Is the Metaverse the New Workplace of the Future?

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Jennifer Mejia
Jennifer Mejia
Jennifer Mejia, IIDA, LEED AP, is a Senior Design Manager and Client Relationship Manager in Gensler’s Austin office. Jennifer’s decades of experience enable her to deliver successful, highly technical workplace projects at all scales. She is a collaborative leader who excels at coordinating project efforts with architectural and engineering consultants, owners, and general contractors through an integrated project management and design approach. Jennifer graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design from Texas State University.

Gensler’s Jennifer Mejia explains how the metaverse will align with the new workplace experience. 

In an age of rapidly changing workplace dynamics and technologies, employers across all industries are challenged to think differently about how and where to conduct business. The “work from anywhere” trend and all its variations, has quickly become the new standard. As we evolve into a digital-first society, the metaverse is another trend to consider as part of the new workplace experience.

The metaverse is a complicated matter for those learning more, but just like all budding technologies, once you dive deeper, you see how it could change the world around you in unique ways. For one, it has the potential to offer an always-on, dynamic and immersive workplace that can be customized to company and/or employee preferences. The metaverse may also open up new, faster modes of knowledge sharing and real-time collaboration, but this can also bring out challenges we have yet to uncover. In that vein, the metaverse may not work for every organization or industry. But for the sake of our audience, let us look at how the Architecture and Design industry is impacted by this trend. Will it resonate and can it be implemented like its creators would hope? We are cautiously optimistic.

Exploring the Possibilities

As an interior designer, it is my job to create well-designed and high-performing workspaces for our clients and their employees to primarily come together in-person, but also accommodate hybrid working. Our design teams and clients have a specific, even basic, human need to connect and create shared experiences throughout the design and construction process. The same goes for future users of these spaces. The question becomes — can we combine a virtual or metaverse world with traditional physical spaces?

With its avatars and fully-digital environments, a metaverse-style workplace as a singular platform, may not provide the best working and collaborative experience. Making the leap from today’s virtual meeting environment to a metaverse one is complicated, both from an experience and likely, a financial standpoint. You must also account for the human need for face-to-face connection, which can be diminished or lost in a virtual world. Moreover, to facilitate a full-scale adoption of the metaverse, companies would need to develop widespread education programs about how to use the platform. Considering this level of complexity, it is clear we have some time to go before the metaverse is accessible and functional.

Impact on Client Collaboration

Today, technologists in the architecture and design industry point to AI as a more useful technology. For example, an AI-generated building or interior space is easily displayed via modeling software tools and programs that enhance 3D modeling. We utilize this technology daily to create visuals for our clients, as well as to enhance the collaboration experience on a global scale. Here lies one of the biggest opportunities for the metaverse — as the technology improves and becomes available at scale, we could see critical breakthroughs. Think multi-dimensional capabilities to solve for architecture and design challenges or fully immersive flythroughs of a new office layout or amenity center.

Striking the Right Balance

Despite the convenience of virtual reality environments and platforms like the metaverse, human beings will always need for physical spaces that provide opportunities for in-person connection and collaboration. Technology certainly enhances the client experience, but it is not the only way to drive buy-in and experience. To that end, we cannot look at either the metaverse or physical offices as the sole workplace solution for the future of work. Rather, offering a suite of digital tools and finding ways to seamlessly include them within the physical workplace will be where the real magic can happen.

With this approach in mind, we encourage our design teams and clients to continue embracing emerging technology, evaluate and measure the successes for their own organizations, as well as challenge our industry to revolutionize how we all experience the workplace.

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