About Client's Needs & Client's Insights

The clients feel that Welo does represent an office space quite well, but there are some areas where it doesn't feel real. One of the most noticeable was that there are no humanoid avatars, which takes away from the social aspect. You can't see what people are feeling and have no body language. There are reactions but they aren't personal enough.

This personal aspect is necessary because it makes you feel like you are in a room with real people even if they choose to have their video off and feeling that personal connection makes things like Zoom fatigue less apparent. In addition to the social aspect, having your character represent you can help people tell which character is which. It is important for the avatar creator to have enough detail so your avatar can represent you accurately, but not be so complex that you spend ages working on it.

About Collaboration

We will be nice and won't make you listen to us read for the next few years...

• Because the static profile photos take away from the immersion we are adding more life to the platform and reducing things like zoom fatigue
• Another way to help with zoom fatigue and make it more life-like is social emotes and animations
• These animations are a great way to lighten the mood and celebrate with your colleagues after you finish your projects
• they can help show your thinking and bridge the gap between people collaborating over the welo platform

About Collaboration

User Journey - Before

User Journey - After

Do want to accept this emote?

k for yes and l for no

1st computer

1st and second computer

2nd computer

Avatar design process and Emotes

Avatar Design UX

Emote demo

At first the R key was pressed which shows a prompt in the console (not shown here) that asks if the other person wants to accept the emote by pressing K. It would be a notification similar to the nocking notifications if it were implemented.

Reflections

One of the biggest challenges was time. We didn't have enough time to code and debug all of the features we wanted to make. We didn't have enough time to make a working UX.

Throughout the project, we learned a lot about Unity animations, c#, and some Blender.

Next steps

• Make more accessories
• Implement into a space
• Finalize models
• A working UX
• More emotes

Feedback/Questions

• What use cases can your audience imagine for your product?
• Which next step needs to be prioritized?
• Do you have any other questions?
• Is there anything you would like to see?

About Client's Needs & Client's Insights

Welo's clients want many things, but one of the most repeated ones was collaboration. The users wanted to have an easier time collaborating and one of the things they said they wanted was a customizable space.

About Collaboration

Currently, Welo is often used for smaller groups, to be more available for impromptu meetings, which works well on Welo currently. However, it is very difficult to do larger meetings when you haven't prepared for it, as most spaces don't have huge individual rooms. The space editor can help with this, being able to change rooms around on the fly.

Welo Space Editor

In this video you can see placing down stools to show how difficult to use the Welo space editor is. Even after 18 months in development, you still can't place something down freely, it places down wherever it appears in the selection menu and you have to move it from there.

User Journey - Before

Currently people have a set space and number of seats, and if they want to get more seats they need to contact an admin.

Thesis Statement

Grelo is a grid snapping space editor made in Unity designed to expand Welo's uses, specifically built to be able to make spaces from scratch.

User Journey - After

Now people can start a meeting, and if they are short on seats they open the editor and place one in themself.

Precedents

TrenchBroom

Gather

Design Precedent

Technical Precedent

Demo

In this video you can see placing down a foundation with cube, placing chairs, and then placing tables. There is also the ability to highlight and move blocks

Reflections

Making it so that you could place objects was hard, mostly because we were using raycasting and making sure all colliders were working properly took a while.

Next steps

We would want to add the ability to rotate object and move your camera around. As well as getting more assets and allowing the user to bring in their own assets.

Feedback/Questions

• What usecases can you imagine for our product?
• Which next step do you think needs to be prioritized?
• What default models should be added?
• Dropdown menus or keybinds?

Clients

-Wants Welo to work for younger generations

-Wants an alternative way to navigate the Welo space

Cliff Pollen

CEO

Clients

-Uses Welo to connect and "hang out" with his team

-Wants ambient alerts in Welo

Ethan Murray

Partner

Clients

-Uses Welo to communicate with her team and hold client meetings

-Wants Welo all the time

Francesca Kennedy

Co-Founder

Thesis

Welote is an iPhone application synthesizing feedback from the Welo platforms major users. Welote integrates and enhances functionality of partner applications such as Miro, a digital whiteboard, Slack, and Google Drive. Through further support for integrations and additional features Welote aims to improve the usability of the platform, and provide a medium for communication separate from a computer, in order to amplify the user experience.

