 DMAB innovation talk number 10. I'm really excited to have the already the 10th innovation talk I never imagined when we started this about two years ago that we will do a Double digit number of talks like that, but to be honest I'm really happy that we do and I always like to come back to all of you and to start with the next innovation talk With me at the moment already up Phillip from here's our guest today I will tell you a little bit more about Phillip in well probably three or four minutes and with me as well as the Lindy one egg She is the chair of the DMAB the direct marketing advisory board of the UPU and she will give you some Introduction to the DMAB in a minute as well, but before we do that. I just see hello from sunny, Tenerife. I Don't want to know how hot it is at Tenerife at the moment because I would be terribly Not happy because we are here at the moment have rain and about two degrees cells ago So wherever you are rainy Hamburg. Yes, Ollie. It's the same for me. We are near Hamburg So it's quite cold here 26 degrees. Well, that wasn't nice referral That wasn't really nice and Bellini already told me you have about 30s 36 to 38 degrees at the moment South Africa probably the same Argentina. It's quite early in Argentina What is it at the moment 9 o'clock in the morning in Argentina? I think so then we have China, which is great I don't know. Did we already have China Bellini? I've never seen somebody from China I think it's the first time Pakistan. We already had that's great 11 a.m. Okay, so I was two hours wrong So it's not too early in Argentina India 7 30 p.m. Yeah, it's late there It's great that you stayed after your normal working times to be possible to take place to be part of that Innovation talk. It's great to have you all over the world from here Aruba. Yes, that's the one I wanted to hear Aruba is always great. I want to be an Aruba. That's I Need somebody who invites me to Aruba to do to give an in-person presentation there. That would be great. Oh Jakarta Indonesia, that's great. That must be very very late in Jakarta now It must be something like 10 p.m. Or so 9 p.m. Okay, not that far away It's great. Turkey and again Germany and China It's China it's 22. It's already 10 p.m. Even later. It's great that you're all here And I think it's already two minutes three minutes after the start we will start now So first of all, welcome to everybody to our 10th innovation talk with the hot hot topic And we all want to know about that topic, but before I give over to Philip I would like to Belindi to make a warm welcome by our host the ones who are paying for all the staff Which is Belindi one egg and but yeah, maybe Belindi the floors yours Thank You Martin and good morning afternoon or evening to you all and I would just like to thank You all for the opportunity on behalf of the universal postal union and its direct marketing advisory board To welcome you to this 10th innovation online talk as already mentioned by Martin and I'm Belindi from egg I'm the chair of the upu direct marketing advisory board and also the executive for corporate marketing and communication for Namibia post limited way down in Africa where it's very hot like Martin has just said For any newcomers that are joining us for the first time online today I would just like to give you a bit of background We started these online sessions in 2020 during the covert 19 pandemic When the upu direct marketing advisory board, which consists mostly out of postal operators and private sector members Introduced this brilliant online platform to keep us all in touch and to stimulate interest and sharing knowledge On the topic of direct marketing through postal channels Of course the success of such online sessions raising the hands of a professional moderator and we are pleased to continue today's Conversation once again with the support of Martin nitschke in the role as moderators. Thank you, Martin Then looking back at the previous nine innovation talk sessions We have been very privileged to be able to learn from very knowledgeable Well-versed guest speakers on a variety of topics all Professionals within the field of direct marketing Focusing on innovation and how it impacts and changes the world around us today is certainly no exception and we are very fortunate and Privileged to have a professor. Dr. Philip Rausch novel professor of digital marketing at the University of Bundeswehr in München Joining us online today and leading us on the theme metaverse from buzzword to disruption Thank you very much professor for taking the time to be with us today and for sharing your thoughts on the topic with us and From the UPU direct marketing advisory board We wish you all a great hour of discovery and conversation and Discussions and with that I have to do more than thank you very much Thanks, Dallindi and thanks for you and the advisory board to make all of this possible and Thank you as well to Philip to be our guest today. I I think it was the first time I met Philip some three months ago in I think it was late September or early October When we had a science talk festival from the German direct marketing association and he did a fantastic presentation on the metaverse on that day and When I heard that presentation, I was really fascinated and at the end I thought okay That's the guy I really would like to have in our innovation session and then I asked him and I was very happy when he said yes I'm coming so Philip welcome to you what we are doing now is you have the floor You have for about well half an hour or so But please let us a little bit time at the end so that we can have a lovely discussion to all of you participants You have the chat at the lower right of your screen if you have questions Please ask them already in the chat if you want you can ask them later after Philip this did this presentation as well But we love to have a dialogue. We are all about dialogue marketing So let's have a dialogue today as well in this innovation talk Philip the floor is yours and Alindia and me we will just do it diminish now. We will go away. No, we will stay and Will be hearing through your presentation. