The Apple Vision Pro has been announced - a bold vision of wearable technology. Resembling a pair of ski goggles (we assume for comfort because they look rather silly), you can’t deny it’s an impressive piece of technology - the engineering and quality behind it are super cool because Apple just knows how to get the little things right. The eye-tracking software only renders parts of the screen your eyes are looking at, and the hand-tracking cameras may be the first time these have ever worked well. The quality we predict will be worth it, but at the cost of $3499 USD (that’s over $5000 for us here in Australia), it’s not yet a consumer-level device. That being said, the early adopters, the super tech and super Apple fans will purchase it, and there are some amazing applications for customers and employees alike. For designers, this raises hugely exciting opportunities. 

For the Employee Experience

Working from Home

Excitingly, the Apple Vision Pro will revolutionise the work-from-home environment. Working from home has a lot of drags, and one of the main problems is the size of the space. Productivity for technical and creative employees requires some serious screen real estate, and the Apple Vision Pro provides just that within a virtual environment (along with a calming countryside background if that’s what you like). Organisations could see a great return on investment by providing working-from-home professionals with Apple Vision Pro technology, and people won’t mind wearing a set of ski goggles and look a little silly in the comfort of their own homes. 

For Healthcare and Service Professionals

Apple Vision Pro pushes the boundaries of what’s possible technologically, and the application within a healthcare environment is revolutionary. With the headset, you’re looking at a real environment, and powerful graphics processors and cameras are processing the information alongside you. This will make it easier for healthcare providers to diagnose, with information and data relating to what you see populating right in front of your eyes, reducing guesswork, misdiagnoses and errors. It ties real-world objects together with data visualisation and will aid healthcare professionals in countless ways, making it ‘real’, and making training and onboarding easier. Data visualisation will change forever and will impact not only the healthcare industry. 

Envision a world where calling a plumber, or visiting a mechanic, or digging out that old dusty manual to figure out how to repair your oven becomes a thing of the past. With Apple Vision Pro, step-by-step instructions could materialize right before your eyes, precisely where the fixes need to be made. The service provider industry is on the verge of a transformative revolution, thanks to the innovations within Apple Vision Pro. The new role of data presentation past a virtual interface just existing as a paradigm of screens floating in space is where hugely exciting opportunities lie. 

As Designers

Mixed Reality Design

The Apple Vision Pro represents a groundbreaking interface that seamlessly integrates with reality, necessitating a shift towards mixed reality design. Traditional notions of designing physical objects, or flat screens are no longer sufficient; designers must now envision how their creations will interact and coexist with the surrounding world.

The scope of design inputs expands significantly, encompassing factors such as eye movement, voice/sound recognition, distance, and depth perception. The ergonomics of human movement and interaction become considerations in design. 

It requires designers to be a lot better at technology and engineering to do cool things in this space because most of the functionality like depth, shadows, and light comes from the engineering of the device. Designers will need to go deeper than a cursory acquaintance into understanding technology and engineering in order to really make a meaningful impact in this new user experience landscape. 

Skeuomorphic Design could be revived

Skeuomorphism - the design concept of making items represented resemble their real-world counterparts has the potential for revival. Apple didn’t invent skeuomorphism, but its exaggerated use had a huge influence on the tech and design industries. Imagine seeing flat objects and screens, which are popular in design right now, virtually in a 3D space - will it feel weird? Skeuomorphism will allow our senses to get the right feel and feedback from what our eyes are seeing represented within a 3D space. It allows for depth perception and makes the virtual objects look more like real-life objects, but is the border on familiar also too weird? There is a balance to be found - watch this space. 

As Customers

Organisations will need to go beyond what’s obvious 

There is huge potential for e-commerce, but it will take organisations going past what’s just the most obvious thing in order to see success. Previewing or demoing a product - being able to virtually see a sofa in your home for example - has been possible with augmented reality (AR) for years, and while this can be further enhanced with skeuomorphism, it’s all a little too obvious.

There is huge potential here to take the customer experience to a sophisticated and enhanced experience that websites, brick-and-mortar, and AR cannot do. Programmers, designers and engineers are already thinking about how to use, leverage, and even push the boundaries of this technology in ways that are yet to be seen in advance of its release. 

We are in an attention economy, and in this immersive experience, it will be really interesting to see how customers will be guided through a virtual e-commerce landscape. Leveraging data points from search history, click behaviour, and even what the eye has lingered on for just a little too long without it feeling a little too ‘Minority Report’.

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Apple Vision Pro is a risk, but a really cool one. 

Apple Vision Pro represents a big and bold risk, and it’s always interesting to watch Apple bring people into a new world of technology. There is a market for Apple Vision Pro, but who that is is yet to be seen. We’re still pretty far away from a pair the size of sunglasses - remember when wearing Apple Airpods was weird? 

There are really cool innovations that will be made a reality with Apple Vision Pro technology and huge impacts on customer and employee experience. But the question remains, when will (or if) they hit the zeitgeist enough to drive mass adoption and people buy it because ‘they just have to have it’? 

We’re a fair way away from that tipping point where customers and employees will be wearing a set every day, but if nothing else for a cool $5000+ AUD you can slip on a pair of ski goggles, look a little silly, block out that crying baby the row behind you on an aeroplane and imagine you’re on an island in Seychelles.

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