Taking Care of Xerox Business—Virtually

Abstract

So Hiro's not actually here at all. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse.--Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam Books, 1992). The vision of a world, like the one described by Neal Stephenson, has spurred the imagination of engineers to create environments from text-based multi-user dungeons (or MUDs) to three-dimensional tools like Google Earth, and immersive spaces like Second Life. The term virtual is often applied broadly to include everything from web-sites like MySpace and NeoPets to the class of games known as MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). While the discussion goes on about how broadly to stretch the definition, the core idea of the Metaverse is 3D graphical environments, which give the users the sensation of being immersed in another world. What's a Virtual World Anyway? The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.--Snow Crash. The common thread in the different definitions of worlds is the ability to connect and communicate in an environment that has a sense of space into which users are immersed. You know that you're using a world when rather than simply using an application, you start thinking of yourself as being inside it. The confusion around what worlds are is also caused by the rise of other types of social networking applications as well as the highly interactive and visual nature of Web 2.0 sites like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook. 3D environments are most effective at giving users the sense of immersion that worlds provide. Not only is the environment rendered in realistic 3D graphics, but every user is represented by a 3D character, an avatar, with which they interact with the world and other users. In the past year, Xerox's Innovation Group has started to investigate how the technology of 3D worlds can impact the way people do business. These types of worlds offer the following benefits: * A pliable 3D environment.--Being immersed in a 3D world opens up new possibilities for visualization and interaction. Users can literally draw in the air to illustrate what they are talking about, and tools can be created for organizing both information and processes in ways that are not possible in a physical environment. * An immersive experience.--Not only can users simply explore the environment, but, for many, being in a natural-looking space that is navigated in the same way as the real world, is much more comfortable than being faced with abstractions like lists, windows and folders that are commonly found in other types of applications. * A high-bandwidth communication medium.--While communicating in a world via text-chat or integrated voice capabilities may be no different than using instant messaging or a VOIP client like Skype, the fact that the communication occurs while sharing the same experience can add new layers to the conversation. Users can make their avatars perform gestures and facial expressions, thereby adding a non-verbal component to the conversation. The location of avatars adds additional information, allowing the use of spatial references in the conversation. * The formation of communities.--By giving users locations where they can congregate to discuss topics of interest, worlds provide avenues for easily meeting new people. Events, meetings and seminars can be used as regularly scheduled activities to grow and strengthen a community, but unplanned encounters by people visiting the same space at the same time are just as important to form connections. Communities are valuable because they take on a life of their own, providing support for newcomers as well as giving a space for old-timers to share-experiences and learn from one another. …