Impact of Mixed Reality on Human Behaviour
While it may appear to be science fiction, we’re already living in the world of mixed reality.
Consider how many times you’ve used a mapping service — Apple Maps, Waze, Google Maps; a location-based augmented reality game — Pokemon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, or a voice UI to answer a query or accomplish a task — Apple Siri, Google Home, Amazon Echo, Microsoft Cortana. These situations combine our ordinary experiences with technological enablers, allowing us to do tasks, engage with others, or be entertained in ways that broaden our perception and talents in our daily lives. We are living in a future where digital, physical, and in-between spaces are beginning to blur.
These mixed reality environments have the potential to have a profound cognitive impact on all of us, fostering rich and meaningful experiences while also connecting us with others.
Mixed reality is a combination of the actual and virtual worlds, with both genuine and computer-generated objects. To create a realistic setting, the two universes are “blended” together. This world can be navigated and real and virtual things can be interacted with.
Let’s have a shared knowledge of the skills we have to work within the mixed reality environment before I break down how we can engage this platform:
— Augmented reality (AR) adds a layer of (usually digital) context to a real-world experience, effectively affecting how a person sees or interacts with it. Pokemon Go, for example, adds characters, gaming, and artificial overlays to an otherwise familiar map experience.
— Virtual reality (VR) takes people deeper into a realm of lucid immersion, where we, the participants, are immersed in a fully artificial environment that we know isn’t real but that our brains believe it is, such as gaming environments with Oculus, PlayStation VR, or Valve Index VR Kit.
— Mixed reality (MR) is a term that encompasses both AR and VR capabilities, as well as an environment that uses auxiliary methods of interaction like haptics (physical and sensory feedback we get through touch or vibration) and auditory experiences like sound design and feedback we get through hearing or spoken environments (Voice UI) that don’t require the extra content of a visual display.
We can design three primary use cases inside these environments that might have a significant influence on education, the workplace, and ageing in place.
Education
Mixed reality environments can connect students with artificial worlds that allow them to study diversely while utilising technologies they are already familiar with.
Our brain’s comprehension of what we’re attempting to learn can also be thrown off by classroom surroundings. All of these elements can exhaust the brain and reduce the rotation of learned materials. Balancing teacher presentations with textbook readings, in-class demonstrations with student interjections — all of these factors can exhaust the brain and reduce the rotation of learned materials. Mixed reality environments can assist students to cope with the cognitive load they confront in the turmoil by allowing them to immerse themselves more thoroughly.
Workplace
By providing workers with the context they need in order and at the moment they need it, mixed reality environments are generating experiences where individuals can excel at the task at hand while also experiencing a significant reduction in cognitive overload.
By having digital devices generate context and instructions via glasses in the worker’s immediate visual purview, these mixed reality settings allow workers to remain hands-free.
Ageing
Finally, mixed reality environments open the door to a new way of thinking about how we age, beyond how we study and thrive in our occupations today. These environments allow us to evaluate various rehabilitation strategies, including those that make use of recent advances in neuroplasticity and sensory function, helping people to recover faster and more efficiently. Similarly, these surroundings have the potential to boost cognitive function by stimulating memory and response — potentially counteracting the impacts of Alzheimer’s and Dementia in the future. Mixed reality environments (as opposed to non-MR tasks) generate nearly double the visual attention in the brain, and these experiences store up to 70% more in memory, according to Neuro-Insight.
Mixed Reality technologies will have a profound impact on work and life in the future. With Mixed Reality, users will be able to interact with digital content and information in a more natural and immersive way. This will enable new ways of working, collaborating, and learning. Additionally, Mixed Reality will provide new opportunities for entertainment and social interaction.
Humans are durable, adaptable, and moldable. We can improve cognition in mixed reality situations by immersing ourselves in them and establishing surroundings that repeat and reinforce our previous experiences. This platform may both benefit and hurt our minds if given the proper emphasis.
Alivia Banerjee
