Video version of the following blog:
Hey all!
My name is TabloidA. I’m the designer for and one of the cofounders of Anlatan. Welcome to what can only be called the first official devlog of AetherRoom, the upcoming AI Chat service by Anlatan, the creators of NovelAI. For this first devlog, we wanted to quickly talk about AetherRoom’s release, and then the design and UI ethos of AetherRoom as they stand right now.
Delays
First off, I’m sure you’re wondering, when is this thing ACTUALLY releasing?
Well, approximately 3 months ago, we released a teaser trailer for the product in which we optimistically announced that AetherRoom would be releasing in 2023. I’ll be the first to say that, this is sadly no longer the case. We were hopeful at the time that, assuming everything went smoothly, we’d be offering a somewhat clean, closed-beta launch at the end of December. Unfortunately, this didn’t go as planned. Despite setting off on what seemed to be a stable path to launch, throughout the process we ran into a few development hitches and unpredictable staffing issues that set back the project more than we would’ve liked.
To remedy this, we’re of course still working on AetherRoom every single day. We hold multiple weekly meetings to stay on point with each other, and we’ve begun hiring (and already hired) some new talent to join us, who’ll help us keep up development at a much smoother pace.
Moving forwards, this time we want to try out something a little bit different. At the moment, while we do have a future target internally, we have no plans to share a further release timeframe until we feel way more comfortable with the project’s position. So, in exchange, the current plan is to begin fairly consistent uploads, of this devlog format, on this channel. In these devlogs, we’ll be doing our best to provide little insights into what we’re working on regarding AetherRoom. We want to show off AI progress, leak some UI designs, and just give you a better perspective into what we’re actually doing over here. We want to let you guys get your feet in the door, providing a little window for you to judge our progress for yourselves. Please let us know what you think about this idea; we’d love the input!
I, TabloidA, the person writing this post, was a big part of deciding the release timeframe, and I’d like to personally apologize for failing to anticipate these setbacks in our planning. Sometimes, the worst of the worst can happen when you least expect it or want it to. But, we overwhelmingly want to make sure we’re putting out a first product which matches the standard of quality you’ve come to expect from us. Therefore, the delay is regretfully necessary.
Direction
Today, we’ll be talking about the visuals and user interface! Please keep in mind that everything you’re about to read about and see is still in an active state of WIP.
As the designer for AetherRoom, I wanted to try and separate us visually from the other AI Chatbot providers out there. After studying around 10+ different other chatbot services, there was a very clear opportunity to design something that felt unique and true to itself. The ultimate goal was to create something that allows the user to customize their chat experience and give creative freedom to those who create, all while maintaining a stable core structure that was easy-to-use and understand for all our users.
Overall, I really wanted to keep the interface fun and playful-looking. Interfaces these days can be a little boring (especially the chat-based ones); so, the idea will be to incorporate fun little interactive details throughout the entire website.
Design
The main interface is where you’ll be creating, editing, and managing your Contacts. I chose to keep a singular light and dark mode color scheme, so both we and future Contact creators can enjoy way more visual flexibility with what can be done with the UI in the future. You can consider this space ‘The Aether’, the pure and unformed essence of thousands of chatbots, characters, and waifus. It’s free-floating, malleable, and dreamy.
Starting a new Chatroom with a Contact will lead you to the primary chat interface, a slate over the Aether that’s used as a completely customizable platform to talk to and interact with your Contacts.
There are already a premade selection of themes, which we call Chat Vibes, to choose from; every theme also has its own darkmode variant. There will also be a custom theme picker, however, this might come a bit further down the line, as I really want to nail the interaction with that. The chat layout is completely customizable too, allowing you to really choose how you want to interact with your Contact. In the further future, the ultimate goal will be to supply enough customization to let people really get down-and-dirty with the visuals of their Contact’s chat UI, without the need for custom CSS or fancy tricks. If you have any ideas or desires for a layout, let us know!
Contact Cards will be the official distribution method of Contacts. If you have a private Contact you’d like to share around, you can send them to other users as images, allowing your Contacts to be reimported into the website so others can get your Contact for themselves. This certainly isn’t a revolutionary concept, and it’s something that the active chatbot community has been playing with for a while now. With AetherRoom, we want to take it a step further, and create a more reinforced feeling of “virtual tangibility” with Contact Cards (and no, we aren’t making NFTs, that’d be stupid). If you share your Contact’s Card with someone, it should always be traceable right back to you. If you create “dommy mommy Shouko Nishimiya”, we want people to know the devil who did it. If someone wants to edit your Contact and make it their own, the original should always be findable through that variant. At the moment, there’s only one card design, but I want to provide a multitude of variations and customization options to really let people personalize their cards, while still keeping to the design of the website.
As you can probably tell, a big part of AetherRoom is being able to customize your Contact, and that includes while you’re talking to them, too. AetherRoom Contacts will have the ability to be assigned custom emotions that can be accurately displayed as you’re chatting with them. This functionality is something that isn’t vaguely prompted, but rather something we’re baking directly into the fully custom dataset that we’re using to train AetherRoom’s chat model. To symbolize these emotions, I took the opportunity to put together a series of custom emojis that I like to call “ARmojis”. We look forward to sharing an example of these emotions in action with you, in a future devlog.
Now, no Anlatan product would be the same without a waifu or husbando representative, and AetherRoom is no different. Since AetherRoom’s branding is much more colorful, and based around characters as its content, we wanted to make sure that the mascot would fit her role. Inspired by some old branding exploration from earlier in the year, AeR-chan is a black-and-white goth maid. This allows for her to be filled with all kinds of color, and as a result, she can fit into any aesthetical situation. The idea is to ultimately chibi-fy her, and have her appear in different places around the website as a part of the fun graphics and designs (almost like Wumpus, from Discord).
Alright, that’s going to do it for this devlog! I hope this provides some better insight into what you’ll be interacting with in AetherRoom. If you weren’t a fan of these subjects, don’t worry! In the next devlogs, we hope to cover the Contact creation process and show off some sneak peeks into progress on AetherRoom’s chat AI. If you did like this subject and want to hear more, let me know; there’s much more to talk about, and I’d love to hear what you’re most interested in.
Thank you so much for reading and hanging in there, while we keep our heads down and work. I’ll see you soon in the next devlog.
