Spatial Computing & Sustainability: a match? - MetaVisions #25

hey all, hope everyone is well and winning! Bit of a longer piece today but it should be worth the reading!

In modern times, sustainability is an important topic for every large to medium organisation, most will claim that they drive their ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) agenda because they want to create positive externalities from their business. Whilst this could be true, we also need to be aware that having a good ESG score is incredibly important to be included in ESG ETFs that are offered by pretty much all trading platforms, additionally, most market RFPs organisations ESG score into consideration.
However, with a real intention behind or not, it is a major area of concern for most businesses. Unsatisfactory sustainability records lead to poor brand image for customers and shareholders and the breach of accords and environmental laws.

Now that we have briefly set the scene around the importance of meeting sustainability goals, we can discuss how organisations across various industries can leverage Spatial Computing to reach those goals. I want to focus on three main areas: collaboration, consumption and visualisation.

Collaboration

In a world constantly pushing the barriers of enterprise globalisation, where it is increasingly common for companies to have employees and clients located anywhere in the globe, efficient collaboration across global teams is key to driving success. Traditionally, this means that global organisations will regularly fly out Leadership members face-to-face to discuss strategy, organise bi-annual design team meet-ups to discuss major projects and host company-wide get-together events.
The problem is that on average, a passenger will emit around 90 kg of CO2 per hour. On top of that, there is all of the financial burden that comes with it.
The Solution? Creating a more immersive, productive and fulfilling way of collaborating remotely.

I would say that this is the bread and butter of the XR industry. Platforms such as Arthur, Engage and the new Microsoft Mesh, provide an immersive environment for small group meetings and whole conferences. Additionally, platforms like JoinXR and Frontline, are focused on providing a new way for users to collaborate around 3D models.
The biggest difference to 2D experiences like Zoom or Teams, is the feeling of presence, especially with devices like the Apple Vision Pro or the Quest Pro that have face and eye tracking. You genuinely feel as if you have your own space, you understand people’s body language better and the lack of distractions from random pings and notifications creates more focused meetings.

How about for your next Leadership meeting instead of flying everyone out to a location, you went into a MSFT Mesh meeting with a Quest headset?
‘Well, Davi, surely the hassle of getting everything set up would be long and expensive? ‘
Quite the opposite actually, SIs like Insight can ship out headsets with everything set-up in pretty much a plug-and-play state, for £500 you get to save on flights and accommodation, give your teammates important time of their life back and reduce your carbon footprint.

Consumption

It is quite common knowledge that in the past 3 decades there has been a huge increase in consumption across a variety of industries, the top ones that come to mind are retail, entertainment and food.
A combination of factors has led to this, including the increase of sales and marketing channels with the expansion and popularisation of the Internet, as well as a huge growth in supply capabilities and a decrease in turnaround times due to technology.
A positive point of this has been good economic growth across top economies and customers certainly having more options to choose from, but in sectors like retail fashion, overconsumption is becoming a real problem for the environment.

In the last 5 years ‘Fast Fashion’ has taken headlines on many occasions. Traditionally, brands launch styles twice a year with summer and winter seasons. But new popular brands like BooHoo, H&M and Fashion Nova have adopted a new product launch strategy, which involves 52 micro-seasons. This new range of options available to customers at (mostly) cheap prices has undoubtedly created negative externalities for the environment, and it is not slowing down, the ‘fast fashion’ market has grown over 21% in the last 3 years.

In this new digital age, it is extremely easy to order clothes in bulk and simply return those that you don’t want. Who doesn’t have a friend or a partner who buys 10 clothing items to just stay with one or two?
During the Black Friday period, ASOS reported that around £100m in clothing was returned by customers. Many of those items will go back into circulation but others will contribute to the growing number of clothes-related waste worldwide, which is 92 million tons per year.

A small number of brands have started to use AR in their e-commerce platforms. Of course, this is great for customer experience and a cool marketing idea, but it could start to affect the amount of items ordered and returned by customers. The proposal is quite simple, what if customers can superimpose themselves with virtual models of clothing before deciding to purchase? ‘Experience before purchase’.
Not only this is being used by brands in the fashion space such as Nike and Adidas, but brands such as IKEA and Amazon have started to implement this functionality into their platforms for pieces of furniture.
As the technology improves over time and becomes more common, this should hopefully cause a positive effect on the amount of items that end up being returned and going to waste.

Visualisation

To hit sustainability goals in projects where the end goal is to physically build something (both products and facilities), it is crucial to show excellence in the planning stage.

Recently, I spoke to a UK business that does van conversions for almost every organisation that sends engineers out in the field. One of their biggest pains is that for every new customer project, the team had to produce multiple prototypes before reaching the desired outcome for the client.
For every new design created, a prototype model has to be built from scratch, which means that materials are being discarded, not great for the sustainability agenda. On top of this, creating the prototype costs on average £2500, which means that across a whole year, this scales up to hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Through Spatial Computing, the business could cut down the amount of physical prototyping, create a better customer experience and start making cost savings by leveraging MR/VR to visualise 1:1 high-fidelity 3D models of designs. Allowing customers to review proposed designs without always needing to see the physical build-out. Nowadays, headsets have great standalone rendering capabilities, either through their computing power or by leveraging services like Azure Remote Rendering to display up to 1 Billion Polygons.

Platforms like Resolve allow organisations to do Immersive reviews of building plans, which means stakeholders can ‘experience’ the environment before building it. Potentially saving £, time and reducing waste.

Spatial Computing has the potential to help businesses achieve desired outcomes across a wide range of areas, with creativity and constant hardware innovation we should see this become increasingly more mainstream. We are still in the early stages, so buckle up and get ready for the ride.

See you next time,
Davi, MetaVisions

Please, let me know if you have any feedback or questions, happy to chat :)