Beyond the Book Tech Comms for the Digital Generation (and beyond)

Senior Information Developer (Media Team) Andrew Mills BA MISTC Senior Information Developer (Media Team)

About me I’ve been creating guide content for the last 27-years (so, since I was 12). Passionate about visual learning while exploring the cool opportunities of different technologies. I produced professional video game guides for over 14 of those years. My time is now spent creating content as a Senior Information Developer for Arm in Cambridge.

Is there any value in using AR & VR for technical training at Arm? The answer? Most likely. But it’ll all be in the context.

Benefits of Visual Learning Formats Emotive Highly Engaging Memorable Visual Context

Arm VR Arm AR Goal: Teach Arm employees how Arm Mali GPUs work using interactive VR. Goal: Visually explore the insides of a Mali GPU at multiple levels.

Arm VR Goals Make learning fun and really engaging. Increase Arm Mali GPU product knowledge. Cater for visual learning styles. Surprise the trainee. Arm branded cardboard ‘VR glasses’.

VR Dev Challenges Valuable? Unity (setup pains & use). 3D models. Scripts & coding. Motion sickness. Phone or dedicated headset? Framerate & optimisation.

(An easier starting point) 360 ‘VR’ Videos (An easier starting point) A 1st Generation 4k Samsung Gear 360 Camera (Eg: Xmas, Holidays). https://jaxry.github.io/panorama-to-cubemap/ Conversion www.360toolkit.co - Converts cubemaps to Equirectangular. Image and video editing tools (e.g. Adobe Creative Cloud). Download Spatial Media Metadata Injector. Upload ‘injected’ video to YouTube and watch in VR mode! Also - www.marzipano.net

Arm AR Goals Make learning fun. Increased user engagement. Blend with 3D printed models. Explain complex concepts visually. Potential online distribution (reduced off-site training costs).

AR Dev Challenges Valuable? Udemy courses. Unity & Vuforia. 3D models and animation. Creating great ‘Image Targets’. Adding interactivity. Framerate & optimisation.

The Production Workflow

My Main Challenges Getting internal stakeholder ‘buy-in’. How to measure the ‘learning value’ for each user. Learning the Unity workspace. The key constraints of hardware performance. Creating slick 3D assets for VR and AR use. Finding the right tutorials or internal resources to create professional assets and/or code.

The Future Mixed Reality (MR) A refined, fluid, and interactive experience that maximizes engagement. MR is AR and VR combined into a single package.

Thank you! Got any questions for me? Feel free to come up and ask me! Email: andrew.mills@arm.com Twitter: the_tech_author