Night Neighbourhood

Night Neighbourhood is a shared house for two to six familiar university friends. Work on separate tasks, explain something on a board, take a short game break or visit someone's room. The design asks whether a persistent place can help friends spend time together without requiring everyone to do the same thing.

Redeemable Crit reflection, 26 October.

Giving a room a reason to return to

A bedroom used to lead back to a general work card. Visiting a friend's desk could open your own unrelated card. The room looked personal, but the interaction gave you little reason to be there.

Now each resident can keep one reference image and save the view they were inspecting. It might be a diagram, design or personal illustration. It remains visible on the desk and wall after the panel closes. Returning resumes that material; visiting gives friends something of the owner's to discuss. Visitors pan and zoom independently, while only the owner changes the saved image and view.

Harrison and Dourish's author-hosted draft (1996) distinguishes geometric space from socially understood place. That suggests a question for this project: what belongs here, and what do friends expect to do here? An owner-selected reference is one answer to test. Another form would add reporting work; a timer would add little to a visit; general media would broaden expression but require more formats, playback and provider decisions.

This choice has costs. Someone must bring material, PNG is limiting, and walking to a room takes longer than opening an image in chat. Saved context and a recognisable owner give that journey a possible purpose. Whether friends value it is still a question for use with real people.

Enter and try a visit

Create a house or join with its eight-character code. Use separate browser profiles for distinct people; tabs in one profile share an identity. Move with WASD/arrows and E, or use touch controls and Places.

Choose My room, walk inside and open Room studio. Choose one PNG, save it, adjust the crop and choose Save this view. Open your door in room settings to admit current housemates. Another resident can then use Places to visit and inspect your reference. Closing the door ends their current access; copies already obtained cannot be recalled. Optional room sound starts only after each visitor chooses Listen here and stops when they close the studio.

The shared board supports drawing, notes, images and companion house chat, with an independent viewport for each person. Study seats support a voluntary huddle; the sofa supports deliberately sharing and presenting an image. At the activity table, sitting starts Watch. Join separately to contribute to the cooperative picture table or the two-player Four-in-a-row game. Quiet/Can chat expresses availability separately from room access and activity participation. Voice options can open a house-configured Discord destination in another tab.

Try it contains the full controls and recovery steps. The room decision records the alternatives. Technical acceptance records ownership, persistence, browser and resource checks: these establish implemented rules, while usefulness, comfort and belonging require human judgement.

Built with Node 24, SQLite, Socket.IO, Three.js and the MIT-licensed Excalidraw editor. Use the pinned Linux toolchain for pnpm build:board, pnpm start and pnpm check. PROCESS.md follows the development decisions and acknowledges assistance. The current plan records the project direction; earlier redesign validation preserves historical checks rather than acceptance of this candidate.