Wonder Handbook
Wonder Handbook
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Our Product

This page is maintained by

Stephane Roux

TL;DR: Emulating real-life interactions in a virtual space.
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Try out the product here

Introduction

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We've all been there. Large group calls that don't feel anything like getting together physically. No excitement, nothing dynamic. Instead, awkward "public" 1:1 conversations, people talking over each other, never meeting anyone new and no way to catch up with some people in a more intimate setting.

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How do people interact when they get together in groups? They move between groups and form smaller conversations dynamically. Using the static "everyone to everyone" paradigm that traditional videoconferencing is based on just doesn't work. That's why many group formats still happen in-person, despite the huge cost and inconvenience involved: until now, there was no way for groups to meet online without giving up everything that made it special in the first place.

Wonder is a new interaction paradigm that allows groups to interact virtually

This interaction paradigm is the starting point. When people get together as a group, they meet and talk. But they often do other things, too. Our

is to turn Wonder into the primary space where people meet, talk, exchange ideas, and work together. So, in addition to nailing the interaction paradigm (which is already very challenging), we need to build a targeted and powerful set of features and integrations that allow our users to do the things they tend to do in groups really. To get there, we developed a product roadmap that contains some features that will transform remote communication. That feature roadmap is our competitive advantage, so we can't make it public.

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Try out the product here

Product design principles

Based on our theses about the needs of users and the direction that remote communication is taking, we have a range of product design principles that we try to optimise for.

  • Enabling great conversations: conversations are at the heart of the social experience. For Wonder, they are what videos are to YouTube and what music is to Spotify. Our product is laid out to enable and facilitate great conversations.
  • Simplicity: this is even more important than for other products. In large groups, there is always someone new. Wonder needs to be so simple that people receive a link, open Wonder for the first time and immediately start participating.
  • Instant access: nobody has time to download and install software or go through other onerous steps. Click and start using, anywhere, anytime.
  • Performance matters: for the social experience, small improvements in performance play a huge role. A little bit of lag, poor video quality or an echo can ruin a conversation.
  • Focus on users rather than hosts: Wonder enables and facilitates conversations between users. In the end, that's what hosts want, too. So we focus primarily on the experience of the people who join events.

What Wonder is being used for and what our users say

People use Wonder for Christmas markets, product launches, all-hands meetings, tech meet-ups, conferences, workshops, education, virtual offices, teaching and networking events. The list goes on. We even had a wedding on Wonder recently.

It's actually hard to express quite how much excitement and positive emotions the product creates in people. It's one of the greatest things about

. This excitement has allowed us to grow at over 100% each month, purely by word of mouth. As of the end of 2020, we had almost half a million monthly users, 6 months after our hacking together our first prototype.

As an example, here are some of the messages people send to us on LinkedIn

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And here is some more user feedback, taken from our NPS form:

"The tool is amazing and exactly what I was looking for. The feature that people can just talk in groups was the one thing that was missing in most of these online events! Very unique!"
"I love the playfulness of wonder"
"It felt very natural as if you were actually at a networking event."
"I just like the natural feeling of the tool. Just "walk" over to someone and talk to him :)"
"Just wow! No forced networking. Love it!"
"very cool opportunity to meet each other and interact dynamically ... WOW"
"This was really fun and a fresh way to interact with people in a virtual manner. I love how you can mingle around the room and interact with different people like at a real party or gathering.
"It's an extremely nice platform which allows to emulate social settings more naturally than e.g. Zoom or Teams. It's useful for private but also official events and it's fun!"
"Simply Mind blowing interface"
"Wonder is like the greatest tech ever and right now it's making parts of my day very unproductive while we develop our rooms into popular online destinations."
"It's an incredible tool that universities can utilize in really great ways"
"What an awesome amazing idea! Literally mind-blowing!
"Breath of fresh air from Zoom, this is more like a cocktail party"