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye. See you later All right. Thank you very much for the invitation. Can you see my screen? I think you can see my screen, right? Perfect. All right, so Thank you very much for the introduction. Thank you very much for the invitation and of course, thank you very much for 50 participants were actually here today as a couple of familiar names So welcome everybody. Welcome to friends and prospect friends. Maybe in the future Glad that you are interested in what I'm talking about which is the metaverse. So what is the metaverse? Well, this is a question I try to answer today But unfortunately and this is a spoiler now So if you want to have some excitement just mute your speakers for a second, we won't be able to define it Because it's more like a bigger disruptional thing Yes, so who am I as I said, I'm Philip I'm a professor I'm an academic and I try to answer two questions and one is What do people do with XR and what is what does XR do with people? So these are the two fundamental questions I try to answer. So in my research, I'm not coding. I'm not Engineering anything. I'm just I'm looking at the intersection. I look what what people think what they do what they how they behave in XR Etc. So this is what we're doing All day. My focus is augmented reality I will explain it later in a little bit more detail, but most of you will know augmented reality from Pokemon Go and I started with these topics in 2014 When I was reading about Google Glass and I thought well, this is the future and I was so excited and I was so disappointed when I tried it for the first time And since that day I specialized on that and now I'm teaching at various universities in the world and on XR and We offered a Bavarian bite Program for XR, which all students can take etc. And I also tried to to color right with the industry So I post a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and hope to share some academic research findings with Yeah, with people who actually work within that field Well, let's start with a very general thing. Who are humans? Humans interact in a very three-dimensional manner. So I think this picture is a nice example you see that child and She's she's exploring things. She's probably smelling and touching and Looking at the flowers from different perspectives and this is how we interact with content. Let's call it content Let's call the flowers content So this is how we interact with the real world This is what we are used to do all day The problem is when it comes to devices like our smartphone This is how we behave So we look at two-dimensional screens in the limited size and We want to be immersed in that and that is so artificial It's it's very surprising that we can do so that it's very surprising that we get entertained from a device like that Because it's two-dimensional. It's very small. It's a very small sized screen and it's even worth It distracts us from the real world So this is the big disadvantage of the technologies we're using today If we want to try that together tie that together and say, okay What are the strengths and benefits we could say well? We have a digital reality on our smartphones or tablets, etc. And that has some disadvantages It's unnatural. It's limited in size and It's only seeing and hearing maybe maybe a little bit of vibration, but that's it but They also have some advantages, you know, I mean a smartphone devices allows us to reach a lot of people. It's interactive We we can We can share content here We can reach a lot of people we can copy things so it has some advantages But when we look at the true reality, so just remember the child in the first slide that the true reality is natural It's unlimited in size so we can go everywhere. There are no borders It's multi-sensory so we can touch smell taste everything, but it also has some drawbacks. It's not digital So we have also we are missing all the benefits digital content has We have a very low personal reach, of course We can shout and some people might hear it, but that's it We can't do a lot of more we this is a strong limitation and we have a limited chariability So we can't take a flower and just cherry with everyone because we can't copy it So what's the idea of the metaverse the idea of the metaverse is just take the pros of both and put it together That is the idea of a metaverse, but a metaverse is more than XR. This is very important So when we look at XR, you know, it's just I don't want to go too much into depth So this is an academic work. We conducted just to organize these terms. It's based on On expert interview, so we say XR means X reality Which is all kinds of new reality formats like augmented reality, virtual reality, diminished reality, mixed reality Whatever you you find We don't call it extended reality because extended reality is in conflict with virtual reality Because in virtual reality you're closed off from reality. So you're not extending the reality or replacing the reality And although a lot of people use AR and VR in the same sentence They represent fundamentally different concepts So the idea of AR is you bring virtual content in your physical environment And in VR the main principle is called telepresence Which means you bring yourself into another virtual environment You transport yourself somewhere else and this is called telepresence And of course they are very sophisticated forms where people might have difficulties to distinguish real objects from virtual objects Which is called mixed reality or there's some very simple AR like textual boxes where people know Well, this is not real and this is what we call assisted reality And of course there are a lot of things in between and we can have a similar distinction for VR Where we have some very simple forms like 360 degree content and to highly immersive multisangular VR content So this is just like a short understanding of the topics We're talking about because I will be talking about AR and VR Over the next probably 25 minutes and discuss it in the context of the metaverse So let's have a look at AR and VR first before we try to answer the question What the metaverse is? Here are some very common examples of use cases for augmented reality For example in the top left corner, there is an example what we would call remote assist You might have heard of that but remote assist means that another person like an expert Can join your field of view and can tell you what to do in your field of view So rather than explaining a complex situation like okay Take the dark red cable and put it in the seventh plug on the on the left side The expert could just like draw and say okay, this cable needs to be here Right next to that there is an example of IKEA It's one of the most used examples in augmented reality because IKEA has used 3d objects of their furniture items And put them in an app so people can place a virtual versions of their furniture in their hopes That is of course a great example The next photo here is the mass rover which is also a nice idea because you can explore the size and the speed of a mass rover In your local physical environment, so you can just place it there and see okay How tall is a mass rover compared to my car for example or how fast is it? And the example on the right side. This is something you all have on your phones This is one of the most useful augmented reality Applications that exist nowadays and this is like a little homework for you try it It's a Google Maps and augmented reality function. So rather than looking at an abstract Map on your phone and trying to figure out. What does this abstract? Representation of my environment actually mean you just hold your phone you look through your phone and Google Maps will play some arrows in your field of view and tell you what to go And this is much more way more accurate than any other form