Seeing claims and risks in 3D : Might HoloLens succeed where Google Glass didn't?

[avatar user="cbeattie@celent.com" size="thumbnail" align="right" /] There have been radical changes in user interface and computing technology over the last decade or two. The Nintendo Wii propelled a new style of gaming to the forefront and touch enabled smart devices have done wonders for Apple, Samsung and Google's Android platform. All of this seems to have made Microsoft's old WIMP based Windows platform less relevant, despite moves to touch enabled interfaces and Windows mobile in recent years. Perhaps now though Microsoft has found the key to the next generation interface with HoloLens. With a tip to Google Glass this is a wearable headset based system more focused on enabling the holograph interface to interact using augmented reality to undertake various tasks. Perhaps Microsoft have found the killer App Google Glass was missing? Or perhaps the high end 3D gaming style interfaces are better at capturing our imagination than the simpler, untilitarian mobile interfaces we find on todays phones.... What might this mean for the Insurance industry? The interfaces and augmentations imagined for loss adjusters and those in the field apply equally to this new technology, albeit the headset is much more intrusive. Leveraging this technology to engage with people on the ground and share a common visualisation, to direct loss engineers to the right items and help provide data about clients in catastrophe affected areas in a rich and useful manner are all possible. Augmented reality and chunky headsets aren't new, but the experiences previewed by HoloLens have sparked the imagination of those who have seen and played with it. With the response to HoloLens being very positive so far I wonder if we will see a relaunch of Google Glass or it's successor sooner than one might have expected. For those who are interested the technology appears to have it's origins in big data, as this article from April last year talks about leveraging the Holograph interface for visualising large datasets.