Disrupting virtual event industry with a touch of real-world magic
About
In 2021, we were approached by the founders of Newnorm, a budding venture that sought to redefine the world of event planning. They were building a platform that would bring an immersive experience to in-person, virtual, and hybrid events alike, and wanted us to work with them to bring their ideas to life. Founded by Moiz Vas and Yusuf Jazakallah, with Moiz bringing a wealth of experience in event management and curation to the table, Newnorm set out to revolutionize the way we think of events.
Scope
The project’s scope was expansive, aimed at developing a platform capable of hosting hybrid virtual events while also accommodating purely in-person gatherings. Designed to offer an immersive AR/VR experience, the platform sought to showcase a wealth of content and empower event creators to organize events with unprecedented ease. By automating mundane tasks, the goal was to enable event creators to replicate the in-person event setup processes online, streamlining event creation to a mere five minutes.
Points of Note
- Technological Innovation: Incorporation of AR/VR technology to enhance user experience, providing an immersive environment for attendees.
- Seamless Accessibility: automatic text-to-speech enabled Closed Captions for audiences with hearing impairment
- North Star Experience: seamless user interaction, akin to the intuitive experience of driving a Tesla, where everything flows effortlessly without the need for manual input.
- AI-powered Engagement: Introduction of AI-powered photo capture to automatically generate images capturing attendees’ smiles, inclusive of hashtags, nametags, and company branding.
- User Delight Features: Introduction of badges and the ability to brand avatars, celebrating achievements and fostering a sense of community among participants.
Innovating Digital Spaces
Digitally recreating the feeling of attending a live event
Challenge:
The platform’s main aim was to replicate the engagement and vibrancy of being present in a real world event, all within a digital product. Everything from the ability to interact and network with other attendees, to the intrigue of walking around and discovering sponsor booths, needed to be reimagined for the platform.
Solution:
We crafted a virtual environment inspired by real-life events. Guests entered a welcome lobby complete with sponsor booths and information about the event, and could mingle with other attendees just like they would at a physical gathering. The event experience was designed to flow seamlessly, automatically whisking attendees between presentations, networking events, award ceremonies, and more, without the need for them to make any effort to manually navigate between separate events on their itinerary.
Sponsor Engagement
Giving the sponsors their due
Challenge:
At real-world events, sponsors put up stalls where they can showcase their brand and offerings, and engage with attendees. We needed to recreate this experience virtually, in order to make virtual sponsorships on NewNorm as valuable to the sponsors as their real-world counterparts.
Solution:
We prominently featured sponsor booths in the welcome lobby of the event, which could be customised to showcase the sponsor’s brand and offerings. Attendees could connect with sponsors both through their booths, as well as through breakout sessions during the event.
Event Experience
Going beyond the ordinary to inspire user delight
Challenge:
Communicating information online is one thing — creating an atmosphere of community and celebration is quite another. Elevating online events to the next level would involve replicating the immersive in-person event experience in a virtual setting.
Solution:
We ensured that attendees got all the fun of an in-person event by paying attention to the little details that make events fun. In addition to the interactive lobby with its decorated booths, we included little user delight features such as award ceremonies, where recipients of awards would be heralded with confetti, be able to give an acceptance speech which would be automatically recorded (should they want to share these recordings or save them as a memory), and would also get little badges on their avatars that they could wear around for the rest of the event, just as somebody might walk around with their award in hand at a physical event.
We used AI in lieu of an event photographer, automatically capturing snapshots of smiling attendees, which would then be offered to them at the end of the event complete with hashtags, names, and companies, as keepsakes and share-ables.
For users who might want to switch to a different device while attending an event, we provided QR codes which could be scanned in order to automatically switch the live event feed over to a new device, seamlessly and without the user having to manually rejoin the event.
We also made sure that accessibility was at the forefront of NewNorm’s event experience, using text-to-speech to auto-generate closed captions so that every user could easily follow what was being said in presentations and group events.
Conclusion
NewNorm revolutionised the concept of attending and organising business events, offering unparalleled flexibility and immersive experiences for users and sponsors alike. Working with NewNorm allowed us the opportunity to re-imagine what events could be, distilling real-world events down to the fundamental reasons why people enjoy them, and then using those insights to recreate the same magic in an entirely new dimension.
The technical challenges of designing and developing this platform were not insignificant; however, the business value of this design was made immediately apparent, as NewNorm started signing up paying customers far sooner than they’d anticipated being able to monetize their platform!
