Happy New Year from VisionPoint. Last year was a toss-up for many organizations mulling over if and when they should bring employees back to the office. Everything still seems up in the air, but perhaps 2022 is the year that we learn to adapt. We believe technology will be there to help us adapt.

The jury is still out as to if employees are working better from the comfort of their own home, or back in the office. One thing is for certain, and that is that hybrid work environments are here to stay.

Here are some trends in office technology that we expect to see coming in 2022.

More BYOD Solutions (and BYOM)

Many organizations considered incorporating touchless solutions to make their employees feel more comfortable. The ebb and flows of the pandemic will eventually force us to adapt. BYOD solutions give organizations the ability to make the workplace a little more COVID-friendly; this means letting employees meet in spaced out conference rooms, sharing content in person while being socially distanced, without having to touch anything.

This brings us back to ClickShare. Anyone can share directly from their laptop with this simple plug & play solution. Another one worth mentioning is the Mersive Solstice, which lets you bring your own meeting with any device and any UC application. You can even share content using any browser, AirPlay, Miracast, or the Solstice app.

Employees will most likely be getting meeting invites from several UC applications, and be expected to attend all of them – so we are expecting BYOM (Bring Your Own Meeting) to increase in popularity. Luckily, there are plenty of technologies available to help employees connect their personal devices to integrated rooms and meet through Zoom, WebEx and Teams. VisionPoint has increasingly deployed several of these rooms throughout the first half of 2022.

The Increase of Experience-Based Design

Employee happiness and flexibility seemed to have been a major focus in 2021. We have even seen that in the AV industry, homing in on technologies and solutions that allow for flexible collaboration on the fly, letting organizations provide better conferencing experiences for their employees.

We imagine that this trend will continue. An article from Work Design Magazine touches on this idea from more of a design perspective, suggesting that the modern workplace needs to have ‘functional and desirable places to collaborate’.

Here at VisionPoint we don’t take that lightly, we make sure that our solutions are intuitive, and bring people together to work so they can get back to what is important. This also means ensuring that our designs are non-invasive, and not in the way. Whether that be a ceiling array microphone, or retractable displays, we pay close attention to how the end user will react to the technology, and what the expectation of the client is. VisionPoint expects to continuously adapt to this trend, focusing on the experience, rather than just the technology. We are not suggesting that experience-based design is a new concept; but it may be something that organizations will be focusing more on this year.

Machine Learning and AI

We have already begun to see the integration of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in certain pieces of video conferencing technologies, and it’s certain that we will only see more of it.

AI seems to be such a broad term nowadays, so how is it fitting into workplace technologies? Manufacturers are implementing AI for certain things such as object detection, background, and noise elimination (for those remote workers), and even gaze and face alignment.

Although some of these features may not seem as useful as noise and background elimination, gaze and face alignment simply adjust a certain portion of a user’s eyes to make it seem as if they are looking directly at the person on the other end of a video call. This simply enhances the conferencing experience, creating more of a connection between teammates. We tend to forget how important that human connection is until we lose it.

Hardware and Software Integrations

Cloud-based video conferencing solutions are only going to grow from here. This is mainly due to its flexibility and scalability. We are now starting to see stronger integrations between hardware and software, like Zoom and Poly UC bars.

Interoperability between video conferencing applications and conference room technologies can now be managed from a single location, which makes meetings a breeze. This also helps reduce the amount of support tickets for IT and gives them the ability to troubleshoot remotely.

We Are Excited to See New and Exciting Features in 2022

Naturally, there will be plenty of exciting things to look forward to in 2022 that we cannot predict. And we are confident that there will be plenty.

Since the pandemic began, videoconferencing has become a regular part of 55% of daily operations for many organizations according to Contribution Space. That staggering statistic only leads us to believe that organizations are looking to upgrade their conferencing solutions and may require more features to make it worth the investment.

Perhaps this is just the beginning of a new standard for the modern workplace, but VisionPoint is excited to be a part of it in 2022.

As new technologies enter the marketplace, VisionPoint will be thoroughly testing these technologies to ensure that they are working up to standard and add value when it comes to Audio Visual technologies. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you are curious about a new technology or feature, and you aren’t sure it isn’t right for your organization. You can contact VisionPoint here.

Additional Reading:

AI Applied To Video Conferencing Kicks It Up Several Notches (forbes.com)

2022 Workplace Trends: Experience-Based Design (workdesign.com)

Video Conferencing Trends You Need To Be Aware Of In 2022 (contribution.space)