FT.com / Technology / Digital Business - Personal view: 3D brings challenges for the world wild web
Personal view: 3D brings challenges for the world wild web
By David Wortley
Published: April 30 2008 04:12 | Last updated: April 30 2008 04:12
The future for IT is 3D. The onscreen desktop will be replaced by a doorway to walk through, the typical corporate website by worlds to explore.
There is nothing imaginative or futuristic about that. As the limits of technology fall away, IT portals can be more instinctive, and resemble more closely the physical world we are used to dealing with.
Serious virtual worlds have the potential to make conventional websites seem about as effective a business tool as a leaflet.
Of course, there are the added depth of functionality and potential uses of the virtual world – but it goes further.
Virtual worlds have the ability to get to the crux of the issue of customer contact, offering a halfway house between the flat efficiencies of the website or call centre and the high costs of face-to-face interaction and the physical and branded location of an office or retail outlet.
The virtual world offers a sense of place and genuine interaction for large audiences at an affordable price.
How many people click out of a website because they cannot find what they want or immediately see what is relevant to them? To overcome this, the office of PA Consulting in the Second Life virtual world is staffed constantly by a team of Second Life PA avatars in locations around the world.
It means the organisation has trained “greeters” who can find out more about visitors, what kinds of services they are looking for and offer them what they need.
A little human charm changes the nature of the relationship between the user and the software, encourages greater interest, more thought. In a virtual world, relationships with customers can be developed through meetings across a desk with an avatar, using an audio or video conversation.
BP is trialling the idea of using Second Life as a place for employees to meet a counsellor or manager to talk about issues they might feel are too sensitive to discuss face-to-face.
In general, virtual worlds are ideal for hosting events that can bring together customers, experts and star “draws” internationally, involving speakers who can take part from home with a PC and a microphone. This leads to what Cisco’s Christian Renaud has been calling “serendipitous meetings”, the kind of unlikely meetings between people to exchange ideas and talk about partnerships that would not otherwise happen.
There is the opportunity for promotion, building customer loyalty and viral marketing through offering virtual objects. The average Second Life user is acquisitive, keen to have a distinctive appearance, and – in a world where every detail has to be created from nothing – keen on any kind of “stuff” that can be shared with others.
The experience of virtual worlds is “real” enough to ensure people maintain a strong sense of self-awareness. Recently, we created avatars for a couple of MPs visiting us at the Serious Games Institute, giving them the chance to speak and interact with an audience in a virtual world. The standard uniform for avatars being jeans and T-shirts, I had to do some shopping to find the appropriate suits and ties they could wear.
But big business needs to be cautious about the growing market for virtual objects. When Nissan wanted to launch its latest sports car, it had the idea of a huge vending machine in Second Life which would give away models of the car for people to drive around in.
Rather than being regarded as a treat, this giveaway upset the spirit of Second Life. A number of the population had managed to build little businesses from creating and selling virtual vehicles to other users. A business giant coming in and giving away sports cars for nothing became the subject of gossip and led to a boycott of the Nissan island.
The processing power required to facilitate the shift to 3D IT is an issue for the moment, but it’s only a temporary one. The biggest challenges concern interoperability and security.
Just as the standard HTML language was the making of the web, so will the ability to have a universal avatar capable of slipping effortlessly between one virtual world and another.
A consortium of organisations in the US is pushing for a recognised standard that will allow this to happen. As previous attempts to create standards have shown, however, it is not going to happen without friction between the commercial organisations building their proprietary environments and virtual customer bases.
For commercial operations to settle with confidence into virtual worlds, far more work is going to be needed on security. It is virtually impossible to find out the real identity of people behind the avatars – meaning they have no responsibility for what they do.
Web visitors to company sites are similarly anonymous, but they do not have the same opportunity to abuse staff, band together to organise protest raids, or generally upset other visitors.
Some form of digital signature will be needed to ensure avatars are held to account for their actions, just as they would be in the real world.
In many ways, the growth of virtual worlds is like the frontier towns of the Wild West, where new social forms were worked out messily and in public. In the same way, new codes of behaviour will eventually be adopted.
David Wortley is director of the Serious Games Institute, Coventry University.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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