of navigation So please try it when you walk through an unknown city. It's really one of the best ways At the bottom we see two other examples and one is a gaming example of Lego now I'm speaking as an XR professor and not as a dad but Lego has an app where you could enrich physical products So you can have for example multiplayer modes and you can play with Virtual creatures that augment physical toys and on the left side at the bottom It's a learning example and this was a study we conducted for a training academy and they are using the Microsoft HoloLens device and Minecraft to teach agile project management. So they use it to teach scrum So they use the HoloLens device to practice and teach scrum. So So where are we in augmented reality? In terms of hardware nowadays, it's mostly smartphones Yeah, so most AR applications that we see run on smartphones. The problem is The smartphone is the wrong device for a majority of use cases So smartphone is nice for applications where you can see yourself for examples a makeup app But typically it's the wrong application for something to use in a longer time and Just as a spoiler for later when we talk about the metaverse It means you're exposed to that kind of content all day or at least for a longer time period and therefore Smartphone is the wrong device. However, this is what we have right now We have some devices. We have some AR glasses that have the potential to be a one all day like this one here for example Yeah, this is a tooth technology, but these kinds of devices They are not they are not ready. They're not ready for the market so far So they have issues in tracking technology or display technology, etc But for example the Microsoft HoloLens device although quite bulky is a very nice device that can show you how our future could look like So let's talk about VR. I'm more into AR So you will probably hear me more talking about AR but VR means being exposed to a different World so it doesn't really matter where you are because it VR you will be somewhere else and that could be used for gaming For therapy for education for shopping for meetings for dating, etc The hardware nowadays is so far. It's really okay. I mean the AR Glasses they are not ready for the mass markets, but the VR hardware It's totally available for it's available. It's affordable. It's not too expensive So for 300 400 euros you get a reasonable device. However, the acceptance rates are quite low We currently see kind of a hype because everyone is talking about the metaverse and show some very simple VR apps By the way, the same apps have been on the market for 10 or 15 years and nobody has ever called it metaverse but now everyone calls it metaverse and We don't really know how the long-term impact is so it's very hyped from the industry Say, okay in a few years through all you'll be using VR devices and maybe all day or at least for certain time period today But we have some challenges to solve for example VR sickness is a big issue So some people just feel sick like 20 to 30 percent with current devices that number might decrease a little bit But I doubt that will ever be zero No However AR is and VR can be really really helpful and powerful and this is one example of a study Which we will probably send to a journal today or tomorrow And and that shows one of the benefits that augmented reality can do it creates Closeness it creates closeness by putting content into your virtual perception of Your physical or local physical environment So this is what we call local presence and Here is one example how wish we Assessed the impact of this closeness on Brands so for example here. I'm a consumer is using the Mercedes AR app and the car is placed in that person's living room and That creates a perceived closeness between the consumer and the brand and that in terms leads to a stronger bonding between Which are stronger bond to stronger attachment between consumers and a brand which on the long run can have Financial benefits and we have shown the same mechanism also for different contexts. For example We showed in in another study that People who are informed about environmental issues Feel much stronger involved in that topic and show way higher interest to change their behavior when that Environmental concern or that environment environmental problem was displayed in their personal environment No, in that close physical environment and that created kind of like a personal Importance and that can really impact people's behavior and that is I think one of the core strength of augmented reality in addition to many other things like Being interactive It's funny, etc. So but this is one of the main strengths that we can actually also measure So when we look at the history as I told you I started about 2014 when I started in 2014 Everyone was talking about immersive tech and immersive and then immersive tech immersive media immersive gaming, etc. And then 2016 Microsoft launch the whole device and everyone suddenly was talking about mixed reality was a everything is mixed reality People redefined the term mixed reality. So it wasn't what Milkem said in the 1990s it just became a new term and 2018 people got a little bit sick or bored of the term mixed reality. So everyone said were XR or extended reality and That's hold another approximately two two and a half years And then Mark Zuckerberg used the ember and then everyone was talking about the metaverse And and I created this graph and when you look at the Google search search, it actually looks quite similar But when I created this graph, I was a little bit frustrated about the number of people who claim themselves being experts And the question was is the metaverse XR 2.0. So is it just Better XR and the clear answer is no Actually not So I tried to create a figure that can explain what is the difference or the relationship relationship between XR and the metaverse and we can try to understand the metaverse as an Ecosystem or a development or a vision that includes a fictitious World or an additional world That is decentralized. So it's not owned by someone. So metas metaverse or Facebook's metaverse doesn't really make sense to me It would be something like IBM's internet It includes some sums of ownership and property NFTs non-fungible tokens for example Some means to trade so you need money and that's typically cryptocurrencies People are represented as avatars. So they have our own identity and are presented as avatars There are certain rules and there are many many more examples that we can use But as you can see there's no XR in that graphic. So XR means it provides Access to the metaverse. So it's the way how the metaverse is displayed, but it's not the metaverse itself itself Yeah, and this is this is very important because a lot of people say whoa I have a metaverse app or Gucci has a metaverse app No, they might have a VR app and they might have an AR app and then might be a really cool AR app or a very cool VR app, but it's not the metaverse So XR provides