Do More With Less: Boosting Workplace Productivity Through Augmented Reality

People often misunderstand augmented reality as just a cool feature for games. However, studies have shown that AR is useful in a lot of other areas, including work and productivity. After all, augmented reality — and its siblings, virtual reality and mixed reality — is all about simulations. Simulating things and situations have important applications when it comes to workplace productivity, such as training, operations, safety, and R&D.

The benefits of using AR to optimize workplace productivity have been studied in many industries. In medicine, doctors are able to train without using real patients. One company, AccuVein, has even developed an app to help health professionals locate veins for IV injections using AR.

Here are some other ways that AR can boost workplace productivity.

Training

Doctors are not the only ones who benefit from AR-enhanced training. The manufacturing industry can shorten training times by using AR. AR helps trainees go from knowledge to practice quickly. It can provide experiential, hands-on learning, which is better for comprehension. Practical training is also simpler using AR tools.

Finally, with AR-enhanced training, trainees can make all the mistakes they need without real-world repercussions or threat of injury, so they can perfect their skills before being deployed.

Remote Technical Support

Technical support is often complicated. One needs to have a certain level of expertise in order to install or troubleshoot something. It can be quite difficult to perform technical support services over the phone, email, and even video call. As a result, technical support staff need to go on the field if they’re working in companies that have multiple locations.

In this regard, AR can be used as a form of remote technical support. By using AR devices such as headsets, smart glasses, or tablets, technical experts can easily assist local employees remotely. An example of using AR for remote technical support would be through digital annotations. A person can simply superimpose drawings for instructions instead of giving clumsy and awkward verbal directions. AR can boost a technical team’s productivity by enabling them to do their job remotely, eliminating travel costs.

Manufacturing and Operations

Efficiency is the name of the game in operations. An inefficient operations team can cost a company a lot of money. Because of this, companies always strive to improve productivity in manufacturing and operations.

That being said, employees can use AR to enhance many of their functions. AR-based visual aids can help workers find products or tools faster. Moreover, it can help them redesign the whole factory layout for a streamlined work process.

Workers who do assembly can also use AR devices to visualize components when building products and pull up instructions as needed. If you’ve ever built a piece of IKEA furniture, you might be able to appreciate an AR device that lets you see assembly instructions as you’re building it, instead of stopping every five seconds to check the instructions sheet.

Research & Development

Prototyping will be easier with augmented reality. R&D teams can utilize AR tools to visualize information and ideas, leading to fewer errors and miscalculations. Where once you might need a stack of documents, with AR, you might only need a headset and a pair of smart glasses.

Augmented Reality for Boosting Workplace Productivity

Clearly, augmented reality has many beneficial uses in the workplace to optimize efficiency. This increased productivity is not a hypothetical situation; companies that have used AR reported an average 32% increase in workplace productivity.

And with technology improving every year, it’s highly likely that this number will only increase as more companies adopt augmented reality. It’s a win-win scenario for all. Employees can do more work with less effort, and the company can enjoy the benefits of high workplace productivity.