A new phone booth-sized virtual meeting pod uses a large screen and ultra-high-definition video streaming in an effort to provide the more intimate experience of in-person conversation. It is part of a growing movement to develop long-distance meeting alternatives to the workhorse Zoom calls of the remote work era 鈥� and it delivers a more natural experience than strapping on a virtual reality headset to step into a cartoony metaverse.
Meetings may be the bane of many an employee鈥檚 day to day, but the simple fact is that they are often a crucial part of getting the job done. Getting together in person can come at a great cost to the planet though, and as numerous companies strive to meet net-zero goals, business travel is coming under much closer scrutiny. 快猫短视频 is no exception: a round-trip flight between London and New York City 鈥� where our two main offices are located 鈥� generates an average of 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
I recently had the chance to try out the new Framery Contact pod during a preview event held at the residence of the Finnish Consul General in New York. It is a rectangular box made of black glass with rounded edges, about the size of a traditional phone booth but far roomier and sleeker. Compared with the 1.7 tonnes of CO2 emissions for a single transatlantic flight, the five-year life cycle between manufacturing and recycling a Framery Contact pod results in just 1.4 tonnes of carbon emissions.
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鈥淭he optimal customer would be one which has multiple offices in different continents, so that it could really benefit from reducing the demand for cross-continental flights,鈥� says , Framery鈥檚 chief executive officer.
Moments after stepping into the quiet interior of the pod and sitting down, I heard an insistent pulsing sound calling my attention to an incoming call on a wall-mounted touchscreen to my left. After touching the 鈥渁ccept鈥� button, I turned to face front and found myself chatting with Arto Vahvanen, head of digital offerings at Framery, whose expressive arm and hand gestures, upper body movements and even minute facial movements around the eyes were made visible through a large screen streaming 4K video at 30 frames per second.
The lack of large or visible microphones helped to make it feel like we were truly chatting in person. To help maintain a sense of direct eye contact between speakers, the Framery Contact鈥檚 high-end camera is apparently aided by an array of non-obvious mirrors. An audio monitoring device was also supposedly at work matching each person鈥檚 speaking pattern and frequency response after capturing the initial sounds from a hidden microphone.
All those design elements helped create a mostly seamless experience during my call with the Framery headquarters, even as almost 6500 kilometres separated our respective locations in the US and Finland. The broadband internet requirements for Framery Contact are a relatively modest 25 megabits per second 鈥� the recommended rate for streaming 4K Ultra HD video from services such as Netflix.
But there were some moments when my call was partially interrupted by drops in the video frame rate. Although infrequent, those moments broke the immersive spell of the experience and reminded me of the typical issues that can crop up in a standard Zoom call.
Framery isn鈥檛 the only company pitching more immersive virtual meetings 鈥� Google鈥檚 aims to provide a similar experience. But Framery may have an advantage by having already sold 21,000 Framery Q 鈥� soundproof meeting pods designed for in-person meetings of up to four people 鈥� to two-thirds of the top 100 companies on the list.
That gives Framery a handy client list to pitch the upgraded pods with a target price of $24,000 each, given that companies are already shelling out up to $16,000 for each standard pod. The new pod鈥檚 commercial launch is targeted for either the end of 2023 or early 2024, although Framery plans to make it available to certain companies earlier for pilot testing.
So is the experience worth it? My early impression is that the new pod does generally succeed in creating a better sense of human connection than a typical video call. You might even say it creates a more unusual sense of intimacy than the standard face-to-face conversation, given that many in-person business meetings are not held in relatively quiet, dark and isolated rooms.
That sense of up-close intimacy may not always suit routine one-on-one calls, let alone team meetings revolving around group collaboration and sharing laptop screens. Framery鈥檚 virtual meeting pod is unlikely to fully replace traditional video calls 鈥� it currently doesn鈥檛 provide built-in options for showing slide presentations or integrating with outside apps. But it could prove more valuable for executives or government leaders looking to hold more private, high-stakes meetings virtually without hopping on a jet.
The best compliment I can give to the Framery Contact experience is that it tacitly discourages you from bringing a laptop into the pod and tapping away on it without maintaining eye contact. It would feel too impolite when the other person seems to be right there in front of you.