Client's highlighted three area's of improvement: notification, portability, and resource navigation. These additions are accomplished through a custom built Flask API and backend, interfacing with the Welo platform. A SwiftUI frontend re-formats resources into a "resource tree" with a room based hierarchy, and provides passive notifications to the user for doorbell alerts, room changes, and messages.

Design Proposals

Design Proposals

User Diagram

Wireframes

Digital Wireframe

Renders

Renders

Next Steps

Questions:

Are there ideas we move away from or maybe some we should move towards.

Testing plan:

1. integrate

2. observe

3. iterate

• Collaborate across various business

Francesca Kenney

• Connect with those in other Welo Spaces

• Better information projection from avatars

beckett

• Collaborate across multiple offices

• Have more expressive avatars

• Improve Collaborative recourses

Ethan Murray

kaia

Collaborate across various business

Connect with those in other Welo Spaces

Increase Welo Spaces customization

Francesca Kenney

Ethan Murray

Collaborate across multiple offices

Have more expressive avatars

Improve collaborative resources

Beckett

Collaborate across various business

Collaborate across multiple offices

Beckett

Welo City is a hub that links multiple Welo spaces with a common area where users from different spaces can meet, mingle, share resources, and build collaborative relationships. With a variety of digital spaces from game rooms to coffee shops Welo City has everything you need to form an active micro-community

kaia

Master Diagrams

100architect

Beckett

Beckett

Networking Event

Welo Coworking Day

wesley

kaia

• Spaces - Coffee Shops, Parks, Streets, Office buildings, Restaurants, Amphitheater, Zen Garden

• Amphitheater Activities - presentations, movies, karaoke, talent show, expert panel, auction, conference, art show

• Zen Garden Activities - meditation, guided meditation, leisure, brain breaks

• Restaurant Activities - eating, conversation, watching TV

• In-Between Activities - graffiti, card games, racing

Spaces

Amphitheater

Zen Garden

Restaurant

In-Between

Wes

Beckett

Beckett

Beckett

Beckett

Beckett

Welo City

Coffee Shops

Amphitheater

Parks

Streets

Office buildings

Restaurants

Zen Garden

Beckett

Beckett

Beckett

Wesley

Beckett

Everyone

Reflections

Next steps

• Turning our demos into final drafts.
• Gain Feedback.
• Iterate based on Feedback.
• Final Pitch to Welo.

• More features.
• finalizing models.
• integrating Welo.

Wesley

kaia

Feedback/Questions

Welo is a community platform designed to improve collaboration between online employees by making it feel more immersive, having a physical space in the virtual world.

Client Insights

We learned from the clients that they really like what Welo has done so far on the Space Editor, but they'd like to have more customizability, such as being able to make a space entirely from scratch.

About Collaboration

Currently Welo has a space where you can talk and interact, which is slightly more immersive than zoom, but that is about it. We want to add to/improve their space editor to give a more wide range of ways to use the space.

How can we improve the customizability of Welo spaces for people who work from home so that they can build their own space.

• Welo's space editor has been in development for 18 months and is now in closed beta
• They plan to have 3 levels of permission for use of the editor, the first would be permission to add or remove a seat, or change a room in a similarly small way. The second would be to be able to change the size of a room, or the layout of a space, but in a smaller way. The third level would be the ability to completely make a space from scratch.

Client Feedback

Revised Project Statement

Grelo is a grid snapping space editor made in Unity designed to expand Welo's uses, specifically built to be able to make spaces from scratch.

Feedback

• How do you feel about the grid system using squares
• Should selecting prefabs be a drop down or use Keybinds (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc)
• Should you be able to move the camera or should it be fixed
• If fixed should it be 2D (Vertical) or 2.5D (45 degree angle)