Getting and Keeping Your Attention in XR, with LumiereVR COO Alexander Haque

Published: July 31, 2019, 7:05 a.m.

XR technologies\nare undeniably a leap forward in humankind\u2019s mechanical evolution.\nBut our brains \u2013 the way they work \u2013 haven\u2019t quite evolved in pace\nwith them, so XR solutions are hardly solutions at all unless they\nwork within the confines of how we think and react. Alex Haque of\nLumiereVR waxes philosophical about how to design XR with that in\nmind.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Today\u2019s guest is Alexander\nHaque, the founder of RetinadVR, whose mission was to help pioneer\nvirtual and augmented reality through powerful data. RetinadVR was\nacquired recently by LumiereVR, in July 2018. Alex is now the COO for\nLumiereVR, which is bringing quality VR content to the masses through\nmasterful curation and distribution. You can learn more about Alex\nand Lumiere by visiting LumiereVR.com. Alex, welcome to the show.\n\n\n\nAlex: Hey, thank you so much for\nhaving me, Alan. Pleasure to be here.\n\n\n\nAlan: It\u2019s my absolute pleasure.\n\n\n\nAlex: Yeah, thanks for having\nme. You\u2019re one of my favorite LinkedIn personalities, and a fellow\nCanadian! So I\u2019m excited to talk shop with you.\n\n\n\nAlan: Canadians are taking over\nthe VR scene in a big way. It\u2019s really exciting. The purpose of this\npodcast is to provide as much value to businesses and business owners\nand people in companies that are looking to explore and expand on\nvirtual and mixed reality and augmented reality, and figure out how\nthese technologies can be used for them. So, perhaps let\u2019s just take\na look back at RetinadVR; what you guys were doing there, and what\nled you to what you\u2019re doing now.\n\n\n\nAlex: Right. Yeah. It\u2019s a great\njump off point. So RetinadVR actually got started in Montreal in\n2014. Our mission was, as you said at the beginning, was to bring VR\nanalytics and data to virtual reality. And what I mean by that is\nunderstanding these new data points that can be interpreted from a VR\nheadset. And what we found is, understanding people\u2019s movement in VR\nis something that we can actually grab from a headset. And then\ntranslating that into actionable insights was basically the mission\nof the entire company for the last three years, up until the\nacquisition. And things are very much still along that path, but a\nlittle bit more, I guess, pigeon-holed into Lumiere -pecific use\ncases for right now.\n\n\n\nAlan: So maybe talk about\nLumiere and what you guys are doing there. I know you\u2019ve done a\nrecent project with synchronizing a ton of headsets at a fairly\nfamous location. I\u2019ll let you talk to that.\n\n\n\nAlex: So we did about 250 VR\nheadsets, all synced up from Madison Square Garden for LumiereVR,\nwhich brings that enterprise software to large venues and media\nentertainment folks. MSG is a really good use case; museums,\naquariums, science centers, planetariums \u2014 those are really good\nplaces where VR lives, [and] is complementary to an existing exhibit.\nThe example with Madison Square Garden, for instance, was they have a\n90-minute tour within the venue. So, a lot of people don\u2019t actually\nknow this \u2014 I think the international community knows this little\nbit more \u2014 Madison Square Garden, I think, is in the top five or top\n10 most-visited, most iconic places in New York City. And I didn\u2019t\nknow this, being obviously, a Canadian hockey fan. I thought you just\nshow up to Madison Square Garden \u2014 a great, beautiful venue \u2014 and\nyou enjoy concert or a game, and you go home. But apparently what you\ncould do is, they have off-hours visits throughout the day that are\n90 minutes that are called the All Access Tour. And they show you the\nhistory of this is where Mohammad Ali boxed. This is where goalie\nHenrik Lundqvist for the New York Rangers, here\u2019s his, like,\nmillion-dollar Swarovski 10-