Holographic Virtual Room

Innovation:  holographic room allowing true immersion in a virtual environment 
  
Forces that would influence this innovation: 

Supporting: 
Social – uses for the holographic room could be related to gaming and entertainment. The comfort level of users, price points for the technology, and types of activities available would determine whether the end users would embrace the technology or not. Games and entertainment in today’s world are social and interactive – as people are deciding what platform to purchase for their entertainment needs, one factor that is important is how many others are available to “play” with them, and what experiences can be shared. 

Political – another use for this type of technology would be for more realistic training opportunities for those in the military, life-saving personnel, etc. Funding for this type of technology could come as a result of political pressure to expose trainees to realistic simulations of potentially harmful events. Haptic feedback (already present on my cell phone) could be used to apply a buzz or small “zap” to the user to provide an alert that the trainee has been injured in some way. 

Opposing: 
Technical – the technology for immersive virtual environments is in its early stages and being developed rapidly. The current technology does not allow for truly immersive experiences. Over time, research and development would have to progress in order to allow this innovation to develop and be able to be marketed. 

Financial – along with the need to create the technology, comes the need to make it affordable and supportable with existing infrastructure (space, power requirements, zoning issues, noise ordinances, etc.) If the cost to purchase and install the unit exceeds perceived value, the innovation will fail to take root and thrive. 

I would use the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) to explore this issue. Because of the potential for the innovation to be heavily social in implementation, getting groups to agree on the features important to a particular audience could focus development methods. I would explore training and entertainment options separately, as I feel these are distinctly different market segments with divergent needs and expectations. Respondents in an NGT process exploring consumer views benefit from high involvement and commitment, and the ranking process provides structure to the data collected. Providing a structured process in collecting data can help researchers avoid problems with individual opinion dominating overall discussion. (Claxton, Ritchie, & Zaichkowsky, 1980) This technique seems most suitable for getting rankings of which features are considered most important in the development of the holographic virtual environment. 

Reference: Claxton, J. D., Ritchie, J. R., & Zaichkowsky, J. (1980). The Nominal Group Technique in Consumer Research. Journal of Consumer Research , 7, 6.