access to the internet and if you want to add to the metaverse So if we want to combine this with or to compare this with the internet It would be something like the browser to access the internet So you would never call a browser the internet But you would say well you need a browser to display the internet So and this is kind of the similarity That means the basic ideas The metaverse is a monitorless 3d internet that reassembles reality as closely as possible What does it mean? It means it's decentralized. So it's hard or not controllable like the world, you know I mean that different people who have impact, but You can't really control the entire world You have access via AR and VR I mean a lot of people have ideas VR can look like but I will show you some ideas how AR can look like Interoperable that means If you buy some or let me just use a very simple example you can you you you buy An asset in in one specific on one specific property on the metaverse and you can use it somewhere else That would be the idea. For example, you purchase You purchase a special weapon in a game and you can play another game and you can use the same weapons over there Then we have a mirror was and I think this is very important because a mirror words means they represent the real world as we see it Today yeah as and and this real world mirror words. They are I think an integral part of the metaverse and People can experience these places in AR or VR so they can go for example To Berlin to the Brandenburger tour, yeah, but they could also go there in VR and they could place Fictitious item in VR close to the Brandenburger tour and the next time they are in Berlin and go there they will actually perceive This virtual asset in AR if they are wearing if they have access to the metaverse we are AR while being actually there And this is kind of abstract. It's a mapping of society So everything that's possible in the real world should also be somehow possible or Imitated in in the metaverse for example some sort of socializing so you can Communicate with other people as as our trust you have a sense sort of presence and identity So if if I am in Berlin You will probably recognize me or hopefully you will recognize me if we know each other So we can chat and you should also recognize me when I am online somewhere in the metaverse Because I have the same identity or have a linked identity. That's kind of abstract And we don't really know how to realize it in in specific or in in a specific use case, but this is how we will How we understand the metaverse then there's some sort of trading so for example I can purchase a specific land or an item or something for my avatar like like a Gucci bag And I could also sell it again So there are some I can make contracts with other people and I can sell it and I get some sort of Financial compensation for that and therefore I'm losing my Gucci bag And that also means there need to be defined ownership rules And this is where NFTs for example come into play However, very important. So this is how I understand the metaverse So if you ask five people how they define the metaverse and understand You will probably get more than five answers because the topic is quite vaguely defined that it's more like a vision However, there's certain agreement that the metaverse doesn't exist right now. It's more like a vision and Finally even meta Has changed the way they communicate and focus more on well the metaverse is something we're working on and it might exist in 10 to 15 years Just just recently I was interviewed in a in a tv documentary Right after interview with meta and meta and even meta said right like 10 to 15 years And then we will have something like a metaverse I wouldn't say these numbers because they are always wrong but What I want to say is even meta is a little bit more careful in how they use the term metaverse nowadays Let me talk about some challenges challenges are not always bad, but They need to be solved For example, who will dominate the metaverse and this is quite an interesting discussion because when we ask people Who will dominate the metaverse they say yeah meta of course because this is the air product No, it's not as we've just learned and when we try to look at how Online brands and and big brands have developed them over different waves of the internet or digital revolution Um, we can see there was there were some early brands like Atari and ziga and nintendo and commodore And these brands have not survived the first wave So in the second wave when it when we all went online from our stationary desktop computers Suddenly new brands appeared like aol or altavista compute serve AOL instant messenger for example So these were the new brands that that really influenced how people use the internet in the 1990s And then in the 2000s New brands when which we call like social media or what 2.0 new brands popped up Oh like facebook youtube Myspace Geo cities, etc. So icq. So these brands came on the market and they These were not the same brands as before So it was not Altavista or compute serve or yahoo who defined social media. These were new brands And then about 2010 when everything moved into mobile again new brands came up. It was like whatsapp and instagram and tiktok etc so Mobile internet was not really defined by facebook or Myspace but by new brands And the question is if we have the next revolution the next Wave of the internet which could be the metaverse or will probably be the metaverse Why should we really expect That facebook or meta Will dominate the market and not a new brand So my proposition is the metaverse will be dominated by brands that do not exist today Quote me And we'll talk in a few years again, but My proposition is the metaverse will be dominated by brands that do not exist today That will also mean new competitors. So when we think about the metaverse we typically think of Games socializing whatever, but it could also mean that entire industries can be disrupted For example, think of these post-its Post-its are very practical. I have a couple of post-its here But they're also very unpractical because Think of the first slider Low reach I can copy them. They're not interactive etc So they have a couple of disadvantages, but they are practical because I can attach them in the real world And I can do the same with augmented reality post-its So I can place augmented reality post-its as you can see here and that's light on the wall And I could share it. I can add videos in a post-it. So things that are not possible with physical post-its so the question is Will content creators be the new competitors to physical products And our research says yes and people are extremely open to that So we surveyed a couple of thousand consumers in different studies with different research designs in germany and in the u.s And we found surprisingly high acceptance rate for that Um, especially post-its or tv screens, etc Um, especially tv screens. I mean tv screens are such an unpractical technology. They