SpatialChat: Designing Private Areas for Focused Collaboration

Overview

The challenge was not simply to create another room

SpatialChat supports open movement and spontaneous conversations.

Crowded spaces needed private discussions, workshops, and focused group work.

Moving to separate rooms would break the shared experience. The question became:

How can we add privacy without breaking the spatial experience?

First, I needed to understand who controlled the space

Two user roles:

Then I mapped the full journey

Journey mapping revealed three moments needing clarity:

• creation
• audio transition
• shared management.

These shaped the solution.

Core Solution

Private Areas had to feel like part of the room

I designed Private Areas as lightweight zones inside existing rooms. Users can create, enter, and manage focused conversations without leaving the shared environment. The zones needed to feel present and recognizable without visually dominating the room.

Boundaries & Audio

Boundaries, labels, and transition feedback distinguish shared from private conversations.

Key decisions

Permissions & Management

A shared area could not depend entirely on its original creator. Role-based controls let authorized team members change access settings or remove an area, keeping management collaborative while respecting permissions.

Key decisions

Private Areas preserve the room's spatial behavior.

I turned the new behavior into reusable patterns

The design system gained patterns for:

• spatial boundaries
• area labels
• access states
• permission controls
• warnings
• confirmation dialogs.

Shared patterns keep Private Areas consistent and support future collaboration features.

Testing showed where the invisible behavior was still unclear

Prototype reviews and in-room playtests revealed issues through movement that static screens missed.

Iteration 1 — Boundary visibility

Iteration 2 — Access states

Iteration 3 — Shared management

What I learned

The hardest part was making invisible behavior — audio context, privacy, access, and ownership — feel visible and predictable. The project showed me that clear system feedback is as important as the interface in real-time collaboration.

Good spatial interaction design makes invisible system behavior feel visible and trustworthy.

Additional Contributions

I also simplified invitations so hosts could bring people into rooms more easily.

The flow supports:

Google Calendar Integration

I connected room selection with Google Calendar so hosts could schedule meetings without moving between disconnected tools. The chosen room and session details remain visible throughout the flow.

Other Collaboration Tools

A unified add-content flow gives files, notes, media, and external tools one predictable entry point.

The result