
Show HN: Elevator party – An interactive small talk experience - boriskourt
https://elevatorparty.chat/
======
boriskourt
Hello HN,

This is a tiny little thing that me and a frequent collaborator [0] wanted to
express in these challenging times. What if people miss something as awkward
and forgettable as elevator small talk?

Right now, there are virtual places where we can meet, collaborate, do yoga,
talk about books, watch content together, and rave. This virtual space gives
you an analog that is a little more from the daily _inbetween_ times.

After long days of video calls at work, we ended up doing more video calls
each evening to get this wrapped up. Overall this small concept took four
weeks to finish. In the process I primarily learned that there have been
notches in screens for a few years now.

The whole thing is built with Clojure and ClojureScript. And largely leveraged
Sente [1], a wonderful front+back end WebSocket story. The characters are
customized from the amazing Open Peeps library [2]. And there is some more
info in the (?) on the website for the curious.

I am curious about what this community thinks about little, possibly zen,
distractions like this?

[0]: [https://ameliedinh.com/](https://ameliedinh.com/)

[1]:
[https://github.com/ptaoussanis/sente](https://github.com/ptaoussanis/sente)

[2]: [https://www.openpeeps.com/](https://www.openpeeps.com/)

~~~
jetset15
Love the idea, couple ideas.

1\. Restrict it to 3-4 people max in each elevator. 2\. Add in audio and close
the room in 1 minute.

~~~
boriskourt
Thanks!

Audio is definitely something we want. Had a nice elevator bell lined up! Will
try to get that added sometime this week.

re #1, it would definitely be more usable with higher visitor traffic. One of
our goals was to let people be in the same elevator if they send it to their
friends, at the moment that is done by only having one elevator haha. Not
ideal!

------
dorkwood
I like things like this because they're different. It feels like the sort of
silly website you'd stumble across in the early 2000s. But I agree with some
of the other posters that the limitation of choosing from canned phrases makes
it feel boring almost immediately.

Something to consider: maybe being able to string random small-talk related
words or phrases together, ala magnetic poetry[0], would result in more
interesting chatter.

[0]:
[https://jayisgames.com/review/farragomate.php](https://jayisgames.com/review/farragomate.php)

------
codeulike
Nice idea.

The fact that some of the people have no eyes and a weird sort of eye thing
for a nose is confusing.

Also there are too many people in the elevator for the necessary awkward
silence between comments.

After a certain amount of small talk you should get awarded the opportunity to
actually choose what to say. Thats kindof how it works IRL.

~~~
boriskourt
It's definitely receiving slightly more traffic than usual right now ;)

------
gavinray
I came expecting a web app showcasing Smalltalk, the language. Boy was I
confused for a second haha.

------
supernova87a
I really don't understand.

Are other people in the elevator operated by other actual users online, or are
they randomly generated? Honestly, it's indistinguishable from random.

Are you supposed to be "conversing" with the other thought bubbles that
appear? Using the 10 phrases you're allowed to use, which because they're
meaningless you cannot tell whether someone is actually responding to your
input or just a bot putting up phrases?

The sentiment is nice, but I have to say, 4 weeks to build this seems...
unfortunate.

~~~
eat_veggies
my understanding is that "indistinguishable from random" and "meaningless ...
bot putting up phrases" is the critique of small talk that this art piece is
trying to get at?

~~~
supernova87a
Yes that's true -- but if the authors of this spent 4 weeks coding up
something to allow people to input phrases and have them appear to others
dynamically and have them "respond" (all of the complexity of a chat interface
and backend), only to not be able to tell the difference between that and
random non-interactive output... what was the point of all that work?

Maybe I'm not getting something about the UI that is obvious.

~~~
boriskourt
It was definitely a challenge to communicate that everyone was a human in
there. (As far as humans can be trusted ;)

Later in the design we added some details to hopefully get that across to as
many people as possible. The biggest being "connect to other humans" that
bounces in over the elevator button before you can call it. The others are
maybe a bit too tucked away in the info (?) area.

I think with the amount of traffic in the last 12hrs everyone does start to
look like a bot though!

~~~
supernova87a
I mean, thanks for your effort, but I still am puzzled as to the purpose of
making this a complex interactive conversation platform... when the phrases
are not able to convey a conversation and it appears random to the
participants. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes work / infrastructure for
something that is... not useful as a conversational tool.

------
FailMore
Fun, it would be nice to have less people per room as right now it's very
crowded (on mobile)

~~~
boriskourt
It's actually a 'single shard' universe. (Sorry bad EVE joke) But yes, its a
bit stuffy in there right now!

~~~
throwanem
What's that smell?

(Seriously, this is adorable. Great work!)

~~~
boriskourt
Thank you! Really glad you liked it!

------
xwdv
This is pretty cool, I’d love to see similar things like this.

~~~
peschu
why would you like to see more?

tbh I don't get the point of this...it's boring and useless(for me)... it's
nice project for learning or demonstrating the technical aspects behind it...

------
futhey
Neat idea, good execution.

