This is a case study for Concert OS, a humanist approach to augmented reality.
When you imagine augmented reality (AR) you probably imagine something reminiscent of Blade Runner 2049: billboards of intrusive, digital advertisements occupying your vision as you walk through the city, an inescapable cacophony of visual and auditory noise creating a claustrophobic experience of reality.
Our imagination of AR has been limited to this dystopian landscape. As a society, we’ve never imagined what good AR could do, we’ve only used the collective imagination to create different versions of dystopia. This isn’t unique to AR, it’s true of any new technology. It’s our impulse to imagine our worst fears before our grandest of ambitions or as Molly Ferguson writes:
“Utopias and dystopias ultimately stand the test of time and keep society’s fascination because they reflect the polarity of human nature — extreme violence and destruction; extreme healing and unity. Utopias and dystopias then are an exploration of those poles;”
In addition, it’s common bias to imagine the worst of our nature, and to ignore the best feature of humankind. The social psychology researchers, Paul Rozin and Edward Poyzman, coined negativity bias, and perhaps this feature which they’ve outlined reflects how we see reality best:
“Negative differentiation states that since negative events are by nature more complicated than their positive counterparts, we require a more significant mobilization of cognitive resources to minimize the consequences of the event and deal with the experience, making it a more memorable and intense experience.”
And this is also true of how we experience pop culture, with darker more dystopian movies being more beloved than romantic comedies. It may be counterintuitive to realize that negative imaginations consume more of our cognitive load, but it makes sense. Comprehending the implications of a cancer diagnosis are far more complex than to imagine oneself as healthy forever. This is perhaps why we never see positive imaginations of XR, it just wouldn’t make for an interesting premise because it’s quite simple.
Meta announced in October of 2021 their grand ambitions to bring Ready Player One, home office addition, into reality, with a yearly budget of $10 billion, they seem poised to make Zuckerberg’s ambition a reality. However the public hasn’t reacted positively to Zuckerberg’s vision. Wired wrote:
“Meta shows fictionalized videos of their visions of the future, they frequently tend to gloss over just how people will interact with the metaverse. VR headsets are still very clunky, and most people experience motion sickness or physical pain if they wear them for too long. Augmented reality glasses face a similar problem, on top of the not-insignificant issue of figuring out how people can wear them around in public without looking like huge dorks.”
The glossy version of the future Meta has portrayed isn’t real and isn’t the lived experience of the product, but there’s a more metaphorical problem as well.
Meta is anti human, they assume that we want to be more immersed in our online experiences, leaving reality behind entirely. Meta’s philosophical argument is that the public isn’t interested in reality, real human interaction, real experiences, or the world at large. This is clearly an observation made by the isolated technocratic lizard people that occupy Silicon Valley. What they have missed is that in fact people want to spend less time online; less time in-front of computers and more time with friends, family and outdoors experiencing the real world. While this is a philosophical argument, it is also a practical one. We on average spend every waking hour now behind a screen, and what Meta is proposing is to not only spend it behind a screen but to walk out of reality and into a completely digital world; to never take off the headset. This is why the public is reacting to Meta with such hostility. It only proves that their greed to maximize on platform time overrides any understanding of what the public wants. Seeing colleagues over Zoom or in the Metaverse will never have the same human level tactility.
From the fundamental technological hurdles and philosophical shortcomings to how much people already interact with technology and their fundamental push back against using it more than they already are, it is clear that Meta isn’t the future people want.
This leaves us as designers with an opportunity: first to imagine the future of XR that is utopian and genuinely improves people’s lives, and second to fundamentally understand the wants and needs of real people and create something that improves their lives and helps them connect with their devices and their loved ones and their communities better than before.
Google’s project Starline is far more reflective of what people want. They want to feel present with others, connected to their community and loved ones without barriers. This is what we want, and what we should enable in that future as designers, by getting technology out of the way and letting people interact with the real world. That is the future of AR.
Concert is AR/XR for humans. It’s a fundamental understanding of the wants and needs of people and it provides a real solution to real world problems, while also enhancing existing interactions with devices. Concert seeks to avoid any dystopian imaginations of augmented reality by offering a limited professional and entertainment experience. Concert is tied to a user’s device and designed to work with their specific platform. It doesn’t have its own operating system in any real capacity. Inputting information is done with a user’s existing device which is vastly superior to any kind of holographic Xbox Kinect inspired interaction. In order for XR to fill a space within our lives we need to be able to interact with it with a high degree of throughput. If XR can’t offer a faster input method, then it shouldn’t be a feature of the platform. Concert is a hybrid platform which leverages a user’s existing smartphone and personal computer via bluetooth to allow for unique interactions. Most importantly, it offers a familiar and efficient input method.
The main function of Concert is to act like a second screen tied to a device and its ecosystem. When it comes to productive functions, this gives users the option to have multiple screens in space and position them freely. However they can use the mouse and functionality of their laptop synergistically with their headset. This gives them the freedom to work where they please but the bonus of having a full field of displays. In addition, Concert works with the phone. It enables unique entertainment experiences, allowing users to use their hands as inputs for games and position virtual entertainment screens in physical space. It also allows the user to type and launch apps through their phone, creating a virtual remote-like relationship. The Concert device itself, the Aurora, has sensors to detect hand movement and placement in space. This allows the user to leverage both the best features of the touch screen, and augmented reality with virtual screens and hand interactions where they fit best.
Additionally, Concert is a platform for application creation. Like the original iPhone, it opens up a new medium of input and interaction. This creates new opportunities for experiences which users find productive and entertaining. Concert reflects what people want today, which is a more productive work environment, and a limited scope of experiences that enhance their existing technology. Concert is an overlay over reality that enriches the experience. Concert is built to be humanist and unobstructive unlike any other imagination today.
