Pit.Chat

Objectives

1. Strategic Discovery
2. iOS Interface Design
3. Chat Stream Experience
4. Payment Structure

How it started

I set out to build a product that would emulate the feeling of curling up on a couch while immersed in a thought-provoking conversation – the kind you experience when stuck indoors on a snowy day with a group of friends. How would I achieve this sensation? What features would it require?

Initially, I turned my attention to video streaming. On the surface it makes sense. You’re in a digital space with a friend, sharing a special moment, reacting and engaging with them in real-time. The reality is, video streaming platforms have done a remarkable job at making the streaming experience as seamless as possible. Apps like FaceTime enable you to connect with people instantly, and often without headache. Heck, they’re even fun to use. Take Twitch, which enables live video streaming with a massive focus on audience participation. It certainly approaches what we’re after, but I’d argue it can be a bit overwhelming and cumbersome, relying on a wide breath of features and a very savvy creator ecosystem.

An alternative was to examine applications that utilize a thread system. These include Twitter, Reddit, and Discourse, among others. However, what I quickly realized is a lack of real-time experience. Although you may find yourself part of a large community oriented thread, you miss the sense of conversation, or, a fluid back and forth dialogue (outside of DMs). In most scenarios, it’s a user who creates an original post (OP), and the community replying asynchronously. Undoubtedly a fun community experience we’ll keep in the sketchpad to come back to.

Then there’s text messaging. Personally, this space feels like the one with the most disruptive opportunity. The user experience hasn’t changed all that much in the past decade. You send a message, your counter-party responds, and you go on and on in a ladder-like style to your heart’s content. Most would say, “why change something that works?” And they’d partially be right. But there’s always something more interesting around the corner, even if it’s different to what you originally set out to build.

We’ve seen text messaging applications attempt to forge their own path, but they haven’t seemed to catch on. The platforms that have shown to be the most disruptive offer a niche-centric feature, like privacy (e.g, Signal), or time-sensitive photo sharing (e.g, SnapChat). Combining my learnings from the initial observations above, I began to outline a product that would fit my initial vision.

A historical example

Before we dive into the product, let’s take a moment to set the stage.

Imagine two travelers from distant lands unite by a fire-pit to share their story. Neither transcribes the conversation, instead, they focus on moving the discussion forward. Now three more travelers show up. They join the first group and listen along. After an hour, the groups disperse with the stories they heard, sharing the most exciting information they learned with their friends and family when they see them next.

This storytelling tradition has been a part of our existence for thousands of years. Pit.Chat is here to mimic that oral tradition, where idea, and the experience of learning that idea, are the leading drivers of its longevity.

Welcome to Pit.Chat

Pit.Chat operates differently than most chat applications in that the communication occurs through an interface that emphasizes both your, and your counter-party’s current message, just like storytelling works when sitting around a fire-pit. The chat function does not follow the standard ladder-like message string as seen in chat apps like WhatsApp. Instead, it focuses on what you and your counter-party are writing live, front and center. It’s like a mini text-stream for your convo. Here’s an example.

Conversations flow outward from the two main center texts (your text in black, your counter-party’s in orange.) The more you or your counter-party writes, the longer your text blocks grow in its corresponding direction. You can see that past sent messages are gray and reduced in size. This minimizes their focus to emphasize the more pressing message that your counter-party is typing. Importantly, any single message you or your counter-party write has a maximum length, reducing the need to scroll up and down as you type.

Clicking the back arrow in the top-left will bring you to your chat history. Alternatively, you can swipe right. I decided to keep the Fellowship UI as minimal as possible, showing only usernames as identifiers and how recently they’ve been online.

At its core, the Pit.Chat UX allows you to interrupt a friend with a more “important” idea, just as one would when speaking with someone in person. Sometimes what you have to say really is of the essence! In fact, I feel this feature will bring a certain element of what I like to call Active-Correction, or AC, where in you edit the message you are currently writing because your counter-party is writing something at the same time. The not-so-functional AC we experience in current messaging applications is from the infamous typing bubble.