are so big. They are so expensive They are huge and when you're not using them, they look terrible. I mean, it's just a black box on your wall And it would be way more practical if you have a five euro or five dollar AR app that you can attach to a wall if you want to watch a movie and if not, you're just closing it again So that could be a big um thing Next data protection We complain about our smartphones that they are collecting too much data about us. That's true It's dangerous. However, um, we have kind of control. So if we want to protect our privacy Then um We can just turn off our devices However with AR it's kind of different because these technologies are packed with sensor technology So they are invading the privacy of other people And that's a big game changer because now we only have to we don't we don't only have to care about our own privacy We also have to care about the privacy of other people and psychologically speaking That's a different topic. So people react differently when it comes to other people's privacy than when they talk about their own privacy It also means that we can have new ethical challenges For example here on the left side, you see an example of a study conducted by Italian scholars and they used 3d Sensor technology light off scanners that are integrated in modern smartphones And the scan people's faces took a photo and then they trained a neural network and estimated Can we predict how a person looks like in an rgb photo by just knowing how the person looks like on a 3d scan? And as you can see on these pictures on the left side, there is the rgb photo and on the red side There is the estimated the estimated photo And I think personally that looks very very very similar So there's a it's quite a High chance that in the future we can use 3d scans to estimate how people look like and that is kind of challenging Because it's quite easy to hide lighter scanners behind plastic For example in tesla car, you don't see the lighter scanners because they're behind plastic So these devices get smaller so we can hide Basically, we can we can take photo through plastic. So this is the practical implication of that and on the right side that was a 10 minute work by one of my phd students simon who We had a meeting with the digital minister in bavaria and I said, well, can we have a can we can we create like a crazy example? So we brainstormed like 25 30 minutes before she arrived. I said, you know what? Can we just change skin color and he said, oh, yeah, that's easy. Give me 10 minutes So within 10 minutes he created this app to change people's skin color And of course, it doesn't look very realistically here because we just wanted to show it works And we don't have any bad intentions. However, what you could easily imagine Is that people with bad intentions can just change people's color? So everyone looks like how they want to have their ideal world and I think ethically speaking This is a very very very challenging development if this happens Next I want to show you an example that a lot of people are not aware of if we can Integrate content into the virtual world. We can also erase content and this is called the minister reality Here is an example it's a it's a use case from called transformer And what they do is they replace people and cars by Yeah, futuristic objects However, what we can see here is it's quite easy To eliminate people or even cars from people's perception of the real world So if we think of our definition of the metaverse We assume that people are exposed to AR content for a substantial period of time over the day So that means if the wrong people have access to your devices They could easily hide coming an upcoming car for example. So you're not seeing that car So that is a challenging topic and here on the right side We see maybe a positive example, which I mean your marketers you find it negative But a lot of people might like it A real world ad blocker So this is an example. It's a student project From the US and they just trained an AR technology to identify brand logos and just to to overlay it or to blur it out And about 30 to 40 percent of the population Are using ad blockers in their browsers So real world ad blockers could be the next logical step Here is also one more extreme example of a diminished reality So this is how a person could perceive the real world So there is a homeless person sitting on the corner and If you have a let's call it a not so nice personality, you might say, okay, these people are they don't fit into my world So with AR you could eliminate those people And this is really really An example that Underlines the ethical challenges we have with augmented reality if used in a daily life No, so this is way beyond like catching catching pokemon somewhere However, we are living in a bubble and this is very important Here is a very simple example We surveyed roughly 400 consumers this summer and about a different topic and I had the idea Let's just add a multiple choice test at the end How people think about augmented reality And and the numbers in bold are the correct answers. Yeah, and as you can see here People have no clue about augmented reality In augmented reality people are in a completely fictitional environment. Well, this is wrong because this is VR However, 36 percent say yes So 36 percent one third Of the response doesn't know the answer Has a wrong understanding 33 percent have no idea. They I don't know and only 31 percent have the correct answer And we find very similar patterns Throughout that survey. So a lot of people have of think they have a vague idea of what they are talking about But in fact, they have so I think our homework as an xr Discipline is we have to educate the public. So this is our Main homework and that's why I love speaking about that topic because I think I have we have to spread the word And make people familiar with these terms So where are we now? If this is the development of social media with a lot of different brands that are popping up and that are developing More or less towards social media. So the question was icq social media It's my space social media or was geocities geocities, for example Is it Is this really social media then we could say well, we have a very similar development In the metaverse and we have of course some brands that are more or less Something like an idea of a metaverse or we call it the proto metaverse So it shares more or less similarities With a true metaverse, but we are basically somewhere here So what we see nowadays in terms of of metaverse platforms is something like icq In social media. Yeah, so of first first step so together everything indicates That we will have a hybrid future In which real and virtual content will merge in some way It's unclear when this will happen And how it will be called and how it will exactly look like So that's unclear, but something in something that way will be happening But one thing is clear The sooner we tackle the issues the better. So what we have