What will Whatsapp look like in VR?
Unlocking the potential of asynchronous communication for spatial computing
VR and the Internet are at odds as communication technologies. The Internet was the first effective asynchronous communication medium — its first mainstream apps were email and message boards. It was a turning point coming from letters that took days or weeks to arrive, could only be sent to one person, and you needed to know their address. VR, instead, is great for synchronous communication. It's a magical feeling when low-quality avatars convey that there's a real person behind them. But what happens if you can't hang out at the same time?
Many might think this is not an issue. We can use VR for synchronous communication and existing messaging tools for asynchronous. But I don't think VR (and AR) are just a headset; they are the poster child for a transition to 3D interfaces. They are the gateway to a more natural, contextual and intuitive way to interact with the world. In this future, it doesn't make sense to project a Whatsapp-like UI on a floating screen.1
As more elements of our lives move to 3D, it will become a format to express ourselves. 3D isn't new — it's been around for decades and there's already beautiful art — but now it's becoming commoditized. We're going from big machines running for hours to generate a single frame of Toy Story to anybody expressing an idea in 3D in seconds.
Existing formats won't disappear. They never do when a new one comes up as each one is great for different use cases, and many are often combined. Text, for example, has existed for ~5000 years. It's a format we understand well and we master it as toddlers. It's flexible for long and short-form content and a fantastic abstraction over our thoughts.
With the advent of new mediums2, we've found new ways to use text, audio, photos, and video. A few years ago, the only available mediums for 3D were games and films. With new ones like Tilt Brush, Softspace, Memoji, rooms.xyz or 180/360 videos, 3D is becoming a new format to express ideas, art, and entertainment.
As more people experiment with 3D through different mediums, it will organically shape to look like a language. The Internet created emoji, GIFs, and memes, what will be the symbols of 3D? We have an infinite 3D canvas at our disposal and it's impossible to predict how we will use it and what it will look like. This makes it so much fun and exciting.
Maybe it's Star Wars-like holograms of an embodied avatar or a 3D video of animated objects interacting with each other. 3D messages could also be an interactable small game. Perhaps we end up giving meaning to certain 3D shapes as if they were a combination of words. Could there be 3D abstractions of our ideas that are closer to our raw thoughts? If so, we could convey more complex ideas faster.
These are just some options that I think are worth playing around with. Each one raises many different questions. For example, would holograms still be able to convey a sense of presence? Or what is the role of the space in the communication process? I would love to start a synchronous conversation and keep it going in the same space asynchronously. Maybe each 3D message is space-agnostic or maybe it can understand the space around it and interact with its environment.
Generative AI is changing the creation process and it will do the same for 3D. As we talk, it will create an animated hologram that represents our idea. It could even do so during a synchronous conversation. Once we have a library of 3D symbols, we could draw primitive versions of these shapes in the air, and the AI model will convert it to a high-quality rendering. Or we could think of AI as our butlers like in the MegaMan anime, and they go around the Metaverse communicating with other people's AI butlers for us.
A big issue we have in every communication process is the lack of context. There's already experimentation with AI to link related ideas together and a spatial representation could make it shine. Navigating links and long threads to get the full picture is such a hassle that most don't bother. Instead, we could have summaries pop up around the content we're viewing in a way that represents their relationship.
There has been very little experimentation around asynchronous communication in 3D. The coolest example is Where Thoughts Go, where people leave audio messages answering some deep personal question after listening to others anonymized responses. It's an intimate experience worth checking out. There have been many attempts at worlds where one could leave messages hidden — also with AR in the real world — but these have never caught on. Maybe there's nothing there or maybe we still haven't found the correct formula.
Either way, 3D is becoming a new communication format. We still have to figure out what it will look like and discover its ideal use cases. While synchronous VR is magical, asynchronous will have its place as well. Now is the time to be open-minded and creative; we should try out every idea that comes to mind. Who knows what may stick and completely change how we communicate online.
No dig at Apple. Floating screens will continue to exist, and they will be prominent as we slowly transition to 3D-native interfaces. I'm also happy to see how well Apple has implemented spatial 2D UIs.
Books, Newspapers, Film, Radio, TV, Blogs, Twitter, Youtube, Podcasts, Instagram