The table dresses up, and so do you

Every hangout on Let's Hang has always been a table drawn from above, with the people sitting around it. It is the one picture that makes the whole thing make sense: enough chairs filled, the lights go on. This week the picture learned three new things.

A face that looks like you

The little person at your chair used to be a hairstyle and a shirt. That was fine for a symbol and useless for recognising anyone. So the drawn avatar is a real face now: head, eyes, brows, mouth, beard, glasses, clothes, and your own colours for skin, hair and shirt. Thirty four hairstyles, hats, a headscarf and a turban, and a pair of headphones and two light beards we drew ourselves because nobody else had them.

The faces come from Avataaars, drawn on our own server. Nothing about you is sent anywhere to be rendered, and there is no attribution line hiding in a footer, because there does not need to be one.

The part that took the most arguing with ourselves is the second row above. The table still draws you from above, in our own hand, because that is what the table is. Every hairstyle you can pick has a twin for that view, and the colours are the same in both, so the person at the chair is obviously the person in the chat. Building it is one page, Your avatar, with the parts listed down the left and every option drawn on your own face before you choose it. Or use a photo. Both work.

The table dresses for the occasion

A host can now decorate the table. Not the tabletop, the floor around it, because that is where a real room shows what time of year it is.

In autumn the leaves come down once when the page opens and then lie there. In winter the flakes fall first and the snow gathers underneath them. In spring there are flowers, in summer shells, a beach ball and somebody's sunglasses, with the sun over the table by day and a crescent moon once your screen goes dark. For a birthday there are balloons at the sides and confetti that drops once, and the drawn people put on party hats.

Nothing moves unless the host picked something, and the picker marks whichever season it is right now. A table made months ago stays exactly as it was. If your device asks for less motion, everything is already lying where it landed.

The room joins in

Inside a room the drawn table was a good picture and a bad participant. It showed who was here and who was typing, and that was all. Now:

• Raise your hand. One tap and a hand shows over your chair for everyone. It comes down with another tap, or on its own after ten minutes, so nobody sits there forever.
• Throw a reaction at the table. Six buttons under the table. Tap one and it pops over your chair and floats off, on everyone's screen. A message that is only an emoji does the same, and so does reacting to somebody's message.
• See who is talking. When the video says somebody is speaking, their drawn self nods along and the ring around them breathes. You can tell who has the floor without looking at the tiles.
• Tap a person. Anyone at the table opens their card, the same one the chat opens, with their bio and links and a Mention button.

None of it makes a new request. The room already asks the server every couple of seconds who is typing; hands and reactions travel in the same answer.

On the phone

The app already shows the new faces and the dressed tables, because it draws the very same tables the site does. Building your face inside the app, and the hand and reactions in its room, are on the way in the next update, which is with Apple for review as this is written.

Set a table, dress it if you like, and build a face people will recognise.