I have been getting into mixed reality or MR recently, this is a very interesting premise and has lots of applications, allowing students to interact with 3d objects in real time and to scale therefore making the learning experience much more interactive and interesting. The leaders behind this great technology is Microsoft heading the charge in bringing MR to real life applications through the HoloLens. Although it is very expensive for the average user the HoloLens is still experimental and despite the great leaps and bound made with developers using the tech, the mass production of the lens would be difficult to implement into daily life due to its size.
Medical Teachings
In the medical field Leiden University develops first interactive mixed reality HoloLens application for medical education to investigate anatomy with your own body movements. This allows 3d images to become overlaid onto the users body and replicate in real time how the body is working using 3d tracking. Using the HoloLens teachers in the medical fields can now prepare presentations with interactive content showing 3d animations of body parts and cell structures discussed. This allows for a more immersive experience abolishing death by power point, which is the main cause of learners being reluctant to listen and study due to text heavy resources leaving everything to the imagination.
With this doctors can be trained much quicker by using simulators using mixed reality so students can learn and perform practise operations and diagnosis any time, anywhere. Combining this with gamification learning material can be represented as levels in a game allowing schools to keep track of student progress by tracking how many levels they have completed during their independent learning hours.
Gamifying education would not only make it more fun to learn, but different students could learn quicker and even finish the modules before they are due allowing them to move onto the next semester early. This will create a tailored learning experience moving at the pace of the individual learner and not generalised to the speed of a whole class.
Online Banking
The banking industry could be completely changed with mixed reality with customers being able to access their bank and talk to visual aides or call centre operatives any time over a video streamed call. Adding gamification to banking through mixed reality would enable long term investing, buying a house and saving to seem like levels in life and in a game. A bank could be represented by a 3d replication of a local branch which the user could visit and interact with anytime enabling them to see balance, view interest percentages and learn the best ways to bank, save and invest.
This would bring tutorials on how to bank better into the viewers everyday life when dealing with personal banking, the level system could be measured by how much the user learns and how much knowledge gained is put into practice. Below is a mixed reality banking design which falls along the same lines as what I am mentioning in this blog, the video shows a glimpse of what the future of banking and society would be like with this tech.