right now is not the metaverse But shares some aspects of the metaverse So what we have right now is the ideal time and the ideal tool to to study and to To to understand what's going on and of course also to shape and define I also call for caution in the use of the metaverse word because It doesn't it's not really helpful if we call everything metaverse if if it's not the metaverse, you know I mean, then we just say it's a VR app. It's a social VR app. It's a social AR app is a persistent Spatial AR app, whatever A lot of people don't care about the metaverse because they don't know about it. So again, if we go outside the bubble A lot of people have never heard the term before And we should discuss it across disciplines and that's very important because developments don't care about disciplines We as academics or as industry Professionals we care about our discipline. So I'm a marketer and I'm a PR person and I am an innovation manager and HR person However, the developments typically don't care. So we have to look at this in a little bit on a broader level so This was my my part I know that you have a postal background so We created some use cases and Tried to figure out if this is something That you are already using Here is one example that We identified as a use case which could be A very simple augmented reality app again, not a metaverse app It's an augmented reality app And you can scan a product you want to send to someone And it shows you the size of the box you need A very simple standard technology included in all mobile devices And surprisingly, we found an example Of this concept already in the us So the us Postal services, they have such an augmented reality app. I've never seen it before but could work The next example could be And this could go more towards metaverse Virtual versions of physical postal offices. So for example, you could have an appointment Add a postal office in in VR so without leaving the house And you could even chat with the person that's sitting in the postal office And this person could for example, see you as an avatar So this is something that could be possible. I mean the question is does it make sense What can we do? What can we do better? And this is of course a question You guys have to answer So what could we do and What what benefits could we have if we have virtual agents for example, rather than actual people So this is something I'm handing this over. I'm handing this question over to you and I'll show my last slide So thank you very much for your attention for your interest in that topic. Thank you for joining my talk And of course, I'm happy to discuss these two examples or many other examples In the remaining time. Thank you very much Thanks, Philip for that really really interesting presentation It was well part of it was the second time but the interesting thing I just found is that I heard different things the last time which is I think good thing you really get into Into it a little bit deeper I'm sure that will become a lot of questions. They are coming some some thanks yous already So the people laughed you what you presented, but I'm more interested in the questions at the moment So please Ask your questions to Philip now is your chance Until we get the first question Let me let me start with one thing. I just was thinking over you said People are not waiting for the metaverse to come. That was one of your last statements And I was thinking okay In 2000 was it 10 or somewhere around that nobody was waiting for an iphone Everybody was waiting for the next Nokia, which was smaller lighter and had 15 days instead of 14 days of battery life Oh, what a great one then along then along came came steve jobs with an iphone which was bigger Heavier and had one day of battery life and everybody wanted to has it so so my question is coming from that Even if people at the moment do not know about the metaverse and do not have knowledge and feeling about it Don't you think that they will love it the the moment it comes? It depends. So first of all, I totally agree with you. There's a great quote by Henry Ford If I had asked people what they want, they would have said a faster horses. Yeah Yes, absolutely. So we need we need this initial contact with xr definitely and We we are just analyzing the data of a study we conducted a while ago Where we had people the first time exposing augmented reality On a on a mobile on a Holo lens device And we could measure their initial inspiration over a time like of over a week So even a week later these people felt kind of inspired Okay, so we need to get people exposed to that And we need creative people who just prototype and do things I mean, this is so important that people just like okay I'm just trying something like like how did how did facebook emerge for example? Not not by saying, okay So the theory says we need this is not just by trying it and doing it and prototyping it And and of course the first ideas that the first social networks They were not very successful But then suddenly few great examples came up and those were the ones who changed the way we live Yeah Totally right. There are a lot of questions coming in. I will just start with the first one You've used on ar versus we are so what do you think which which technology will dominate and if you can answer why? It depends on the use case I mean there are certain use cases where ar doesn't make sense and there are use cases where we are doesn't make sense So it really it really depends on the use case. So I would say both play a dominant both play a major role It's not either or but I think on a long-term exposure My proposition is that people are more willing to use ar over a longer time than we are Once we have the technology so on devices in this size. I mean, this is more like a sister reality It's it's not it's not comparable with a HoloLens device. Yeah, and it's attached to the smartphone Um, but Um, so people are more willing to use something like that Where they still have control over the real world then something where they are totally closed off However, for some use cases you have to be in vr because if you want to explore a place that's not existent That's not where you are. It's far away, etc Then then ar doesn't make any sense that you need vr. Yeah You mentioned something like sickness caused by vr. