As video calls become ubiquitous, new interactions are created. A video call creates a dynamic and temporary "shared space", a virtual room that comprises of not only the participant's screens, but also their physical environments. While many services allow the user to guard off other participants' access to their physical environment (replace or blur the background, filter out noise), sometimes the purpose of these calls is referring to the physical environment itself, and showing it to somebody who is not physically there.

ShowMe Assist is created for such a scenario. Example: ringing a handy family member to diagnose and fix a problem with your car. Here, traditional screen-to-screen solutions present some barriers. The video call participants want to reach into the other's physical environment, through the shared space that the video call creates. ShowMe assist allows one participant overlay their hand onto the others video feed. Now the handy family member can point, gesture, and more expressively and richly explain how to diagnose and fix the car problem (open the hood by pressing here, then lift in this way, then twist and pull up here.)

Certain video services allow drawing on each other's screen when screen-sharing, to point to certain buttons or screen areas, but it's communicative power is much more limited what than our hands and body language can achieve. It's really a quite simple idea, but overlaying a hand from one video feed on another is an excellent application of AR and an elegant solution to enriching video calls. It extends the shared space and allows the participants to reach into each other's physical space.