Testing What Actually Works
When the studio went remote in 2020 we did not want to accept whatever collaboration platform was already on everyone's laptop. We rebuilt the Solarflare London studio as a virtual replica and used it to run an honest test of which remote working technologies actually delivered on their claims. The virtual office was navigable, had separate breakout rooms, a bar and a layout that mirrored the real space closely enough to carry some of the spatial logic of working in the same room as someone. We used it internally for months and treated the whole exercise as genuine R&D: what breaks, what holds up, what creates the feeling of presence and what just adds friction.
