Making a Truly Synchronous Chat by Matching Word Bubbles
From the simple delivery of the letter by horse-back riding in ancient times, we know that people has demanded the synchronous information delivery between people.
However, as a social norm even if we are in the live chat with video and sound, we know that it is impossible to have the truly synchronous delivery of the information.
The maximum limit of this demand only reach to the point where one start talking the other person has to stop in order to listen to other person.
So, here I wanted to experiment, what if we talk truly instantly by chatting with matching word bubbles.
Through out the experiment, I found that even if we have this matching system, one user waits until the other user stops writing. It is just a matter of time human brain processing.
LINK TO THE WORK: https://dyk286.itp.io:8080/index3.html
1. BACKGROUND
We have a common sense in conversation that we keep ourselves quiet when the other person speaks. It is true that overlapping one’s voice over the other is rude. However, we have this social norm implemented in the chatting too. The chatting is synchronous platform and we can read the text as we are typing. So I want to make synchronous text chatting.I wanted to make a new way of chatting that people keep talking and overlap their voices over the other.
2. DEVELOPMENT
I was introduced with the video and the audio which changed the thought process. Also in terms of data ownership the p2p ID generation is very clear, it is data-free(no data stored).
So, I worked on the css, html, javascript to make this project working. I used Tone.js to make sound just like other chatting webpage. Here is the link it is working only when I run the server.js. As I am working on it I kept googling to get the answers that I want to have. As I am making this chatting, I changed it to refresh every 1minute. In this way it will make the users in the one starting point as time goes. It is the starting time of getting synchronous. So I tested the chatting with people.
3. User Test
First I wanted to have the functional completion. I chat with the friend in France and it proved the P2P is possible World-Wide and during this test I learned the lesson that in terms of video chatting, the video should go with the audio. However, in terms of drunken chat, the audio and video are constraints because it breaks the need of word bubble. So, I muted the audio and shrank the size of the video. I conceptualized it as an on-air kind sign of the broadcasting.
4. Design/Naming
I had a hard time struggling with the design and colors. At the end of the design, I made the design more seamless and made it more crisp by shadow. Also as I design the div I thought of the matching word bubbles as the fistbump. So I made a logo looks like a fist-bump.
5. Modification
I modified the design into something that I like not following Google’s material design because material design does not covey my philosophy, fun, human interactivity.
