailed.
More recently, many others have followed suit; with most of our clients and colleagues now doing the same. Hybrid working is here to stay – so when it comes to the Metaverse, do we REALLY need ANOTHER online communication platform? Can a virtual office really make a difference to a small team who hasn’t had a chance to meet in person since August?
What better way to find out than to give it a go?
First of all…What is Metawork?
The aim of Metawork is to create better tools for teams to work remotely, together. Working in the Metaverse means being in the office without a commute and having your own personalised workspace that enables you to work together, from anywhere. You can tune out distractions and focus completely on a task, or tune in to the rest of your team for more collaborative working.
How does VR actually work in the workplace?
To fully access the Metaverse, you’ll need the right technology. Each member of our team has their own Oculus, and we’ve set up our own Virtual Office – Anopia HQ. Whilst we don’t have as much flexibility over the workplace design as we’d like (I predict this will be a huge opportunity in the future), our office looks pretty great – and it’s nice to overlook a beautiful virtual lake during our meetings.
Each team member also has their own private workspace, with a daily calendar to join meetings throughout the day in different rooms (connected to our Google calendars, of course). Our virtual workroom really feels like it is bridging the gap between remote and in-person working, which is really effective for a team like ours that are spread around the UK.
Finally, you can connect your computer to your VR headset and have full access to your screen – virtually. This means that you can work, share your screen and bring files into meetings at the click of a button.
What does working in the Metaverse look like for an agency?
Our morning stand-up always happens at Anopia HQ. We can sit round a table and share our schedule onto the screen to chat through each day before it happens. The audio is immaculate – with spacial audio we hear each other based on where we’re seated at the table, and it feels much more natural than having a meeting on zoom or slack. I find myself rotating in my chair and being more expressive as I talk – as I would if we were in the room together.
We also find it works really well for collaborative working. Being able to share our screens and write on a virtual whiteboard makes it easier and more natural to collaborate on creative projects.
We’re keen to get our clients involved, so we’ve been adding Metaverse meetings to our Calendly links for next-level video conferencing. Sure, most of our clients would only be able to join via browser, but having a virtual office makes a good talking point, no? We’ve created meeting rooms for each of our clients so they can be sure they have privacy and security – and there won’t be any unexpected visitors dropping in.
How does the team feel about working virtually?
Our virtual office doesn’t come without its challenges. I find interaction with the platform in the Metaverse difficult – whilst you’re supposedly able to use your hand as a pointer, I find this hard work, and switching from your mouse to the Oculus controllers feels a little clunky. Similarly, if there’s a lag with our internet connection it feels a little awkward for everyone in the meeting. I suspect this will get better as the technology develops and we become more comfortable in the virtual world. Finally, we all agreed that the headset isn’t particularly comfortable to wear for long periods of time – I find my eyes straining after a while and I would like to see some research on the long-term effects of prologued use.
That being said, as someone who loves to be around people, I really like how the interactions between colleagues feel. We all agreed that it feels significantly more natural than communicating via Zoom (despite the cartoon looking avatars), and it truly is a nice compromise between working remotely and working in person.
We know the Metaverse is on most businesses’ radar as we move into a new era of the internet – but are brands and companies actually embracing it? For many, there’s a concern around accessibility. The technology isn’t cheap or easy to implement – will this put companies off? Is it suitable for all colleagues, or will some feel excluded? Secondly, there’s a question mark when it comes to return on investment – can we measure the impact on productivity and, more importantly, employee satisfaction? Our aim as an agency is to begin bridging the gap between the Metaverse being an (albeit expensive) novelty platform to engage with customers and colleagues, and a real, useful collaboration and communication tool that allows businesses and brands to reach customers like never before.
The one thing we do know – the Metaverse isn’t going anywhere.
