During COVID‑19, Radu and I started building a web frontend for new video chat, As we built it Sage joined the team working on product.

We've had a number of gatherings on the platform, was online as
Game Board. We had our first big gathering as a
part of an online festival, where hundreds of people joined the chat over
the course of a weekend, having as many as 20 online at one time.

The architecture was developed to support customization, and it is possible to
use an online editor, through firebase to update the chat space in real time.

The design space

Our project is on hold at the moment but there are a number of interesting
players in this field, designing the next iteration of how people gather online.

• Rally
• Sparkle.space & Co-reality Collective
• High Fidelity
• here.fm
• Make Space
• Topia
• Gather.town
• CozyRoom

To list a few!

The Future

It is clear that with the commodification of Video Chat as a service,
innovation in this space will displace Zoom and Google Meet as
reliable custom environments become more of a norm. There are two main
features that can differentiate these innovators. The capacity for meetings
with >50 participants and smoother affordances for splitting off and rejoining
sub-groups.

Some screens from our project