5 ms·

When I talk IRL I don't use GIFs or stickers, and the only background is whatever is behind me. I like the idea of moving around to decide who you talk to; it

by evanb 6y ago

When I talk IRL I don't use GIFs or stickers, and the only background is whatever is behind me. I like the idea of moving around to decide who you talk to; it is the premise behind jitsi-powered Work Adventure http://workadventu.re http://workadventu.re

jMyles 6y ago
> jitsi-powered Work Adventure http://workadventu.re http://workadventu.re Getting a 404 - "Could not load map."
- remotelyyours 6y ago
  This seems interesting. I'll check it out!
lukeschlather 6y ago
> When I talk IRL I don't use GIFs or stickers, and the only background is whatever is behind me. There is no "background" you are surrounded by 3 dimensional space with a variety of objects you can point at or manipulate. Given that you can't share a 3 dimensional space gifs and stickers give you a way to communicate things that require more than 2 dimensions to express.
jrockway 6y ago
I think the idea is to add some sort of flair, like you would in real life. For example, people wear unusual socks, and you'd notice them in real life, but in a video call you'll never see someone's socks. So the video call takes away that dimension of being alive. I'm not sure GIFs are the answer, but I think that's what the attempt is.
remram 6y ago
I don't know if the spatial metaphor really brings anything. I think a few rooms, with proper tooling to signal activity and a way to preview (listen in before you decide to join, or better yet have it play a recent utterance from its beginning) would work wonders. Maybe the system could prompt participants to move to a separate room on sufficient activity, and remind participants to set a text subject once in a while during periods of activity. Spatialization gives you little, as it's still impossible to listen to multiple conversations at once, and discovering the mapping of location-to-topic is a problem. If you're setting up specific locations for specific topics in advance, what I want to know is who is there and how active they are, not where on a 2D canvas the admin has chosen to position it.
- rozab 6y ago
  I agree with the need to preview whats going on. In real life spaces, we often decide to switch to a different conversation from hearing a snippet or zoning in to what's going on around you when you're bored of the current talk. In this system, I feel like it would be rude to bring yourself over to a group and then leave again when you decide you're not interested in the conversation. Perhaps being able to mouse over a location to here the audio would be good. I don't think there's much expectation of privacy in a space like this anyway. I think this spacial arrangement would generally make such social dilemmas easier to handle. For instance, I think it would be more awkward to abruptly leave a room during a conversation than to just sidle away. Leaving slowly could implicitly invite others to follow. The internet has forced us to create a bunch of new social protocols and norms. Why not design our tools to fit with our existing ones?
  - remotelyyours 6y ago
    You're right. The interactions can a lot more "natural" than it is right now.
- seedie 6y ago
  Couldn't agreed more. After seeing the first "Video conferencing" tool with spatial audio I was so excited. This excitement got lost instantly when we had our first online christmas party. Being able to hear everyone clearly and loud is not a bug its a feature. IRL I can change my focus on someone further away without moving at all. Only if Im really interested in that other conversation I will start moving. A pre-listen feature on mouse over would be awesome. While I'm still fascinated by the technical aspects imho theres still a lot of room for improvement in the implementation. But its great that there are so many projects tackling this problem and improving online get-togethers
mxuribe 6y ago
I've never heard of work adventure. Seems really neat! Thanks for sharing!
lscotte 6y ago
Same for me. Other than an ASCII smiley here or there, if I can't say it with simple text as a complete sentence, I don't say it, and video chat backgrounds are annoying.
ironmagma 6y ago
True, but the addition of stickers and GIFs makes it much closer to real life where there are dozens of visual and physical cues as to your headspace.

by evanb 6y ago

jMyles 6y ago

> jitsi-powered Work Adventure http://workadventu.re http://workadventu.re Getting a 404 - "Could not load map."

remotelyyours 6y ago
This seems interesting. I'll check it out!

lukeschlather 6y ago

> When I talk IRL I don't use GIFs or stickers, and the only background is whatever is behind me. There is no "background" you are surrounded by 3 dimensional space with a variety of objects you can point at or manipulate. Given that you can't share a 3 dimensional space gifs and stickers give you a way to communicate things that require more than 2 dimensions to express.

jrockway 6y ago

I think the idea is to add some sort of flair, like you would in real life. For example, people wear unusual socks, and you'd notice them in real life, but in a video call you'll never see someone's socks. So the video call takes away that dimension of being alive. I'm not sure GIFs are the answer, but I think that's what the attempt is.

remram 6y ago

I don't know if the spatial metaphor really brings anything. I think a few rooms, with proper tooling to signal activity and a way to preview (listen in before you decide to join, or better yet have it play a recent utterance from its beginning) would work wonders. Maybe the system could prompt participants to move to a separate room on sufficient activity, and remind participants to set a text subject once in a while during periods of activity. Spatialization gives you little, as it's still impossible to listen to multiple conversations at once, and discovering the mapping of location-to-topic is a problem. If you're setting up specific locations for specific topics in advance, what I want to know is who is there and how active they are, not where on a 2D canvas the admin has chosen to position it.

rozab 6y ago
I agree with the need to preview whats going on. In real life spaces, we often decide to switch to a different conversation from hearing a snippet or zoning in to what's going on around you when you're bored of the current talk. In this system, I feel like it would be rude to bring yourself over to a group and then leave again when you decide you're not interested in the conversation. Perhaps being able to mouse over a location to here the audio would be good. I don't think there's much expectation of privacy in a space like this anyway. I think this spacial arrangement would generally make such social dilemmas easier to handle. For instance, I think it would be more awkward to abruptly leave a room during a conversation than to just sidle away. Leaving slowly could implicitly invite others to follow. The internet has forced us to create a bunch of new social protocols and norms. Why not design our tools to fit with our existing ones?
- remotelyyours 6y ago
  You're right. The interactions can a lot more "natural" than it is right now.
seedie 6y ago
Couldn't agreed more. After seeing the first "Video conferencing" tool with spatial audio I was so excited. This excitement got lost instantly when we had our first online christmas party. Being able to hear everyone clearly and loud is not a bug its a feature. IRL I can change my focus on someone further away without moving at all. Only if Im really interested in that other conversation I will start moving. A pre-listen feature on mouse over would be awesome. While I'm still fascinated by the technical aspects imho theres still a lot of room for improvement in the implementation. But its great that there are so many projects tackling this problem and improving online get-togethers

mxuribe 6y ago

I've never heard of work adventure. Seems really neat! Thanks for sharing!

lscotte 6y ago

Same for me. Other than an ASCII smiley here or there, if I can't say it with simple text as a complete sentence, I don't say it, and video chat backgrounds are annoying.

ironmagma 6y ago

True, but the addition of stickers and GIFs makes it much closer to real life where there are dozens of visual and physical cues as to your headspace.