Case Study

Inside the MITsdm Virtual Space: Building Community When Campus Went Quiet

When campuses closed in 2020, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s System Design & Management (MITsdm) program faced a challenge shared by universities worldwide: how to preserve a living, breathing community without the physical campus that had always held it together.

Lectures could move to Zoom. But hallway chats, serendipitous introductions, and celebratory events? Those needed a different kind of home. That is the context in which MIT engaged BTN for its Virtual Spaces platform.

The brief was clear: To keep the MITsdm community connected when the campus went quiet. This meant the creation of a space where students, faculty, and invited guests could gather, share work, and celebrate milestones—from technology showcases to graduation moments. The Virtual Spaces platform provided a modular foundation to build this shared immersive world.

The platform had emerged from BTN's experiments in immersive learning interfaces. It featured secure authentication, 3D avatars and pre-built spaces out of the box. Spatial audio made conversations feel natural — voices grew louder or softer as avatars moved — enabling side conversations and group huddles. Presentation boards allowed participants to stand beside their work while peers gathered to discuss. Events in the environment were brought alive with features such as confetti cannons, fireworks, and the ability to change the time of day. Admins could activate dance floors, while attendees could launch into dance moves with a single keystroke. Teleports allowed participants to move seamlessly between halls, the auditorium, breakout rooms, and lounges with options to chat or play board games like chess.

From the start, we aligned on four guiding goals: presence (it should feel like being with people), usability (it should just work), inclusivity (it should be accessible on a wide range of devices), and delight (it should carry the MIT spirit). Beyond mere continuity of communication, the project asked a bigger question: could we design a digital place that felt enough like “being there” to sustain community pride and momentum during an extraordinary year?

We ran a tight, iterative build with frequent demos to the client team. Early sprints focused on frictionless onboarding and core interaction loops—movement, proximity, chat, and navigation—before layering in event-specific features like teleporting, poster boards and dance stages.

Through iterative updates, the campus evolved with the seasons. Visitors could stroll beneath leafy green trees in summer, return to see the grounds glow with autumn colors and later find themselves walking through snowfall on paths blanketed in white. Working hand-in-hand with the program's leadership ensured the space reflected the character of MITsdm, not a generic metaverse. Woven throughout the environment were playful, campus-inspired touches: towering statues honoring Tim the Beaver, sweeping views of the Boston skyline, and festive flourishes like the Great Dome transformed into a giant jack-o'-lantern—a nod to MIT's legendary hack tradition.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing though. Right as development had gained steam, an underlying SDK we relied on announced major breaking changes that risked destabilizing voice and networking—the heart of virtual spatial presence. Rather than patching over the issue, we refactored decisively: isolating the audio layer behind a thin abstraction, swapping components, and instrumenting performance so we could tune quickly without regressions. The outcome was better than a simple fix—it made the whole system more resilient.

For BTN, the MITsdm Virtual Space was more than a response to restrictions. It crystallized a philosophy we had always carried in spirit: design for engagement, build for resilience, and add delight with intention. The same building blocks now underpin our newer platforms and simulations. The MITsdm project reinforced how these ingredients can support not just utility, but a genuine sense of belonging.

Projects like this are always collaborations. A big thank you to MITsdm and especially to Ben Linville-Engler, whose vision and partnership were instrumental from the first whiteboard sketch to the final build. On the BTN side, our engineers, designers, and producers rallied through rapid iterations and an SDK upheaval, turning constraints into craft.

We're grateful to the MITsdm community for trusting us with something as personal as a home for their community. As campus life returned, the virtual space receded—as it should. But for a season, it helped bring people together and added a spark to our everyday.