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, a vr sickness typically, um, of course if the if if if what you see doesn't match to what you feel So if you move your head and the leg there's a little bit of latency Um, the research says there are three different groups of factors that determine Vr sickness One is the hardware one is the content and one is the person itself We can easily fix hardware and software over the next years That's getting way better. The challenge is what happens with the people And our research in in vr shows that people who feel sick in everyday life. For example while reading a book in the car or Whatever just feel sick quite often every day life. They also feel more sick in vr So we found out in one study and we we replicated The study and we divided we used two different devices So we used a very fancy and one of the newest vr devices and for half of the response We trimmed everything and imitated being an older device and we saw of course the newer device was better However, the effect of the person itself was kind what's still stronger So still there for even stronger than the effect of the device. So on the long run, I think Um, we will we will be able to solve issues about content and hardware But we will still have to struggle that some people will feel sick in vr At least when used over a longer time I mean, I don't want to talk too much about it. But there are ways how you can train that for example Pilots get kind of a get get get a training not to feel sick, but they had they just have to they just have to Have to feel sick for two weeks and then you get used to that. Okay, you can't do that with vr So you can't say you're okay. I mean you You can buy your new vr in the shop and then you have to feel sick for two weeks and then it makes fun I think that will be a hard sell. Yeah Okay, there are several questions around the generation. So let's start with the older generation Do you have the feeling that We are or metaverse will exclude the older generation or because not everyone is so techno feel and loves this or Do you maybe think the other way around so people older people can visit their grandchildren in some kind of vr or ar environment and they'll use it maybe even more So what do you think about that? So our research replicates common sense Younger people like it more. This is true for all technologies And and this is something that will disappear over time because first of all younger people are becoming older And second once younger people are using it older people think, okay, I have to use it too. So older people are typically not among the early adopters But they are more towards a late majority, but they are not excluded Some people for example who have problems with stereoscopic viewing They might have issues so that vr does or 3d effects don't work as as expected But I don't think age is a major turnoff And for the younger generation, there's a question that they Tend or it seems that they tend to prefer less physical And more virtual worlds Do you think that this is something that will be a big difference for advertising then as well? So will there be advertising in this virtual worlds to reach this younger generation? Yes, and I was I'm sure we will make the same mistakes as we did with all Um previous generations because we tried to copy what was effective in the wave before Yeah, so mass advertising for example was kind of successful in the offline world Then people went online. So we placed static banners everywhere and that well people now have to buy our products Or when social media started companies posted like, okay, here is a discount 10 often People were unfollowing their brands is where I'm not interested in that So companies had to train journalistic skills and marketers had to become like little journalists And create good content which was called content marketing And we'll have very similar challenges in ar for example In which situations is vr content better than ar and in which physical situations Is which Which virtual content helpful to us and this is not that easy So we study a lot how how people perceive different content in different contexts and this is so complicated So it's not as easy that we would say, okay, if there's a match people like it If there's a this match people don't like it. No, it's quite complicated We don't really we don't have a full understanding of that yet And I think marketers will have to learn new new New laws new rules and how to place it and yet laws by the way also legal issue For example, am I allowed to place? If if I was coca-cola, um, am I allowed to place a virtual coca-cola banner in your backyard? Well, I'm not allowed to place a physical banner there because it's your property But a virtual banner which you can only see if you have access to that kind of metaverse I have no idea It's an interesting question because there might be Well in in reality, there might be different laws in different countries Yes, so will we have different metaverses with different laws might be another question because Well, it doesn't well, we have only one universe But it seems to be the case that we won't get only one metaverse But more like a plural like meta versus like one from meta another one from no idea Microsoft the next one from Whomever there might be the companies you told us we don't know the names about yet Yeah, so will will there be more than one one metaverse? What do you think or will there be one one big one where all these things emerging? Maybe it I It could could be both. I mean, it's very hard to predict uh, the the question is also When would you call something a metaverse or yeah, or when is it just a what would be for example? um, a social vr app that everyone is using Would you call it? Yeah, that's a proto meta type. I mean, it's a definition question, but it could be that several platforms exist Um, there are some questions around the postal services. So do you think that? Mail or physical mail how this can work in some very synergistically with the technology like ar br Well, you showed the example with the with the package size. I like that one much. Yeah, but um Besides or More than that. Do you think we will have some kind of Postal services in the metaverse or is this all so So virtual that you don't know you not need really these services Well, it it we discuss these ideas. Um, so one very simple way could be a navigation system for for um for postal delivery So it's just like shown in your field of view and you you bring you bring your amazon delivery And it just takes a photo how you deliver it and everything is documented So that could be a a very simple and pragmatic way Um, however, there could also be something like a new form of email. For example, I have no idea how that could look like So this is something I have to get back to you and say well think of that idea Um, how could an email look like in the metaverse? Would it be something that looks like a physical mail? Would it be something that is text? This is something different Is it something that you find in a physical postbox? This is something in 3d or in in 2d. Does it have to be 2d? Text only like we know an email today or is it something totally different? So this is something I have to get back to you But um, I would say uh, don't try it Don't try to to copy physical letters in the metaverse Might be something might be something better I agree with you. I think that the postal operators shouldn't try to copy something but on the other side there might be a chance to Well to reuse some ideas we have in the physical world. So if I look for One of the best things that a physical letter has which an email doesn't