Abstract
Extended reality (XR), here jointly referring to virtual, augmented, and mixed (VR, AR, MR) reality, is becoming more common in everyday working life. This paper presents a systematic literature review of academic publications on XR indicating changes in practical organization of work. We analyse both application areas of XR and theoretical and methodological approaches of XR research. The review process followed the PRISMA statement. Design, remote collaboration, and training were the main application areas of XR. XR enabled overcoming of obstacles set by time and space, safety, and resources by mediating experience of space. Research on XR applications in actual working life settings is yet relatively rare and covers primarily three areas: collaboration, evaluation of knowledge transfer, and work practices. Virtual reality was the most common form of applied XR, although the hardware used varied case by case. We identified four research areas regarding XR: collaboration, work practices, and evaluation of knowledge transfer, which somewhat followed the application areas. We did not find XR-specific methodologies in the reviewed articles, only few recent studies used novel ways of collecting research material, such as recording the movement in virtual reality. For now, XR still holds significant potential rather than clearly confirmed general advantages in working life.
Highlights
Extended reality (XR), here referring jointly to virtual (VR), augmented (AR) and mixed (MR) reality, has become more common in working life during the previous three decades
We looked for changes in practical organization of varying working life contexts, since fewer studies have focused on added value in concrete ‘real-life’ uses of this technology (Berg and Vance (2017), p. 4; Maftei and Harty (2015), p. 53-54)
We identified three main application areas of XR in the articles: design (13), remote collaboration (6) and training (5)
Summary
Extended reality (XR), here referring jointly to virtual (VR), augmented (AR) and mixed (MR) reality, has become more common in working life during the previous three decades. Radianti et al (2020), Zahabi and Abdul Razak (2020)) While this approach allows to study a specific technology in detail, it does not provide a general overview of theoretical and methodological approaches used XR research in actual working life. 2.1 Ways of defining virtual, augmented, and mixed reality In this article, we use the term extended reality (XR) as an umbrella term for diverse kinds of technologies. Virtual (VR), augmented (AR) or mixed reality (MR) are used in the article for accuracy instead of XR, as most previous sources do not use the XR term, but more specific forms of it. We are more interested in the ways of practitioners define these technologies and the review aims to provide some groundwork for further understanding on these technologies from the perspective of practical uses and collaboration. For more detailed technical account on the relation of XR technologies we recommend for instance the paper of Mann et al (2018)
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