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is a virtual platform that mimics real-world interactions with spatial audio and private chat areas.
2024 – 2025
Product Designer
I worked as a Product Designer within a 5-person design team, collaborating with PM, engineers and QA.
Noise & Monetization
SpatialChat mimics real-life acoustics, but as rooms grew crowded, the "spatial" nature became a drawback for focused work.
• Audio Overlap: Users near boundaries heard multiple conversations simultaneously, causing distraction.
• Lack of Control: Only the original creator could manage areas, creating bottlenecks for teams.
• Business Need: We needed a compelling "premium" feature to justify and drive sales for the new Team subscription plan.
Focused Spatial Interactions
We introduced "Private Areas"—zones with isolated audio logic and clear visual boundaries.
• Audio Isolation Patterns: Engineered a specific "fall-off" effect near borders and explicit join confirmations to eliminate accidental eavesdropping.
• Clear Entry/Exit Model: Designed distinct visual states and labels so users intuitively know their "sound privacy" status.
• Unified Roles & Permissions: Re-architected the authority model, allowing admins and moderators to manage spaces regardless of who created them.Premium Packaging: Positioned the feature within the Team plan with strategic upgrade prompts and administrative controls.
• +12% Satisfaction & Retention: Users spent more time in meaningful, focused conversations without acoustic noise.
• Uplift in Team Plan Sales: Successfully turned a UX improvement into a revenue driver by highlighting the value of "focused sub-rooms."
• Improved Workflow Efficiency: Eliminated the "single point of failure" by democratizing area management for moderators.
• Scalable UI: Added new spatial components to the Design System, ensuring consistent implementation for future room types.
• Discovery: Conducted competitive analysis of virtual spaces and user interviews to map acoustic pain points (CJM & Empathy Mapping).
• Prototyping: Built high-fidelity prototypes and conducted "in-room" playtests to fine-tune the transition between spatial and isolated audio.
• Handoff: Delivered comprehensive documentation and state diagrams to engineers to ensure the complex audio-visual sync was pixel-perfect.
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Private Zone Discovery: How users find and join quiet areas.
Roles Dashboard: New permission settings for Team plan admins.
Audio-Visual Feedback: UI indicators for microphone states inside/outside private zones