COVID Strategies
A world post Covid-19 will be different forever.
Changes: Less face-to-face, things are moving virtual, people and teams have more time to create.
Impact:Off-the-shelf sales stalled, focus on Hygiene, more demand for content creation
We are: Producing more content, Building 2D capability, focusing on Hygiene
What has changed in the market?
Equality and bias is now more important than ever, with COVID it is actually killing people. It’s not just a nice to have, it’s a need to have.
Majority black counties have three times the rate of infections and nearly six times the rate of deaths as majority white counties, according to the analysis.
“Why is it three or four times more so for the black community as opposed to other people?” President Trump asked at Tuesday’s White House task force briefing. “It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t like it, and we are going to have statistics over the next probably two to three days.”
“Health disparities have always existed for the African American community, but here again with the crisis now — it’s shining a bright light on how unacceptable that is,” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
We don’t have access to care and if we do it’s likely that care is of worst quality because they are often termed minority-serving,” Blackstock said. “And they may not have a specialist or the resources needed to care for covid-19 patients. And there’s implicit bias on the part of the health-care providers, and the studies have shown that there’s bias toward white patients over patients of color.”
Approval for testing for COVID-19 is particularly vulnerable to implicit biases, doctors say.
“the whole process more vulnerable to the implicit biases that every patient and medical professional carry around with them.” (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/coronavirus-tests-covid-19-black)
Result:
California has now enacted mandatory unconscious bias training for medical professionals, and other states are expected to follow suit. We have had Stanford’s Associate Dean at the Medical School reaching out to us to co-create and pilot training.
Less face-to-face interactions
There will be less of this in the foreseeable future:
- Meetings
- Classroom learning
- Events
Things are moving virtual
Virtual will replace things that do not need to be face-to-face interactions. Including:
- Workplaces
- Classrooms
- Venues
Clients currently have more time to create/build
We are seeing people and teams have time to focus on creative tasks that they may not previously had bandwidth for.
Some industries are not in a downturn, and oppositely correlated, eg. Healthcare, some tech companies.
How it has impacted us?
Off the shelf content sales stalled
- Off-the-shelf VR product sales (and implementations) from the website have stalled. As they were largely run at events, or in classroom style workshops.
Hygeine and sharing
- Virtual Reality is not ubiquitous enough yet that everyone owns one (like a mobile phone or PC).
- There is a need to share headsets.
- There will be less willingness to share things that touch the face (even with proper hygeine processes).
Teams are asking us to create content
Companies want to build things. We are having to provide proposals for custom production.
Demand and sales of this service are higher than ever.
Companies are still planning on a world post Covid-19. Some are doing well, and have budget (eg. GSK).
What are we doing?
Producing new content
Our team is co-designing and producing new VR (and non-VR learning) content for a world post Covid-19 with clients.
Teams recognise value of simulation, and gamification in learning.
Building 2D capability
Our team is currently researching taking our existing VR experiences to mobile and web interfaces.
We will build mobile phone AR capability, as well as web interface (video game style) functionality.
This will benefit the scale, and overall product offering.
Leading Remote Work
Our team has been working remotely and with partners and clients remotely for years. We are now doubling down on this, educating our clients and partners on how to do this.
In a time of remote work, our team are helping lead the way.
Oculus Quest - Hygiene Best PracticesHygiene and Safety
See our recommended Hygiene strategies and best practices for running VR in the current climate.
Be aware of currently local and national policies of running events and social distancing.
Hygiene and Safety, plus other learning resources in our Learning Guides Section
Future Direction for Equal Reality
We are seeing more and more interest for what we do in the healthcare sector - specifically focused on care and bias in patient/clinician interactions. Eg. GSK, want to focus building a VR experience teaching Diversity in clinical trails, Johns Hopkins wants to look at professional standards of care for Nurses, and a lot more healthcare providers are asking us for simulation on end-of-life discussions and difficult news (such as Alzheimers Australia and many more). This all leverages our technology focus perfectly. We see this trend continuing for the future.
How does this not affect us?
Remote Work As Usual
Our team has been working remotely for years. This global shift to remote work has had minimal change to our way of working, in some aspects an increase in productivity.
Diverse Industries
Our diversity of verticals means we can lean on different industries in their moments of strength, and avoid the effects of industries under pressure.
Flexibility is who we are
Our core products and process shore up in the face of this global crisis, and due to our inherent nature of being flexible and adapting. This is by no means the biggest challenge we have had to face. We use learning from previous challenges to help us face the next. For us, this is largely business as usual.
We still deliver
Thanks to established remote systems and inherent flexibility COVID has had minimal impact on our ability to deliver existing work, or take on new work.
We are proud to say the work we make is still up to our usual standards, which is recognized as world leading.
How to turn this climate to your advantage?