{"id":18086,"date":"2020-04-14T20:47:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T20:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/replace-non-stop-zoom-with-remote-office-avatars-app-pragli.html"},"modified":"2020-04-14T20:47:55","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T20:47:55","slug":"replace-non-stop-zoom-with-remote-office-avatars-app-pragli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/replace-non-stop-zoom-with-remote-office-avatars-app-pragli.html","title":{"rendered":"Replace non-stop Zoom with remote office avatars app Pragli"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could avatars that show what co-workers are up to save work-from-home teams from constant distraction and loneliness? That\u2019s the idea behind Pragli, <\/a> the Bitmoji for the enterprise. It\u2019s a virtual office app that makes you actually feel like you\u2019re in the same building.<\/p>\n

Pragli<\/a> uses avatars to signal whether co-workers are at their desk, away, in a meeting, in the zone while listening to Spotify, taking a break at a digital virtual water coooler or done for the day. From there, you\u2019ll know whether to do a quick ad hoc audio call, cooperate via screenshare, schedule a deeper video meeting or a send a chat message they can respond to later. Essentially, it translates the real-word presence cues we use to coordinate collaboration into an online workplace for distributed teams.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Slack <\/a> did for email, we want to do for video conferencing,\u201d Pragli co-founder Doug Safreno tells me. \u201cTraditional video conferencing is exclusive by design, whereas Pragli is inclusive. Just like in an office, you can see who is talking to who.\u201d That means less time wasted planning meetings, interrupting colleagues who are in flow or waiting for critical responses. Pragli offers the focus that makes remote work productive with the togetherness that keeps everyone sane and in sync.<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea is to solve the top three problems that Pragli\u2019s extensive interviews and a Buffer\/AngelList study discovered workers hate:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Communication friction<\/li>\n
  2. Loneliness<\/li>\n
  3. Lack of boundaries<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You never have to worry about whether you\u2019re intruding on someone\u2019s meeting, or if it\u2019d be quicker to hash something out on a call instead of vague text. Avatars give remote workers a sense of identity, while the Pragli water cooler provides a temporary place to socialize rather than an endless Slack flood of GIFs. And because you clock in and out of the Pragli office just like a real one, co-workers understand when you\u2019ll reply quickly versus when you\u2019ll respond tomorrow unless there\u2019s an emergency.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIn Pragli, you log into the office in the morning and there\u2019s a clear sense of when I\u2019m working and when I\u2019m not working. Slack doesn\u2019t give you a\u00a0<\/span>strong sense if they\u2019re online or offline,\u201d Safreno explains. \u201cEveryone stays online and feels pressured to respond at any time of day.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \n

    Pragli co-founder Doug Safreno<\/p>\n

    Safreno and his co-founder Vivek Nair know the feeling first-hand. After both graduating in computer science from Stanford, they built StacksWare to help enterprise software customers avoid overpaying by accurately measuring their usage. But when they sold StacksWare to Avi Networks, <\/a> they spent two years working remotely for the acquirer. The friction and loneliness quickly crept in.<\/p>\n

    They\u2019d message someone, not hear back for a while, then go back and forth trying to discuss the problem before eventually scheduling a call. Jumping into synchronous communicating would have been much more efficient. \u201cThe loneliness was more subtle, but it built up after the first few weeks,\u201d Safreno recalls. \u201cWe simply didn\u2019t socially bond while working remotely as well as in the office. Being lonely was de-motivating, and it negatively affected our productivity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    The founders interviewed 100 remote engineers, and discovered that outside of scheduled meetings, they only had one audio or video call with co-workers per week. That convinced them to start Pragli a year ago to give work-from-home teams a visual, virtual facsimile of a real office. With no other full-time employees, the founders built and released a beta of Pragli last year. Usage grew 6X in March and is up 20X since January 1.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    Today Pragli officially launches, and it\u2019s free until June 1. Then it plans to become freemium, with the full experience reserved for companies that pay per user per month. Pragli is also announcing a small pre-seed round today led by K9 Ventures, <\/a> inspired by the firm\u2019s delight using the product itself.<\/p>\n

    To get started with Pragi, teammates download the Pragli desktop app and sign in with Google, Microsoft or GitHub. Users then customize their avatar with a wide range of face, hair, skin and clothing options. It can use your mouse and keyboard interaction to show if you\u2019re at your desk or not, or use your webcam to translate occasional snapshots of your facial expressions to your avatar. You can also connect your Spotify and calendar to show you\u2019re listening to music (and might be concentrating), reveal or hide details of your meeting and decide whether people can ask to interrupt you or that you\u2019re totally unavailable.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    From there, you can by audio, video or text communicate with any of your available co-workers. Guests can join conversations via the web and mobile too, though the team is working on a full-fledged app for phones and tablets. Tap on someone and you can instantly talk to them, though their mic stays muted until they respond. Alternatively, you can jump into Slack-esque channels for discussing specific topics or holding recurring meetings. And if you need some down time, you can hang out in the water cooler or trivia game channel, or set a manual \u201caway\u201d message.<\/p>\n

    Pragli has put a remarkable amount of consideration into how the little office social cues about when to interrupt someone translate online, like if someone\u2019s wearing headphones, in a deep convo already or if they\u2019re chilling in the microkitchen. It\u2019s leagues better than having no idea what someone\u2019s doing on the other side of Slack or what\u2019s going on in a Zoom <\/a> call. It\u2019s a true virtual office without the clunky VR headset.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    \u201cNothing we\u2019ve tried has delivered the natural, water-cooler-style conversations that we get from Pragli,\u201d says Storj Labs VP of engineering JT Olio. \u201c<\/span>The ability to switch between \u2018rooms\u2019 with screen sharing, video and voice in one app is great. It has really helped us improve transparency across teams. Plus, the avatars are quite charming as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    With Microsoft\u2019s lack of social experience, Zoom consumed with its scaling challenges and Slack doubling down on text as it prioritizes Zoom integration over its own visual communication features, there\u2019s plenty of room for Pragli to flourish. Meanwhile, COVID-19 quarantines are turning the whole world toward remote work, and it\u2019s likely to stick afterwards as companies de-emphasize office space and hire more abroad.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    The biggest challenge will be making comprehensible enough to onboard whole teams such a broad product encompassing every communication medium and tons of new behaviors. \u201c<\/span>How do you build a product that doesn\u2019t feel distracting like Slack but where people can still have the spontaneous conversations that are so important to companies innovating?,\u201d Safreno asks. The Pragli<\/a> founders are also debating how to encompass mobile without making people feel like the office stalks them after hours.<\/p>\n

    \u201cL<\/span>ong-term, [Pragli] should be better than being in the office because you don\u2019t actually have to walk around looking for [co-workers], and you get to decide how you\u2019re presented,\u201d Safreno concludes. <\/span>\u201cWe won\u2019t quit, because we want to work remotely for the rest of our lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

    Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/1PkRKtSWaxU\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Could avatars that show what co-workers are up to save work-from-home teams from constant distraction and loneliness? That\u2019s the idea behind Pragli, the Bitmoji for the enterprise. It\u2019s a virtual <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-18086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t