Q&A: Jackie Fenn, Gartner VP and Fellow, on Public Virtual Worlds and the Hype Cycle
Earlier this week, Gartner announced a new report on the hype cycle for emerging technologies in 2008 putting public virtual worlds in the trough of disillusionment. We've spoken before with Gartner VP Steve Prentice, who wrote the specific analyis on virtual worlds for this report, on the state of virtual worlds and the hype cycle. We turned this time to Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner Fellow, who has been authoring the emerging trends hype cycle report for 13 years for her take on where public virtual worlds fit in.
"Virtual worlds is an interesting technology to track through the hype cycle," Fenn explained. "We do see the hype cycle as a pretty universal model. Most technologies go through it to some degree. Virtual worlds, depending on how you look at it, could have had a couple of rounds through the hype cycle already or a full stop before launching onward. If you look back 10 years ago to what was happening with VRML and avatars, there was certainly some hype there.This round is more visible than that round, and it went through some hype already. Now the reality is kicking in both from the experience in virtual worlds and from businesses asking, "what do we do with it?" So this year we’ve put [virtual worlds] moving down towards the Trough of Disillusionment. The question now is does it pull out of the trough and into adoption or is there another round of hype?"
Virtual Worlds News: You do label virtual worlds as likely to see mainstream adoption within 2 to 5 years, though. So it seems like you lean towards the first option. Is that fair to say?
Jackie Fenn: We do need to see more standard, easy-to-use ways of navigating and moving around, which can take a while.
Often what will happen, and could happen in this case, is that there are some interesting and useful niches for what can happen early, and those move through to mainstream adoption. For example, in the world of speech recognition, you’re not there for use as a full interface, but if you look at telephone access systems, it’s pretty widely used. In that area, you can say it’s moved through the hype cycle to become a mainstream technique. We may see that split happening where there’s still a holy grail of the metaverse connecting us all with avatars moving between different worlds, and that’s a desirable state that still hasn’t been achieved in five years, but in the meantime there could be some acceptance.
For example, it seems to resonate with the educational community with professors spending time in their real-world office as well as their Second Life office with students able to visit them in both, and that seems to be a nice fit. We do see it as a technology that can move through the hype cycle and split into several uses.
VWN: So what do you see happening as far as mainstream adoption goes in that 2- to 5-year range?
JF: I’d put it more at the five-year range. When you mix it together with technologies like the Nintendo Wii, for example, you’ve got a very natural way to navigate and move. I would tie it together with other technologies like that to drive it through. I would say there will still be elements that will not be in place in that five-year time frame. That will still be an emerging time for that virtual world plan.
Certainly the younger generation of virtual worlds are pretty mainstream, the way they use Club Penguin and Build-A-Bear environments, I’d say that’s become a dominant part of the online experience in many cases. As those mature, you see some education and some degree of enterprise and online launches for events that have met with some level of success. I think corporate collaboration will be one of those things we won’t have nailed in five years, but we’ll be sorting that out.
VWN: I'm interested in how you see virtual worlds blending with other technology. You mention the Wii, but on the hype cycle report, you're tracking things like augmented reality behind public virtual worlds and location-aware applications ahead of them. To me those can all fit together, and that's where things get really interesting. Do you see any convergence with those technologies, or do you think virtual worlds will evolve fairly separately for now?
JF: I think for the next five years, there’s still a distinct area in the main development. There’ll be people developing their own worlds. Existing leaders in the space will continue to thrive and have their movements in and out of success as fashion and demographics dictate. That will continue to exist as a distinct market or technology.
There are elements of that virtual reality and presence that will start to seep into other applications. You’ve already got things like the virtual treasure hunts with a sort of augmented reality where people are using location-based technology to move around the real world, but tracking that movement in a virtual world to find these treasures. That notion of those parallel worlds will I think continue to evolve in parallel to the desktop worlds.
VWN: You mentioned that you didn't think we'd see corporate adoption of virtual worlds really within those five years. I'm kind of surprised. Obviously, the kids worlds were the first to take off, but I hear about a lot of interest and investment, though not necessarily adoption, for enterprise-level virtual world applications right now.
JF: It’s always of intense interest and there’s a lot of investment, but really figuring out what the environment is and how to develop and use the technology to make people at least as productive as they are in face-to-face meetings--or more productive, since you should be able to get there--is challenging.
You ask people what their favorite collaboration tool is, and they still say email, even though there are so many other things that we could be using. Even the richer social platforms that have replaced email in some demographics, the corporate world is slow to adopt those. It’s not all about utility, part of it is security and compliance and all those corporate things that involve tracking robustness of technologies that take off virally in the consumer world, but pose challenges when the corporate world tries to adopt them. So there’s usually a lag there.
We’re seeing companies investing in and experimenting with virtual worlds, but I have to say it’s still pretty much at the experimental stage for most organizations and will be for the next few years.
VWN: I saw in the report that Steve Prentice recommended that users begin to experiment with virtual worlds, do you think that's right? Is it time for individuals and companies to start looking at virtual worlds even if they're not ready to adopt them?
JF: It’s worthwhile experimenting as an individual in the professional world. It’s worth it to be familiar with the different technologies. As corporations, I would say that, yes, corporations should have a way to understand technologies like this and what their relevance is to their corporation. In some cases it may be worth it to move very aggressively.
We’ve just written a book, "Mastering the Hype Cycle: How to Adopt the Right Innovation at the Right Time," on when it’s appropriate. There are times for companies to say, "Even though a technology is going to go through a hype cycle, there is value for us because of our use or community to invest in it." For organizations that really need to align themselves with the groups in these virtual worlds and that have strong ways to engage them with the brand, that makes sense. But if you’re an auto insurance brand and you set up a storefront and wait for people to come and sign up, you’re doomed. If you have cars with crash tests or something that matches the users’ desires, and you can match your brand to some value proposition, that might make sense to move more aggressively.
You need to be looking at it and saying, "Here is one application where I use virtual worlds, and here is another application with a different technology where I shouldn't use virtual worlds." It depends on those situations.
VWN: In the report, you refer to "public virtual worlds." Is that specific? Are you not tracking private virtual worlds for the hype cycle?
JF: We split the public from the private. That’s an example of how things do split over time. The private virtual worlds have been starting to appear with vendors offering to produce a virtual world for in-house use, but we saw that those are actually trailing the popularity of the online virtual worlds.
Here we're just tracking the public virtual worlds as a point on the hype cycle, but we have about 60-70 different hype cycles on all different topics. On those we have split out the public and private. [Private virtual worlds are] trailing on the hype cycle and are further behind.
VWN: I'm kind of surprised by that as well, particularly for corporate use. It seems like the public worlds are mostly used by corporations for events or marketing, but the private virtual worlds are getting interest for collaboration.
JF: With the public worlds, there’s more interest and awareness because that’s what people have read about. It’s not "What should we do in virtual worlds?" It’s "What should we do in Second Life?"
That’s now what’s going through the backlash. In terms of the potential for an organization in the long run, I don’t know that one exceeds the other. If you use public worlds well, there’s a market there that could be significant. If you use the private worlds, there could be a different application if you use them well for collaboration. It’s a different application, but it’s a little further behind in the hype cycle.
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