BERG builds a home videophone for Google with the Connbox prototype

Back in early 2012, BERG’s Joe Malia gave us a collection of videophones in film as part of an unnamed design project. The project’s goal, it turns out, was both simple and very difficult: create a piece of dedicated video hardware that could break people out of the “scheduled Skype call” mindset and get them to treat video as a tool for quick conversations or constant telepresence. Based on a request from Google Creative Labs to showcase Google’s voice and video services with a device prototype, BERG created the “connection box” or Connbox, a kind of virtual window that lets users see and interact with others.