Zoom Rooms are called rooms but they don’t feel like rooms. I’ll tell you what does.
I was speaking at Tweakers Developer Summit a couple weeks back – three talks on consecutive evenings. (Probably overambitious, and I was exhausted but there’s something that intrigues me about this experimental format, which I why I tried it, and I learnt a bunch. It worked! New narrative possibilities abound!)
Let me lay out the facts of the speaker experience first:
A few days ahead of the event, I received a link to my virtual room.
I could visit the room and make it my own. So I could change the layout presets, turn features like Q&A and polls on and off, upload docs to present, rehearse and so on.
At this point, the doors were closed. General attendees, even with the link, would not be able to enter. At the bottom of the screen, there was a timer showing when the event was scheduled to start…
On the day of the event, as the time approached, I could see people entering an anteroom one by one. A waiting area. They got a countdown and a splash screen (which I think I could also customise) while I, from my room, got to see a list of people queuing up.
When it got to about 40 people, I hit the button to go live, and everyone in the anteroom was brought automatically into my room. (I could have waited till the timer reached zero, but instead I opened the doors with about 30 seconds to go. It was neat to have that touch of agency.)
Because everyone entered at the same time, instead of trickling in, I was able to make this into a threshold event – no slow start here waiting for people to arrive, but a fun and immediate “hey, welcome!” and a high energy experience to kick things off.
During the talk, I positioned my slides full screen – and my face also full height, right next to the slides, but narrow. (The chat occupied a sidebar on the right.)
At the end, I said thanks and goodbye and ended the event on my own terms by closing the room again - without waiting for a clock to run down, or fumbling for the “hang up” button - and the attendees were moved out to the “thanks and please rate” exit screen.
What made this feel like a room vs dialling-in? Here’s what:
It was my own persistent room that I could customise, welcome people to, and so on. I had a calming 10 minutes sitting in my own before the talk, breathing and waiting, comfortable in knowing that all the tech was working, and watching people arrive.
I was able to control the end-to-end audience experience because of good threshold design. Throwing back the curtains to bring everyone in was a wonderful moment! Great energy and no dead air. So there was good attention to liminal places and moments (the anteroom, the “go live” button). Software regularly ignores these. And in this case it made the event feel like a place.
One other feature I liked: I was able to communicate both information and energy simultaneously. Virtual events are hard because the speaker’s face carries so much emotional energy, and it’s often relegated to a tiny box. But you also need slides to riff off and give attendees an anchor. The non-traditional layout of this platform (my face in a tall but narrow window, portrait style, next to the slides) really worked. (I’ve talked about the interplay of slides and speaker before (7 July 2020).)
Kudos to the underlying events platform, Let’s Get Digital, for some thoughtful design choices that made a difference.
So we could extend these ideas to video call software…
Could Zoom Rooms be persistent and customisable? What if I could set background wallpaper, and hook up a Dropbox folder to appear in an interactive panel? What if we could all do that together?
Could Zoom pay more attention to thresholds? Like, could the “waiting for the organiser to start this call” screen be a place to gather, somehow? Could it include a mirror to check my hair, or a transcript of the last call to get up to speed?
BUT
I’m more interested in leapfrogging to something else: the OS.
Social features should be part of the operating system.
In this case, I’m imagining that each video chat room is a window, just like a filesystem directory window. I can drag and drop documents into it, and they are immediately shared with the participants.
Of course if I drag and drop a person out of the video chat window onto another document, that document would immediately become shared. Give it a special border to distinguish it. We can both edit it; both of our cursors are visible.
Each room has an icon on my desktop (or I can file them away). Double click the icon, and it opens the meeting right away.
Now I’m inspired by the 1981 Xerox Star, the highly influential early “desktop” user interface. I’m especially taken with the way the printer appeared as an icon on the desktop, as this lengthy retrospective explains:
In Star, printing is invoked via the Copy command: users simply copy whatever they want to print to a printer icon. No Print command is needed. Similarly, the function Send Mail is handled via Move: by moving a document to the Out-basket.
Let’s do the same and have the meeting room icon double as the anteroom. As people join the call, I can see their tiny avatars appearing over the icon. If I long press or hover my cursor over the icon – ambient noise, the muffled hubbub of people waiting. Perhaps they should even be able to knock. A doorway on my desktop.
So a challenge to Microsoft, Apple, Google: what are the OS-level hooks required for third parties like Zoom (and even web-based services) to integrate like this?
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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Zoom Rooms are called rooms but they don’t feel like rooms. I’ll tell you what does.
I was speaking at Tweakers Developer Summit a couple weeks back – three talks on consecutive evenings. (Probably overambitious, and I was exhausted but there’s something that intrigues me about this experimental format, which I why I tried it, and I learnt a bunch. It worked! New narrative possibilities abound!)
Let me lay out the facts of the speaker experience first:
What made this feel like a room vs dialling-in? Here’s what:
One other feature I liked: I was able to communicate both information and energy simultaneously. Virtual events are hard because the speaker’s face carries so much emotional energy, and it’s often relegated to a tiny box. But you also need slides to riff off and give attendees an anchor. The non-traditional layout of this platform (my face in a tall but narrow window, portrait style, next to the slides) really worked. (I’ve talked about the interplay of slides and speaker before (7 July 2020).)
Kudos to the underlying events platform, Let’s Get Digital, for some thoughtful design choices that made a difference.
So we could extend these ideas to video call software…
Could Zoom Rooms be persistent and customisable? What if I could set background wallpaper, and hook up a Dropbox folder to appear in an interactive panel? What if we could all do that together?
Could Zoom pay more attention to thresholds? Like, could the “waiting for the organiser to start this call” screen be a place to gather, somehow? Could it include a mirror to check my hair, or a transcript of the last call to get up to speed?
BUT
I’m more interested in leapfrogging to something else: the OS.
Social features should be part of the operating system.
(Here’s where I wrote about this before: Multiplayer docs, webcam fashion, noisy icons: three ideas (20 Nov 2020).)
In this case, I’m imagining that each video chat room is a window, just like a filesystem directory window. I can drag and drop documents into it, and they are immediately shared with the participants.
Of course if I drag and drop a person out of the video chat window onto another document, that document would immediately become shared. Give it a special border to distinguish it. We can both edit it; both of our cursors are visible.
Each room has an icon on my desktop (or I can file them away). Double click the icon, and it opens the meeting right away.
Now I’m inspired by the 1981 Xerox Star, the highly influential early “desktop” user interface. I’m especially taken with the way the printer appeared as an icon on the desktop, as this lengthy retrospective explains:
Let’s do the same and have the meeting room icon double as the anteroom. As people join the call, I can see their tiny avatars appearing over the icon. If I long press or hover my cursor over the icon – ambient noise, the muffled hubbub of people waiting. Perhaps they should even be able to knock. A doorway on my desktop.
So a challenge to Microsoft, Apple, Google: what are the OS-level hooks required for third parties like Zoom (and even web-based services) to integrate like this?