has is the the physical Feeling around so I can touch it. There might be a the thicker paper or thinner paper So there's some haptic experience with that Do you think that we will have something like that in the metaverse as well? So is there something like a like a haptic technology out there? And the different ways how you can do that So one is in in vr that the vr technology identifies objects in your physical environment And overlays content for example, you can have a ball in your hand a Soccer ball and and it could display like a global out of it. So that that something like that could work And the other ideas that we see developments that integrate haptics into xr for example We know it from a controller So it could vibrate when we touch something could vibrate And then we there are a couple of developments in terms of haptic gloves. So gloves that have Sensors included. So once you touch something you get like a haptic feedback So this is it's yeah, I mean the manufacturers They they promise it's not a prototype anymore personally. I think it's still a prototype phase because it's not a it's not a daily use It's not something that a lot of people have but what I wanted to to to Or my the message I want to communicate is there are developments. So the community is aware that haptics matter We need it and one last thing on that We have one academic study where we show that even though people can't touch it people have the feeling that they touch it So even when they see so there are certain people who have it's called high need for touch So these people have to touch everything before they make a decision and in in our one paper We could show that people who have a high need for touch and they are more happier with ar That those people with a low need for touch and this is kind of interesting because people with a high need for touch They typically don't like online shopping that much But in in ar when they see a product that looks touchable They they can satisfy their need for touch That's interesting especially if we get more sensors to work together at the moment We are speaking more or less about Visual sense and audio sense, but it would be interesting how this develops if we have the haptic sense or the smelling or something like that to work together and giving a more well Immersive feeling of the whole thing. So we get more and more questions. I have to tell you all people It's it's one minute past four. We are more or less already over time and I'm german I'm not to be allowed to be over time after the schedule So but I think we can do one or two last questions. Philip. Is that okay for you? Oh, absolutely and and your further questions just just text me on linkedin and I'm happy to continue the discussion That's good. I I see that you have about 10 000 around 10 000 followers on linkedin already So maybe after today there might be some work So that's great. Um, I see there's for example a question around 5 g do you think that there is a um A connection between the this fifth generation or even then maybe six generation networks of telecoms and and AR VR whatever xr things we are talking about is that a directly connection? Do you think so? Yes, absolutely. Um, because In the future or nowadays if you look like a Microsoft HoloLens device I showed a picture earlier What I have in my in my in my hand on the last slide. I'm sure if you still see it So that's kind of a big device because everything that the device needs is included in the device like the battery the center technologies the computing unit, etc and the vision is that The devices are getting smaller And they only include tracking technology and display technology and everything else is done elsewhere Um, the rumors say that apple's xr device which will be coming soon is just using the iphone So that means the the the headset is collecting the data is sending it to the smartphone Smartphone is through the calculation and sends the results back, which is displayed The idea is why should why should we have it on a smartphone? I mean, then we're just like moving the challenges from the head to the pocket So why can't we just send it? To a nearby service station now So that's why the fast internet connection if we call it 5g or 6g or whatever Um, it's just essential for that. Otherwise, we still need cables and battery packs and whatever heavy bulky devices Which is not very user friendly on the long run The other is of course if we want to scan if we have 3d scans of the environment Then we need to have access everywhere because we need real-time information We need to know how another person is behaving somewhere so that the avatar can be imitated in a VR world And therefore we need information and that also brings us even beyond the 5g discussion Namely it brings us to low orbit low orbit internet Because on the long run we need internet everywhere fast fast internet everywhere So the developments with starlink or the european counterpart, which is currently discussed That will probably be the next the next stage logical steps, yeah, right I think this clumsiness of the current devices is still probably one of the biggest challenges I see for for a For a big roll out to to to everybody because at the moment these devices are still not really fun to wear for a longer time So they are heavy. They are they are not good looking So do you think that this will be solved in the next years the the hardware part of it? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean the developments we see with meta for example meta is partnering with ray ban um with the ray ban stories, of course, it's not augmented reality, but What is what is the purpose of that device? I mean it's first of all establishing a collaboration between a tech company and a fashion company And second it's making people used to wear technology in their face So, um, by the way, meta is strongly working on ar. They are investing more money in ar than they invest in vr But everyone associates um meta with vr. We are So of course, we call it fashionology because it's fashion and technology and this is As important as the context at the content itself Fantastic Thanks to you philip and I think you said Anybody who has questions and if I missed the question. I'm very sorry. I try to get all of them But if I missed one, I think you can ask that question philip directly Um, philip thanks for your time. It was great to have you on board here Thanks one finally to the upo belindy and fredrick and abby to make all of this possible It was very nice to have you all here and now as it is already the first of advent I think we can say we wish you a great time Wish you a nice christmas and a good way into the new year and I hope to see you all back to Innovation talk number 11. I don't know the topic yet, but I can assure you we will find a very interesting topic again Thanks philip for being here today. Thank you And thanks everybody else for being here today as well and um, yeah, we'll see you again. Bye. Bye. Bye