Baluba

Master’s project and startup. 2020-2021 @ NTNU/ Baluba Labs. IndiviDual Project turned startuP

Concept

Dubbed “Video Socializing”, and later “Video Gathering”, Baluba was supposed to provide people with a more natural way of gathering digitally, by allowing participants to split into smaller groups where they could have more natural conversations without ending up in discrete rooms. This allows for mingling between groups and a less formal experience. The concept worked pretty well in controlled testing, but our implementations were plagued by technical bugs too distracting for real world usage to be possible.

Concept film: Initiation

Focusing on Baluba as a tool to combat isolation and to foster social experiences during lockdown, the first video imagined the service in a vacuum without other alternatives than being alone. It focuses heavily on the concept rather than the implementation, as this was too early in the project to have specified any details.

Wireframe

After a few iterations, this was the interface of the final prototype. On the left is the room where one can move about and form group, while the right comprises large videos of the people in one’s current group and small videos of everyone else. How far one is away from someone in the room determines how loud their voices appear. We also wanted to experiment with incorporating videos into the room area, but ran into insurmountable technical challenges and out of time and resources.

Concept film: Evolution

The second concept video intended to stake out a vision for further development, imagining what the service could evolve into. We had done extensive testing with the first prototype, and I was experimenting with what direction we could go in with later prototypes. At this point in the pandemic, the whole world had gotten intimately familiar with many traditional video conferencing services, so this video contrasts Baluba as a more natural, fun and modern alternative to what people were using.