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Comment by steve_adams_86 | Hacker News Reader

This is meant to be constructive feedback: This almost looks like it's supposed to be a game for kids. I'm not seeing how it'll help me. I know it's intended to allow me to work with my remote team easier, but I don't see how exactly. I picked up something about rooms and possibly screen sharing (It gave me vibes of someone seeing my screen on demand though - I hope not?)

This "Present your authentic self" bit, showing a cartoon emoji; what is the appeal? Am I supposed to make a cartoon of myself? Do I have to?

Sorry if I could answer these myself if I read more. I suppose my feedback is that I don't want to read more because what I've seen isn't compelling enough.

Having said that, I'm glad to see work is being done in this space. Good luck pressing forward – there's a ton of progress to be made and real productivity gains to uncover.

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As a counterpoint to the extremely negative commentary I'm reading in this thread, I like "the present your authentic self without turning on your camera" bit. Sometimes I don't want to wear a shirt (or pants!) at home or don't want to be surprised absently rubbing my jaw in thought or making a weird face.

I love to see innovation in the space of remote work tools and I can confidently say Slack and friends ain't it. I want a experience of serendipity-making leveraging some of the same mechanisms physical office goers make use of.

Apologies if I came off too negatively. I meant to be frank about my reaction in hopes that it might inform the people behind it how others perceive it.

I should add that I can tell the people behind it are good at their craft and the guiding principles seem like good ones. It’s mostly the marketing that has thrown me off. I also recognize that I might just be too old and crusty to get it.

I used to be with “it” and then they changed what “it” is.

I don’t get what the authentic self is though. They used to take a screenshot every couple of min with cam. I thought something like animating that would be neat and an authentic self. It allows you to do what you said and still be closer to the phrase.

A cartoon self that has limited options isn’t authentic though. It is pretty pointless for me. Note. I have used the app extensively.

Appreciate it!

I understand the cartoony feedback. We're working on improving the quality of the avatars to be more adult / work focused. We do believe in avatars - they are one of the key points in our product - because we believe that being on video all day is soul crushing, but audio-only feels disconnected. The avatar provides privacy and personality at the same time. FWIW, you can turn on video if you want it too, we just default to the avatar.

Nice, that’s a great angle. I think you should stick with it. Thanks for responding and providing more context.

I might be a bad prospect because I’m a very literal and surface-level sensing type of person. I’m terrible at reading between lines, seeing past facades, etc. Working with avatars would probably make me feel like I’m in a cartoon, haha. This is definitely not your fault.

I know my oldest kids would love this. They don’t like the formality of things like zoom and they find mostly-text interfaces like slack stifling. By the time they’re in the workforce, if something like this was around they would likely prefer it.

Good luck with this. I’ll keep an eye on it for sure.

Believe me being an avatar all day is more soul crushing. Actually I cannot see how being face to face can be referred to as soul crushing. That’s a pretty said commentary on the target audience.

In your opinion. For me, I’ll always favor video-off calls, especially when they are longer than 30 mins.

I find being on video calls all day incredibly draining. I can see how a tool like this would help. Though for me the addition of an avatar adds nothing, but it is a nice middle ground.

How does this compare with Gather? It seems fairly similar.

https://www.gather.town/

I think the style of the illustrations is maybe making this feel more kiddish than it otherwise would be

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