The real benches of Brussels

Before writing a line of code, I spent a few weeks sitting on benches and watching who sat down next to me. It wasn't user research, but from a distance it looked like it.

A rough typology

The pond bench, at the Ixelles ponds: conversation practically guaranteed, but strictly about the ducks. A subject you exhaust quickly.

The tram-stop bench: the worst of the lot. Everyone faces the same direction, the clock announces exactly how long the situation will last, and nobody says anything.

The square bench, in Saint-Gilles: the best. People sit at an angle, there's noise around, and the noise licenses the silence between two sentences.

That last one is what we tried to reproduce. Hence the long accepted silences in the app, the absence of a typing indicator, and the fact that nobody knows whether you're writing. On a square, you don't know either.