Many organizations are exploring, initiating, or advancing the integration of immersive experiences and solutions into their daily workflows and pipelines. This is a topic frequently raised in conversations with our customers and partners.

To streamline these discussions and minimize confusion, time, and costs, we've consolidated comprehensive guidance to outline best practices for organizations venturing into this terrain.

We will delve into what we term the four primary stages, known as the 4D approach, and examine each stage's objectives, key stakeholders, expected outcomes, as well as common challenges.

By framing the entire process as an adventure of exploration, engagement, and learning, participants are more likely to be actively involved, leading to greater success and outcomes compared to approaching it as a mere technical exercise.

Once you've familiarized yourself with the guide, you'll notice that projects involving emerging technologies follow a similar trajectory to traditional software development processes, whether employing waterfall or agile methodologies (typically the latter). Similarly, they encounter comparable processes and challenges.

The Discovery Phase: Setting the Foundation

The primary aim of the discovery phase is to define, gather input from relevant stakeholders, and align on learning outcomes or business objectives. This phase involves establishing logistical requirements such as budgetary considerations, deadlines, payment structures, and anticipated deliverables.

Additionally, it involves identifying the target hardware for immersive deployment (eg, VR or AR devices) and outlining requirements to ensure seamless integration.

It's imperative not to let technology dictate the solution; rather, the solution should drive technology decisions. Merely adopting VR or AR for the sake of innovation or competitive pressure often results in subpar solutions. Without clearly defined success metrics, solutions may lack impact, leading to stakeholder dissatisfaction and limited organizational adoption.

Workshops conducted during the discovery phase serve to answer the fundamental question of “Why?” Organizations must articulate the specific use cases and needs driving their integration or enhancement of existing processes with immersive technologies.

These sessions also provide an opportunity to showcase existing immersive technologies and content experiences, fostering a collective understanding of available possibilities and limitations.

We advocate for starting with small-scale pilots and progressively scaling up based on successful outcomes. This approach minimizes initial budgetary requirements, scope, and potential points of failure, instilling confidence among stakeholders to endorse larger-scale initiatives once initial results are validated.

Early stakeholder involvement is paramount for project success, particularly when introducing new technologies. While the composition of stakeholders may vary depending on the project's context and end-users, a typical roster might include:

Despite stakeholders having diverse objectives influenced by departmental requirements or perceived authority, it's crucial to maintain focus on learning outcomes and business objectives. Evaluating use cases constructively and objectively ensures alignment with organizational goals. Establishing clear lines of authority and defining responsibilities for review, approval, and communication are equally essential.

Workshops with stakeholders aim to define a feasible scope of work within allocated timelines and budgets. While design work may not begin immediately, agreeing on content breadth, topics, duration, formats, and high-level details facilitates subsequent design and development phases, ensuring alignment with achievable objectives.

Selecting appropriate immersive technologies involves thorough research and evaluation to determine compatibility with organizational needs and existing infrastructure. Considerations may include hardware interaction modes, user collaboration, real-world referencing, hand tracking, spatial movement, content type, scalability, and target audience reach.

Some content vendors may restrict content installation from external providers within their ecosystem, necessitating careful scrutiny of hardware agreements. Business organizations should retain flexibility to install applications from various vendors to foster wider adoption and maximize return on investment.

Exploratory R&D efforts may be warranted to validate feasibility, particularly when incorporating new environments or tools beyond established practices. Anticipating deployment and end-user experiences, including training sessions and user testing, ensures readiness for widespread implementation.

Following the discovery phase, the defined scope of work informs the design phase, where content configurations are refined for stakeholder review. This phase generates outputs guiding subsequent development activities.

The design phase involves collaborative efforts among content provider teams or in-house R&D teams, supported by relevant technical expertise. Roles encompass learning design, interaction design, system design, graphics design, and user experience design, collectively shaping content structure, user flow, and data collection mechanisms.

Design deliverables may include storyboards, branching logic, voiceover scripts, film shoots, or mood boards, offering stakeholder insights into the envisioned user experience.

In summary, transitioning from beta to release involves a methodical approach encompassing discovery, design, and development phases, with early stakeholder involvement and a focus on learning outcomes and business objectives driving decision-making. Thorough research, iterative testing, and stakeholder engagement are pivotal for successful integration of immersive technologies into organizational workflows.