The hardest part of VR video

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Does your company need to be creating VR video? Or 360 degree video? Or podcasts? The hardest part of any new technology is solving a problem with it. Should you create media with these new technologies?

Yes, if you can find a reason to do it that’s entertaining or educational for your audience.

No, if you’re doing it just to do it.

To quote Jeff Goldblum’s character from Jurassic Park:

Consider what a technology is good at. 360 degree immersive video and VR help our audiences to experience an environment virtually. If our primary customer experience is sitting unhappily in a waiting room, then turning that into a VR experience only magnifies how bad our core service is.

“Experience the thrill of sitting in the waiting room at the Department of Motor Vehicles!”
“Marvel at the virtual reality experience of waiting on the cable company to answer your call!”
“Enjoy the immersive experience of boarding a plane and stuffing your luggage into the bin while avoiding surly fellow passengers!”

Doesn’t really work, does it?

We must fix our core service first. Innovate in the core experience first. Once our business makes customers happy to do business with us, we can explore ways of sharing that experience with immersion video or any other new technology.

This isn’t to say we should avoid investing in these tools. By all means, run internal tests. Learn the how. Develop our capabilities.

Don’t release your experiments to the public until you know the why.

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