Day 19 in the Virtual Office
Total Time in VR: 4 hours and 51 minutes (across 8 VR sessions)
Use Cases: Focus Work (1 hour 55 min), Community Time (1 hour), 1:1 Meetings (1 hour), MiniMindfulness (30 min), Evening Work (25 min)
We are coming up on the half way point of this VR Office Experiment, and I definitely feel the wind in my sails. At the same time a few glitches are starting to become quite frequent, which is concerning. But the positive side still outweighs the negative for me.
I spent almost two hours in my Private Office today doing a variety of productive work, and so I thought it would be fun to give a quick 360 view of the Lake Office in Horizon Workrooms. My actual windows are currently showing a cold world covered in several inches of snow, so I definitely prefer this VR view, and the fireplace is welcome in both realities!
Cup Half Empty: As I mentioned, some glitches are becoming predictable. This is DAY 3 of the cursor issues. It only happened a couple of times, but it knocks me off my rhythm whenever it happens. I also experienced the odd thing of an avatar freezing even when the person sees themselves moving. This happened in my weekly 1:1 with my manager. The frozen avatar is just incredibly trippy when it happens. I had to exit to my Personal Office and come back to resolve the issue, and it didn’t happen again. I also experienced getting kicked all the way out of Workrooms today, which hasn’t happened in a long time. That was while using Quest Pro, so perhaps it’s unique to the newer headset.
Cup Half Full: So many negatives today! But my overall experience remains good. I started my day in Mini-Mindfulness, and discovered how the campfire of Bogey’s Bonanza can be used as a Virtual Sun Lamp. With winter upon us, I might be returning to that campfire often.
#TLDR
I made the mistake to read a couple reviews of Horizon Workrooms yesterday. I tend to place more value in negative voices than positive voices (something I’m working on), and most of those reviews were pretty negative. But I could also tell that the reviewers hadn’t spent much time in the application. Complaints that they found damning, I could have probably fixed with a slight headset adjustment. So that is both discouraging and also somehow encouraging. I’m doing this experiment to create a voice that has actually tried to use VR in a productive way. If it sucks, I’ll say so in the end. And I’m certain there will be things that are not good about working in VR (especially if that cursor problem continues). But my experience at the almost half way point has been overwhelmingly positive. Which is what frustrates me when I read reviews that pass judgement after a couple hours of “kicking the tires”. I’m not kicking the tires, I’m driving the car across the country. And we’ll see how rough the road is once we’re a little further.
I am experimenting with some survey questions to ask myself in the second half of the VR Office Experiment to better measure both my productivity and my mental health using VR on a regular basis for work. More to come in December!!
Till Tomorrow…
Carrier Pigeon XR 