Augmented Reality in Technical

Communication

Sally Martir Huawei Technologies

Huawei AR in Technical Communication

Each day technicians are dispatched to perform complex processes for installation, configuration, and maintenance of mission critical telecommunication equipment. In order to support customers in 140 countries, including 45 of the world’s 50 largest telecom operators, Huawei technical documentation teams prepare, publish, and support delivery of full digital instructions to technicians to ensure the complete and error-free performance of procedures.

With partners, Huawei is developing processes to add Augmented Reality to product technical documentation in a consistent and robust manner. In this talk we will describe our project goals, approach, and results of our research to date.

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AR adds efficiency to Tech Comm

In large enterprise customer scenarios, we want to introduce AR for select use cases.

During our AR Think Tank and from our research, we see many efficiencies for our customers’ field technicians. The findings from Iowa State University and Boeing show an increase in first time quality, a reduction in errors, fastest time, and increased worker efficiency.

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Tablet AR had significantly lower errors.

Inter-service/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2014

Error by Mode

AR participants completed the assembly task faster the first time.

Worker Efficiency

Many AR experiences are procedural/task-based/instructional. That is what technical communicators basically do, plus they are experts at:

Knowledge of the user & how he or she interacts with a product,

User task analysis,

User requirements collection,

Persona development,

Relationship with design (a bridge between SME and customer needs, language/jargon and understanding),

Minimalistic writing,

Information architecture,

Content re-use,

Modular content development,

Content management,

Editing,

Usability testing, and

Testing for quality and accuracy.

Tech Comm brings skills/benefits to AR

•Proof of Concept

•Tablet & Demo Video

Phase One

•Prototypes

•Tablets & Smart Phones

Phase Two

•Customer Pilots

•Tablets, Smart Phones, Some Smart Glasses

Phase Three

•General Availability

•Smart Glasses and Tablets

Phase Four

Augmented Reality in Technical Communication

Our phased approach plan increases our investment as the technology and the business case improves for AR and wearable technology.

Technical communicator hands on involvement increases through each phase with the goal of being independent of AR vendor developer assistance by phase four.

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Our end goal is to save our customers time and money by allowing them to view

procedures digitally over-laid on the equipment via an AR experience. Smart

glasses will leave their hands free to use tools and simultaneously perform the

tasks while viewing the instructions.

Phase one: AR proof of concept

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DAQRI Huawei IMS Proof of Concept

Phase two: AR prototypes

3D Studio Blomberg Huawei SuperDual Band Interactive Print Prototype

Phase two: AR prototypes

Inglobe Huawei SUN2000 Prototype

Phase two: AR prototypes

Joinpad Huawei Enterprise CE12808 Prototype

Phase two: AR prototypes

Joinpad Huawei IT H2288HPrototype

■ The amount of AR experiences will be expanded for select customers to pilot the experiences on the job in place of, or to enhance existing customer documentation.

■ Huawei’s trained technical communication teams will provide some of the AR experience development with support from AR development vendors.

■ The predominant viewing device will be tablets. However, some testing will be conducted with a limited amount of smart glasses.

■ Preliminary Huawei development processes and procedures will be tested during this phase.

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Phase three: AR customer pilots

■ AR experiences will generally be available to Huawei customers to enhance their technical documentation user experience.

■ The technical communication teams will work completely or mostly independent of vendors to create the AR experiences.

■ The predominant viewing device will be smart glasses. Tablets will also be used.

■ Standard Huawei AR development processes and procedures will be available for the technical communication teams.

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Phase four: AR customer General Availability

Thank You!

Contact Information: Rhonda Truitt

Huawei Technologies

Director, Technical Communication

Best Practices & Innovation (US R&D);

Global Chief Information Architect

Rhonda.truitt@huawei.com

@RhondaTruitt

www.linkedin.com/in/rhondatruitt

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Contact Information: Sally Martir Huawei Technologies Project Manager, Technical Communication Best Practices & Innovation (US R&D) Sally.martir@huawei.com

@SallyMartir

www.linkedIn.com/in/sallymartir