Start a Pit

This leads us directly to my favorite feature, Pits. Or in plain terms: streaming for texts. Users can search for a specific topic and scroll through live conversations between thinkers, philosophers, chefs, athletes, developers, teachers, and many more. Here’s what the live feed of Pits looks like with the ‘FinTech’ tag applied.

Buy Logs, fuel the Pit, and go public!

Where private, one-on-one conversations are free, Pits are the platform’s paid feature. Any two users can make their private, free conversation public by clicking the flame in the top-right of their conversation.

As mentioned above, starting a Pit requires resources. On the Pit.Chat application, those resources are known as Logs. One Log is equal to ~$0.10 (exact price TBD). Starting a Pit will vary in price depending on network load. The more activity, the higher the price.

Although untested to date, having users pay a small premium to broadcast their conversation public will hopefully increase the quality of conversations. Furthermore, once you and your friend start a Pit, your conversation is live and searchable on the public feed. Again, the duration of how long your conversation is searchable on the Pit Feed will depend on the application’s scaling algorithm (also TBD). At busy times during the day you mat get 10 minutes of airtime for the cost of one Log, at less active times, you might see closer to 30 minutes.

Users who have followed your account from past Pits or who have you in their chat history will get a push notification that you’ve gone live. You can disable this feature in your settings page.

Here’s what a live Pit looks like from the perspective of a user who chose to watch a discussion between @jack and @santi on the topic of cooking recipes. The screen on the left shows what non-active users see. The screen on the right shows what happens if that user swipes left, revealing the Tribe. In the Tribe chat, fellow onlookers can speak witch each other. If a Tribe member contributes at least a single Log to the Pit, their messages will be highlighted, as shown on the right-hand screen.

A dynamic economy

You may have noticed that the left-side mockup above shows 12 Logs. Why are there 12 Logs if a Pit only costs one Log to start? To incentivize conversation, Pits allow for an infinite stacking of Logs to keep the fire going. This accomplishes four key things:

1. It extends the duration of any Pit past its initial duration
2. It pays the creators of that Pit a percentage of the Log(s) donated
3. It improves that Pit’s ranking on the public search feed
4. It visually prioritizes a Log contributor’s messages in the Tribe chat

If a discussion is winds down and no Logs are added to extend its duration, it will dwindle to ash and disappear from the Pit Feed.

What if your Pit heats up? 🔥

If you find yourself with several users contributing Logs to your Pit, you’ve created what we call a Blaze. The Blaze will trigger a notification to any user who has saved the category tag the Pit creators have set (e.g., FinTech). This action dramatically increases your conversation’s popularity on the searchable Pit Feed.

You might be asking yourself how users find interesting conversations. It’s quite simple! By clicking on the magnifying lens in the top-right of your Pit Feed, the application will open a filter view to sift through popularity or by specific categories.

Save a Convo with Clips

You’ll likely come across a captivating discussion on Pit.Chat during your time on the application. And, you’ll likely want to share that experience with friends on other social platforms. Clips allows you to record a 5–15 second segnment of any public Pit and export to your platform of choice.

The Pit.Chat application will automatically configure your stream clip in the video dimensions of your app of choice. At the start, that will include Twitter and Instagram. Here’s what that looks like

Onboarding & Message Requests

I’ve saved the onboarding and message request for last as they’re less critical to the overall product vision, but important nonetheless! I’ve gone for a One Time Password (OTP) approach using your mobile # given this app is built primarily with mobile in mind. Similar systems would be the likes of Telegram, where a number and verification (including 2FA) are a good starting point. More registration options like Twitter and Gmail will be included in a near future.

Now that you’re onboarded to Pit.Chat, how do you initiate a request? You may recall the Fellowship UI from earlier in the article, which shows you how to add fellows to your contacts list. You can search usernames and sift through contacts on your phone since it’s an Apple app, but here’s an example of what you would see in your iMessage when someone invites you to join them on Pit.Chat.

The long-term vision

By mixing familiar streaming practices into a modified, yet traditional texting interface, I hope to create an environment that fosters storytelling. Gamification is an important element of any mass consumer application, and I believe Pit.Chat accomplishes that with its tasteful mechanisms. You might have something of incredible value others are eager to learn about, so get a Pit going and give the community something they’ll rally behind!