Expressive spaces for remote togetherness

Crafting otherworldly environments to bring us closer to one another

It is difficult to imagine today's world without virtual meetings with work colleagues and video calls with family and friends. It is also hard to imagine many of these encounters without custom backgrounds, especially as we continue to evolve what it means to be professional in the workplace and create more space for playfulness.

These playful backdrops help us feel immersed in something other than our personal spaces. They can teleport us to imaginary landscapes or surround us with an exciting story. Most importantly, they help us break the ice in a conversation, share our personal interests or a cause we are passionate about. In fact, they strengthen our relationships with one another and this is really why I'm so drawn to this feature. ??

The creation of Together Mode in Microsoft Teams was ground-breaking as it allowed everyone on a call to show up seemingly together in the same scene. This has been transformational during the pandemic: a time when we couldn't see our colleagues or even our extended family members. It quickly became clear that any experience that could safely simulate physical togetherness brought a sense of relief. A good example is what Teams has been able to accomplish in partnership with the NBA , leveraging 17-foot tall LED screens that wrap around the basketball arenas and put fans back next to players.

Celebrating special occasions, such as birthdays and holidays as in these scenes above (created with Reisinger Studio ) and below (by Studio Tendril ) became more common at work and at home.

We continue to see an abundance of the creativity in hybrid school and work environments, where people find unique ways to celebrate one another. It makes it clear that the beauty of tools like virtual backgrounds is that they can often go beyond being functional, for instance by hiding your space when it's not quite ready for prime-time during a business call, and in fact aim at putting a smile on someone's face. ?? That is undeniably just as important.

Custom backgrounds are essential to educators and students and they happen to come to life beautifully in both Teams and Flipgrid - Microsoft's social learning experience. This realization came in sharp focus to me when I was able to observe my daughter attend her middle-school classes using these two apps.

It was clear that in classes where teachers embraced individual expression, students were more engaged in learning. For my daughter, Flipgrid's highly expressive camera, with a growing range of AR lenses and filters, frames, stickers and backdrops, was a weekly highlight when submitting her orchestra homework. ??

To expand the selection of backdrops designs, we recently partnered with Yambo Studio in Israel to create a series of unique designs for school environments (seen above). Much like many of our other background series, these compositions embraced serene and whimsical scenes.

In all these environments, we aimed at framing things in such a way that the naturally user fits right at the center of the of the composition, yet leaving room for small details and sometimes Easter eggs to be discovered during each call. ??

Similarly, cultural celebrations like Pride Month, Black History Month, Women History Month and many others continue to grow in awareness and relevance. From what I've been able to witness in my personal experiences, a stronger bond is forged when everyone can more fully express themselves, share their experiences, be heard and also be supported by allies at work and their community.

A great example of how this can come to life in product was in this year's Pride celebration. An event that became significantly amplified when we offered 20 unique themes in Edge as well as backgrounds in Teams, all inspired by flags from each and every LGBTQIA+ ????identity.

To accomplish that, we partnered with artists Bryce Walhof and Zachary Hazen to create a collection of designs that were evocative of nature. Together, the images (seen below) were meant to symbolize a connected ecosystem, much like we come together as a diverse set of people in our own communities. All of them are also available as 4K wallpapers .

To sustain the goal of infusing more fun into our daily digital interactions, this summer we also worked with Six & Five to create a set of nostalgic backgrounds celebrating some of Microsoft's most iconic and memorable product moments: a landscape inspired by a Windows XP wallpaper, a playful rendition of Microsoft Paint, a reimagined scene of Microsoft's Solitaire and an encounter with a beloved friend named Clippy.

Teams' presenter mode introduced a very different challenge for designing backgrounds. Here presenters at a Teams meeting have whole new way to interact with their slides in PowerPoint, allowing them to appear side by side and on top of the content.

This extends the use of these imaginary spaces playing the role of integrating the presenter and the content. We felt hat here, the spaces must initially appear intriguing, but also calming, with the goal of not distracting from the slides being shown.

The first design collection (samples below), were crafted together Tendril , and are just our first attempt at making your presentations more memorable.

With so much of time spent in digital meetings and classes in the last eighteen months, it was natural that fatigue would eventually set in. Most of us have all probably felt it and looked for creative ways to stay focused and engaged before resorting to turning off our camera.

For those that are camera shy, it can be empowering to augment their appearance with AR lenses and filters. As a first step in this direction, we recently partnered with Studio Tendril to create a few dozen interactive lenses (samples below) that are now available on Flipgrid .

These range from everyday filters that color-grade and augment you and your environment, to simple Augmented Reality lenses that add exciting elements to your space, interact with your movement and sometimes even replace your background with a brand new scene.

As usual, I ask for your feedback. If you use backgrounds at work, at school or with your friends and family, please chime in with your thoughts! ??

In the year ahead, we want to continue bringing more choices to your Microsoft experiences, and in this creative process, your ideas matter! If you there are certain topics you really care about, please contribute to the comments below or feel free to connect directly in a message.

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A big thank you to all my colleagues that made these features possible in Skype, Teams and Flipgrid. Our experiences are distinctively better and we couldn't have this much fun creating for this scenario without your hard work! ??

A special thanks to Adnan Jamil-Mir , Alistair Kilpatrick , Amy Hatch Ono , Chad Voss , Colin Day , David Huang , Dominic Roedel , Justin Chando , Katerina Karellas , Mark Swift , Marissa Salazar , Sam Cundall and so many more for their leadership in this space.

Last, but not least, kudos to our amazing artist roster for their incredible contributions to this effort. Microsoft Design couldn't have done this without you! Andrés Reisinger , Atypic , Dominik Grejc , Six & Five , Tendril and Yambo Studio . ??