The dominant paradigm in telecommunication has evolved from telegram, to telephones, to voice. I believe the next paradigm will be holographic communication. Eventually the same as what one would see in sci-fi including Star Wars.
We maybe have half a century before it’s possible to project holograms into thin air. Until then we have something closer to earth as seen in the move Kingsman, where people have to put on AR glasses for it to work.
In a nutshell, this is what we’re working on. Put on your AR glasses and you will see the call participants in the form of holograms. It will be as if they are right there with you in your room.
That said, we should note that even in Star Wars, it’s not just people that are shown as holograms. Sometimes it is objects too.
And this will be the next stage of our work, to allow both human and non-human holograms to be shown simultaneously and in a way that makes sense.
Holographic Project
I am currently working on an internally incubated project (a.k.a “intrapreneurship”) to build holographic communication. This project is still in early stages and details are being kept under wraps for the most part, but we do have an information page on Ericsson and we have published our first Technical Review.
Role
I serve as the human factors champion in this project where I work on horizon-1-type research. In my day-to-day I design interactions and interfaces, perform user studies, and guide junior UI designers. I run usability workshops and introduce human-centred design concepts within the team.
I’ve also initiated horizon-2-type research topics which are not immediately relevant to the issues at hand, but will be of concern within 5-10 years. These topics include:
- Ethical and legal issues in holographic communication.
- Use-cases for holographic communication in education.
- Interacting with 3D objects.
- Producing holographic content with both human and non-human subjects.
I also serve to recommend process improvements. I have so far worked on code migration to GitLab, introduced code review, and started utilising Figma for design. I’m also in the process of using a top-down design, starting from user needs.
Due to my public speaking abilities, I have also talked about this project at internal and external conferences. This serves to drive attention to the work and enables us to garner both attention and support.
Publications
Holographic communication in 5G networks (Ericsson Technology Review article)
Ali El Essaili, Sara Thorson, Alvin Jude, Jörg Christian Ewert, Natalya Tyudina, Héctor Caltenco, Lukasz Litwic, Bo Burman
(Japanese Translation of the same)
Ericsson’s Imagine Perspectives magazine. Issue 1: “Holographic Communication From science fiction to technological fact”
TEEEing up for next-generation communication services (Ericsson blog post)
Lars Sandström, Alvin Jude
And many more to come soon!
