How VR and AR Can Improve Public Speaking Skills?
The fear of speaking in public is one of the most common fears among people across age groups all over the world, and for years, there have been several practices to drive away from this fear. Especially business personalities and celebrities who often need to speak in public find it difficult to deal with this fear factor. Some people particularly don’t have any fear of public speaking but feel incredibly uneasy when appearing and speaking in public.
Your uneasiness in making public appearances and speaking in front of a lot of strangers is often considered a negative quality for various job roles and responsibilities. Therefore, many professionals need to put enough effort into making their public speaking skills perfect. Apart from traditional measures like speaking in front of friends or mirrors, they can now use several virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) solutions to sharpen their public speaking abilities.
Here we are going to explain how both VR and AR can help improve public speaking skills and drive out the fear.
Virtual Ambiance to Clear out Actual Fear
Video Courtesy EFTMOnline
Already VR is being used in different therapeutic environments to help people win over their fears and phobias. People who have claustrophobia or similar kind of symptoms often show significant improvement after they are given Virtual Reality exposure therapy. Now the same kind of VR based measures is showing good results in making people comfortable for public speaking.
While so-called public speaking training focuses on speaking skills more and less on the surrounding environment and unpredictable changes, VR based training suites can help people practice speaking in simulated public gatherings and events. Most importantly, learners can get real-time feedback from the system, which can further help them improve their speaking.
Moreover, VR (Virtual Reality) based training programs and apps come equipped with powerful eye-tracking technology and other tech measures to provide very detailed reports and analytics corresponding to the speaker’s skills and areas requiring improvement. The eye-tracking technology can also evaluate whether the speakers depend too much on presentation slides or teleprompters or notes while speaking.
Most VR based apps for public speaking, on the other hand, help the speakers to practice speaking in a simulated environment where they need to speak in front of a crowd. These apps work great in making people getting the habit of confronting a lot of people and stay tuned to their cheers and inquisitive eyes.
Augmented Reality for Public Speaking
Courtesy TechnoNerd Youtube Channel
VR is not the only technology that is playing such a big role in helping people to dodge the challenges of public speaking. Augmented Reality (AR) has also emerged as one of the most effective technologies to train people and help them get versed in public speaking skills.
Recently an AR-based application called Speak EZ-AR has come into the market. This is the first of its kind app that specializes in helping people with an ingrained fear and uneasiness for appearing in public and speaking. Just by wearing a pair of Augmented reality glasses, the users of this app can choose to see any audience for their public speaking practices. Some of the most awkward menu options for the audience that the users can choose for practice include “Audience in Underwear,” “Kittens,” “Just Your Mom,” “and many others.
The Most Important Advantages of Using VR for Public Speaking Training
Obviously, using VR for getting training on public speaking has its own array of advantages. VR can recreate the audiences and different environments that users can practice with for sharpening their public speaking skills. While speaking in front of friends or mirrors will not provide the real-life feel of the experience, a VR app can provide this can build up the habit of facing crowds in less time.
Let us have a brief look at the key advantages of using Virtual reality apps for public speaking.
- Safe practising option: You don’t need to try to get easy with a large audience by speaking to a lot of people. People having intense fear and uneasiness will rather find it difficult to try real-life events to drive away fears and get easy. For them, VR and AR-based apps and training programs bring a safe option.
- Most importantly, while using such digital solutions, users do not need to feel the constraints of time and availability. They can practice public speaking anytime, anywhere, just by using their smart handheld devices.
- The learner’s biggest advantage is getting a real audience with an environment that perfectly simulates the environment in actual life. You can practice speaking in front of different types of audiences with different ambience while not budging your feet a little.
- Another key advantage is getting feedback and detailed analysis of your speech corresponding to the pace, pitch, eye movements, hesitations, voice modulation, etc. By analyzing these feedback and reports, learners gradually can improve their speaking skills and presentation.
- You can also upload your presentations and speeches to practice in the virtual environment. This will help you practice speaking that can be utilized in real-life events when trained and ready.
Conclusion
The emergence of VR and AR technologies have transformed our living experience across different facets. Now to fine-tune your public speaking skills also, VR and AR have emerged as a beneficial technology.
