How Robots and Avatars Can Cure Remote Work Blues
How could robots and avatars help drive fun for hybrid work environments?
I look down the barrel of my cannon and through the reticle at the center of my screen to see my colleague’s robot bump into a car tire and stop. Now’s my chance. I fire, and the oval LED registers the hit. Bonus points light up on my screen, and I see my colleague’s robot slump down, momentarily out of commission.
Seconds later, the round ends, and Chris Hall, the CEO of Portal Bots, announces my victory. “Poison wins!” he says, using my very cool gamer tag. I raise my arms in the air and gloat to my three co-workers who had the misfortune to face me in the arena. But my celebration is short-lived, and we’re quickly on to the next game, a soccer match that involves driving our robots into the soccer ball like a real-world adaptation of Rocket League. The remaining portion of our 45 minutes in the arena is filled with light-hearted taunts, exclamations of anguish, celebratory howls, and a lot of laughter. It’s par for the course for remote teams that come to Portal Bots looking for a team-building experience that goes beyond another trivia night, says Hall.
“When companies are so involved in creating a positive culture, how do you keep people engaged when they’re working from home? Having fun together is a real part of it. Allowing people to share a laugh,” he says. “The interaction I can offer is so much better than a computer game. Would you rather control a simulation of a robot or an actual robot? The answer is always the real deal. The physics are real here, and you can smash your robot into your colleague’s at full speed.”
Winnipeg-based Portal Bots is a simple concept: allow co-workers to control robots over the internet and compete in fun games, including shooting battles, soccer, and racing. The idea is executed via DJI Robomaster S1 robots, a product designed for education purposes. Hall uses Parsec, a remote PC access application, to give his guests control of the robots. The tool is effective at reducing latency, providing a real-time experience for most participants not tarnished by lag. Hall says he’s been able to connect colleagues from all over the world in his sessions, including Australia, India, Pakistan, and Uganda.
“The robots weren’t meant to be used in this way,” Hall acknowledges. Despite that, he’s bootstrapped his business from the ground up ever since the pandemic brought his last entrepreneurial effort to a screeching halt. Portal Winnipeg was a virtual reality studio that served craft beer along with family fun. But it required getting together in person. Portal Bot doesn’t have that constraint, and Hall isn’t looking back on what he’s lost but rather pushing ahead to find investors and improve the user experience around what is undeniably a good time.
Chris Hall, CEO of Portal Bots, swaps out the batteries for our group so we can race around the course on a full power pack.
Adapting To Post-pandemic Norms
Many businesses aren’t looking back at how work was arranged before the pandemic forced them to work remotely. Nine out of 10 organizations are operating in a hybrid model with some split of workers between remote and office-based locations, according to Info-Tech Research Group’s State of Hybrid Work survey. The data also shows that team effectiveness goes up at least 10% for organizations that embrace hybrid. Aside from a few headlines representing out-of-touch executives that want to cling to norms that no longer apply, most organizations are trying to figure out what the future of work looks like. One major gap that still needs to be addressed is how to create a culture within a digital context. Without a central hub for people to spontaneously connect and show a presence beyond work tasks, the bonds that hold teams together are weaker, and employee engagement is dipping.
Half of the CIOs say they see staff engagement issues as a major pain point, according to the survey data, and four in ten say they are concerned for their employee’s well-being and can’t see signs that employees are demotivated.
Battling On-video Fatigue
As remote work pushes over-burdened IT departments towards holding more videoconferences than ever, employees struggle to avoid burnout from “Zoom fatigue.” Yet some organizations found that using a persistent Zoom meeting for employees to just hang out and chat or collaborate as they please helped improve team bonds so much that Zoom is now formalizing the feature with Zoom Huddles, which is expected to be released to general availability in the next few months.
As a virtual coworking space, the persistent video room is meant to provide a space for collaborating or chatting with colleagues outside of structured meetings. It aims to create the feeling of co-working in an open office, where you can engage your employees by simply turning to them and addressing them. Users outside of the Huddles can see who’s present in the room before they join. The feature was first announced at Zoomtopia in 2022 as Zoom Spots.
Zoom Huddles is currently in beta. It provides a persistent video room where colleagues can drop in or out and see who’s available in the room. Source: Zoom.
The name change came after Zoom saw how customers were using it, says David Ball, product marketing manager for Zoom Huddles. “Many of our customers were using the meetings product to solve a team connection problem,” he says. “Teams would set up this always-on Zoom meeting, and if you had questions for your manager, you could hop on to it and get those answers.”
Zoom hatched the idea after contracting research from Morning Consult examining the problems of bonding with a remote team. It identified that 55% of Zoom users felt team connection was a challenge when working remotely and that 83% found that persistent coworking space solutions would provide a good way to connect with employees.
Zoom is already using the feature for its own operations. Ball has access to a marketing team huddle and recently dropped in and bumped into a product manager colleague he hadn’t seen in about a year. “There were smiles all around,” he says. “We got lost in the business of everyday work. So when we have that spontaneous connection, it’s nice.”
Ball points out that users are still in control over whether they want to appear on camera or not and can just participate in huddles via audio.
Of course, not appearing on video can lessen that feeling of connection. At the same time, being on camera all day can be exhausting. Microsoft is trying to find the ground between cameras off and on with its Avatars feature, now available for Microsoft Teams Public Preview. Microsoft’s research shows that only about 30% of meeting participants have their video on. Using a cartoon avatar that bears your likeness provides an alternative option. Users get a camera break while still providing a presence that colleagues can interact with. The avatars speak in sync with users as their microphones activate and can be animated through a variety of canned gestures.
Avatars for Microsoft Teams Preview gives users an option that lands between camera off or camera on. Source: Microsoft
See More: How To Create a Secure But Immersive Space for Gaming
Dialing Up the Fun of Working
In our Portal Bots battle, all of my colleagues were happy to keep their video cameras on. Scoring that goal at the last possible second of a soccer match is just sweeter when you get to see the look of anguish on your colleague’s face.
One of the best surprises of the battle was when we saw that Hall was present at the site. Not only was he guiding us through the experience from a videoconference, but we could see him roam around the arena from the vantage of our robot’s view. About two-thirds of the way through the experience, we took turns driving up to a pit stop and had Hall swap out our batteries.
The thrill of the battle leads to a lot of funny moments, Hall says, with some participants cursing after being defeated, then blushing as they realize they just swore in front of their boss. But everyone leaves the event with high spirits and some bragging rights that become a part of company lore. “People love it,” he says. “Now it’s just for me to tell people about it.” So Hall continues his mission to improve remote team engagement – one robot battle at a time.
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Image Source: Shutterstock
MORE ON REMOTE TEAM ENGAGEMENT
- How To Show Employee Appreciation In The Remote Workplace
- How Companies Can Create a Sense of Shared Culture in a Remote Environment
- Leveraging the Value of Digital Employee Experience (DEX)
- Three Ways to Retain Remote Workers from Quitting
- How Robots At Work Will Lead To Stronger Human Relationships
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