Help Lightning Blog

The promise of smart glasses has been the source of buzz in the technology sector for some time. We have seen excitement over various products, starting prominently with the introduction of Google Glass in 2012. Since then, the market has gotten quite crowded with products from Realware, Vuzix, and Microsoft, to name a few. Smart glasses create true extended reality/mixed reality (XR/MR) experiences for users. In contrast to virtual reality--which totally submerges the user into a computer-generated world of visual and audio stimuli--XR/MR overlays information onto the user's view of real world. Smart glasses make science-fiction experiences like those from the movies Terminator and Iron Man a reality.

“Rock Star Employee” isn’t the easiest title to win. You’re expected to have all of the answers and excel at your job—all while pulling up the performance of your team, keeping customers satisfied, and delivering exceptional solutions.

The Augmented Reality (AR) market continued to create value in many market segments in 2019. We did see struggles in the smart glass market as Magic Leap failed to meet unrealistic expectations and a number of AR companies collapsed including Meta, ODG, Blippar, and Daqri.  However, we did see AR take hold in a few markets including product promotion and remote expertise.

As a surgeon, an important part of my responsibility to patients is to be available as needs arise.  A critical aspect of this relationship involves postoperative care. Many patients, myself included, feel apprehension about a surgical incision and worry about how best to change bandages, wash the wound, etc. or what to make of any changes that seem unusual or unexpected.

On Monstrous Pictures of Whales, On Monstrous Pictures of Reality, whether Virtual, Augmented, Mixed, or Merged

The famous Ishmael of Melville's Moby Dick struggles to share the true form and nature of whales with us:

What have whales to do with virtual reality?

Today’s companies are under tremendous pressure to provide superior service in addition to excellent products. When Diversey wanted to exceed the service expectations of its clientele, it turned to Help Lightning and merged reality technology.

It was a Saturday morning early last Summer, and I was on the phone with John. John was at his daughter’s birthday party and had stepped out to help me with a problem with my A/C. John has been providing service on my HVAC equipment for me for more than a dozen years. He’s been here several times and knows all the stuff very well. He had a good idea what the problem was and was trying to walk me through the procedure to fix it. It was going to be a brutally hot weekend, and after 10 minutes of effort John said, “Hang on Marc, I’ve got my truck with me. I’ll head on over and get it done.” Hearing the disappointment in his voice, I told him to wait a minute, “I think I’ve got a way for you to do this and still sing ‘Happy Birthday’”…

In the world of Augmented Reality, 2018 has been a year of breakthroughs and advancements sprinkled with a dash of hope and disappointment. With this informative Webinar, we reviewed headlines and highlights surrounding Augmented and Merged Reality activity from this past year.

These three simple, small words, are currently the ones I most often hear when working with service leaders today.

They usually lead to questions like:

• “How can we reduce our service costs without compromising on customer outcomes”?
• “How can we increase productivity and efficiency without adding head count”?
• “How can we improve first time fix rates, both in our technical support organization, as well as with our field service team”?
• “How can we effectively train new hires, by leveraging our experienced techs”?
• “How can we increase customer loyalty, deliver better customer experiences and retain and grow our clients”?

The list of “How can we…” questions is endless.

Believe it or not, Smart Glasses are not a new idea. In fact, they were first conceived by Ivan Sutherland in 1968 but, at the time, technology had a long way to go. Well here we are, 50 years later, and we're still waiting for a practical solution.

Integrating Merged Reality Remote Assistance into Your Existing Field Service Management Tools

Your field service experts and technicians are focused on solving customer problems. If not introduced properly, new tools and apps can be a barrier to their core mission, no matter how powerful the new technology. Rather than focusing on getting the job done, each new tool and app requires your users to learn new patterns and behaviors. Some users will resist doing this, resulting in low adoption for new apps and features introduced into existing apps. This is the classic 'Who Moved My Cheese?' problem. 

English is the world’s most-commonly spoken language, but that doesn’t mean you can overlook the billions who don’t speak it. Just because a person knows some English, doesn’t mean it’s enough for them to handle complex technical issues or effectively solve problems. When you factor in the rise of emerging markets, which means emerging languages, you can see how complex things are starting to become.

Our CEO, Gary York, is not only a tech innovator, serial entrepreneur, and marathon runner. He's also an Augmented Reality aficionado. Throughout the month of February, he explored the brighter side of this break-through technology and tweeted daily about practical AR use through the comments and observations of some of our Help Lightning users. You can follow his journey here...

Replacing a retiring filed service professional isn’t as easy as you think. That’s because millennials are two times more likely to leave a job after two years and only half as likely to be employed with the same company after 10. In fact, the cost of replacing your high-level, specialized employees is about 400% of their annual salary!