Ellis Auditorium: The Design of a Scalable, Fun and Beautiful, Socializing Webcast Experience

(2004)

Abstract

Today’s commercial webcast applications are largely designed as virtual lecture halls optimized to support a speaker’s need to present information such as speaker audio, supporting slides and to receive audience questions. This focus on information delivery ignores the many additional reasons why people attend real-world events as well as the social dynamics at these events.

We believe that socialization, both casual (running into an old friend or making a new acquaintance) and formal (coordinating or meeting up with a friend, group, or class) is a critical part of realworld, live events. Believing that webcast counterparts should be no different, we created the Ellis Auditorium, a webcast application that includes innovative design elements such as Cosmo, a “scalable socializer”.