Sandbox Demo 2: Houseparty
WeiTing Huang
Houseparty is a video-chatting app that enables users to do group hangouts virtually. Launched in 2016, Houseparty has now rapidly regained its popularity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Comparing with Zoom, Houseparty provides a gathering space that is more casual. Users could sign on to the app and wave to any friends who are online and join their party. Users can also hop between different party rooms and even randomly popped into strangers’ parties to engage in a fun chat.
Besides the group chatting feature, Houseparty also has plenty of interactive features that engage and entertains its users in the virtual world. For instance, they can play board games such as Uno, Chips and Guac, or even sing Karaoke together with friends. The app could also connect with the popular game Fortnight for online game lovers to participate.
In order to have a deeper understanding of how users view the Houseparty experience, we could apply the Four Stage of Activation and the Experience Modes as analyzing tools.
Four Stage of Activation
The Four Stages of Activation introduces the concepts of 4As, including Audience, Access, Agenda, and Attractor. The four aspects demonstrate how audiences are activated to participate in experiences.
Audience
Firstly, we should pay attention to who does the users go through the experience with. In the case of Houseparty, the audience mostly plays it with a group of people. It could be a group of close friends, new friends who tried to get along with each other, or strangers they met in their friends’ chat rooms.
Access
Houseparty is available on mobile and laptops, and are compatible with IOS, Android, and Chrome. As soon as users download the app, they could access Houseparty anytime, anywhere. In addition, the app sends you a notification once your friends log in to the app. Thus, it encourages users to access the app while knowing there’s someone to video-chat with.
Agenda
The possible time for users to play Houseparty may be at night or on weekends after they finish their busy works and chores. However, Houseparty could also be used on special occasions during the pandemic. For instance, orientations, club welcoming parties, and other social gathering events. The fun and integrative games could serve as perfect ice-breaking games to bring people closer.
Attractors
The experience of Houseparty chatroom often bring users positive and exciting energy through the good times laughing and chatting with friends. The positive emotions serve as a warm invitation that attracts users to immerse themselves in the virtual party.
Experience Modes
According to the Experience Modes, there are five fundamental elements to describe how experiences serve audiences’ intention: Task, Social, Discovery, Entertainment, and Aspiration. In my point of view, Houseparty falls into two of the categories: Social and Entertainment.
Social
An example of a social experience is public parks, where people often visit with family and friends to bond and do activities together. Houseparty also has a similar concept but performed as a virtual social place online. People mainly use Houseparty to seek social connections with others and would feel satisfied after having valuable social time with groups of friends.
Entertainment
Entertainment is what most businesses want to have in their products. They want their users to have fun and generate a positive attitude toward their experience. The gaming and Karaoke features on Houseparty successfully fulfilled users’ need to be entertained and make them want to come back and join a virtual house party again.
At the time I experienced the Houseparty app, I immediately think of a similar chatting app “Line” that I have used. Line is a chatting app that is popular and commonly used in Asian countries. The app also has a group video chatting feature that allowed friends to play interactive games. Although the similarity of function, the two apps have slightly different features that are worth discussing.
Firstly, the games provided by Houseparty are mainly board games that everyone is familiar with. On the other hand, Line has games that are more interactive and often combine AR technologies. The app makes the most use of the virtual place, designing games that can only play through mobile devices such as face recognition dancing games and virtual donuts catching contest. If Houseparty could include more innovative games, there would be more reasons for users to use the app even when the pandemic is over.
The second feature that Houseparty could learn from Line is to add the Face Filter feature. Line has several face filters for users to choose from. Including natural makeup, glasses, or even funny expression. In this way, users could not only have a more entertaining party time but also not being so worried about how they look when their faces are close up to the camera.
All in all, Houseparty does an excellent job moving the classic old school party to the virtual space. However, it doesn’t take much advantage of its online nature to create distinctive experiences. If Houseparty could keep evolving and add more innovative features, it could definitely attract more users into the virtual space.
