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Studio: Communal Computing
Avatars and Animations
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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?
We were tasked with adding useful features to the Welo space. Welo is a company that provides virtual office spaces for online work. Welo has flat profile photos as avatars, and it operates within a 3D space. We aimed to create 3D avatars, but we noticed that the current avatars are not customizable and detract from the immersion. The immersiveness of Welo is what helps prevent Zoom fatigue and promotes the social aspect of working in a physical office. Thus, we developed prototypes of avatars and animations to give the platform more vitality, as well as custom avatar designs, reactions, and group emotes.