Why

Mod on Mozilla Hubs

The Mod team is excited by the live online event work that we’ve been doing in Mozilla Hubs. We’ve found Hubs to be a scalable, flexible and fun platform that allows a more natural human communication experience than video conferencing allows. 

Video conferencing has its benefits but it’s not always the best solution, especially for multi-person gatherings. Disadvantages include scalability problems, cognitive overload caused by straining to read non-verbal cues across multiple video panels (often featuring inconsistent framing and lighting), on-camera self-consciousness, a lack of familiar human interaction elements such as proximity and spatial awareness, and the loss of informal chat opportunities due to ‘one speaker at a time’ requirements. 

Hubs overcomes these issues by providing users with avatars in a shared online space. This gives participants a level-playing field, removes distractions and self-consciousness, and allows people to move, speak, listen, share and socialise in naturalistic ways. Best of all, Hubs can be used via most devices and browsers. Unlimited virtual ‘rooms’ allow events to cater for anything from a small gathering of friends or colleagues to thousands of guests. Avatars and environments can be customised to create specific or branded experiences. 

While Covid19 has brought Hubs recent attention, Mozilla has given it several years of development time so it already has great capacity and it's growing every day.