Drawlight

A phone as a three-dimensional paintbrush — shared across cities

During the pandemic, millions discovered that video calls let people talk together but rarely make together. Drawlight explored AR as a shared creative medium: the phone became a 3D paintbrush, letting users sculpt with light in open space and then walk around — or through — their creations. Unlike most collaborative AR of its era, participants didn't need to share a room: compact vector-data streams synchronized drawings across cities in near-real time, gaze indicators showed where collaborators were looking, and persistent sessions let artworks evolve over days or weeks. Deliberately open-ended, the tool prompted children to invent games and sculptures its designers never anticipated — and its core concepts went on to influence features of the Membit platform.