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Wave was cool technology with interesting ideas, but there is no substitute for getting the user interface right, and unfortunately they didn't. It's been a lon

Wave was cool technology with interesting ideas, but there is no substitute for getting the user interface right, and unfortunately they didn't. It's been a long time and there might be others I'm forgetting, but there were two important design errors: 1. Email lets you type an entire message before sending; IRC at least lets you type a whole paragraph, which is enough. Wave didn't let you type more than one character before sending. 2. The designers correctly realized chronological order isn't enough, you also want logical order, but unfortunately they provided the latter instead of the former, whereas you actually need both. (Gmail provides both: new messages and threads. Git provides both: view changes, and view current code. Google Docs provides both. Either view alone does not suffice.) I would by all means encourage someone to take another shot at building something like Wave, with those problems fixed.

SquareWheel 9y ago
Regarding #1, wasn't there an option to not preview your message? I remember it being just under the input form.
- rwallace 9y ago
  I remember looking for such a thing and not finding it. Maybe it was added later? I tried an early version of Wave, briefly. If it was indeed added later, this is an example of something Joel Spolsky cautioned against: don't do a huge marketing blitz for version 1.0 of your product. Aim for user count to increase in step with product maturity. Though admittedly this might be hard to avoid with a product that has strong network effects.
sgift 9y ago
> 2. The designers correctly realized chronological order isn't enough, you also want logical order, Oh god, please don't, at least not for chat/irc/whatever-you-call-it. I've seen so many attempts to try to somehow add another layer of order on top of chronological order. All the threads and whatever features and it is always a "what the heck is that, where are my messages, why did they get rearranged" disaster.
- rwallace 9y ago
  That sounds like attempts to supply logical order instead of chronological, which is indeed a disaster; it needs to be as well as. (i.e. at any given time you can ignore it and just look at things in chronological order.)
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > Oh god, please don't, at least not for chat/irc/whatever-you-call-it. I've seen so many attempts to try to somehow add another layer of order on top of chronological order. Like threads in e-mail, Usenet, forums on WWW? IMO those are perfect examples of a combined logic and chronology. I'll speak for myself, but I absolutely prefer threads in the mentioned examples. It makes the content better readable. For me, there's no question about that. Although that isn't any proof; it'd be best to have usability studies about it.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Threads is Gmail aren't perfect. Some threads aren't nice neat linear threads and I find I can lose track of branches. But, overall, that's been one of the big wins of switching to Gmail for professional stuff. Now some long but uninteresting thread in a mailing list or whatever is one line rather than overwhelming my inbox.
    - u801e 9y ago
      > Threads is Gmail aren't perfect. If you're referring to conversation view, then they're not as good as traditional threads since they don't handle keeping track of conversation between multiple people that may branch off into different topics.
- wpietri 9y ago
  I don't think it's impossible. Slack's threads work pretty well for me in busy channels.
- errnoh 9y ago
  I've seen a lot of failures in this space as well, but I still think Flowdock was the only product so far that got the second layer right. It never tried to hide messages from you, the threads worked more like filters. Instead of finding the discussion you wanted you filtered out messages that weren't related to that discussion.
amelius 9y ago
Do you think HN solves point 2 correctly?
- cygx 9y ago
  What's the proper way to only show 'new' comments on HN?
  - usrusr 9y ago
    Text search for " minute"? Haven't done that in a long time because it is so cumbersome. But the friction it adds is part of what shapes the discussions here. Adding a feature like that (or making it more visible if it already exists) could have unpredictable side effects, with symptoms almost impossible to trace back to the causing change.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      > Text search for "minute" This is the sort of thing I love about the web, and composability in general I suppose. The people who designed the HN UI didn't think or care about that feature at all, but just by virtue of the fact that the user has powerful general-purpose tools at his disposal, and the HN UI is just as valid as content as the actual content is, the user can piece it together for himself. This would not be possible if HN were a traditionally-designed desktop application instead of a web page. The web returns us lots of the composability that was lost when "progressing" from CLI applications to GUI applications.
      - wruza 9y ago
        Iow, everything is searchable if you put it into Word-like text container. Of course Word had issues like jumping tables and blocks floating at wrong positions between versions, but who doesn’t.
      - KajMagnus 9y ago
        @cygx, @usrusr, @jstanley: Here's one way to show new comments at HN: https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-3-things https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-... — part 1: "Finding new comments". Video, + live demo if you click "Recent comments" in the upper right corner.
HenryBemis 9y ago
As the article quotes:"I was one of about four people who thought that Wave would have been a good project", and I really loved Google Wave (while at the same time I don't like many of Google's anti-privacy practices). The fact that 2-5-10 people can simultaneously work on the same piece of text, eliminating the risk of forking, enabling tracking/auditing for every key-press.. that was a dream come true. I am saddened by the fact that this went to sleep. I do understand that Google Docs is (somewhat) involving this, and that's something positive. As far as "collaborative editing environment(s)" go, I would love to see more alternatives with such capabilities.
- trevyn 9y ago
  For anyone interested in working on such a project, I highly recommend checking out the Automerge library, posted on HN ~2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16309533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16309533
jasonlotito 9y ago
Wave didn't have a UI, it had clients. Google's client might have been a problem, but that would be like me complaining about email because the client I'm using one accepts a single email address at a time.
- opencl 9y ago
  If every email client currently in existence only accepted a single email address at a time it would be a perfectly valid complaint about email. It's like all those W3C standards that none of the browsers actually implement, "it's not a problem with <protocol> it's just a problem with every implementation in existence" is not a useful distinction to make.
  - tatersolid 9y ago
    > If every email client currently in existence only accepted a single email address at a time it would be a perfectly valid complaint about email. Sounds like Nirvana to me. No more eternal “reply to all” chains that span months? I’m in.
thefifthsetpin 9y ago
I viewed design error #1 as the killer feature of wave. What I found is that it turned IM-like communication into a high-bandwidth medium comparable to what you get in a phone conversation. It managed that while also retaining nearly all of the advantages of an IM client.
- renox 9y ago
  I think that you're right #1 is a 'killer feature' in that it killed Wave: think about such feature at work, would you really like to see your boss see when you made a big mistake without having the time to think twice? Even if you can disable this setting, good default matters!

SquareWheel 9y ago

Regarding #1, wasn't there an option to not preview your message? I remember it being just under the input form.

rwallace 9y ago
I remember looking for such a thing and not finding it. Maybe it was added later? I tried an early version of Wave, briefly. If it was indeed added later, this is an example of something Joel Spolsky cautioned against: don't do a huge marketing blitz for version 1.0 of your product. Aim for user count to increase in step with product maturity. Though admittedly this might be hard to avoid with a product that has strong network effects.

sgift 9y ago

> 2. The designers correctly realized chronological order isn't enough, you also want logical order, Oh god, please don't, at least not for chat/irc/whatever-you-call-it. I've seen so many attempts to try to somehow add another layer of order on top of chronological order. All the threads and whatever features and it is always a "what the heck is that, where are my messages, why did they get rearranged" disaster.

rwallace 9y ago
That sounds like attempts to supply logical order instead of chronological, which is indeed a disaster; it needs to be as well as. (i.e. at any given time you can ignore it and just look at things in chronological order.)
Fnoord 9y ago
> Oh god, please don't, at least not for chat/irc/whatever-you-call-it. I've seen so many attempts to try to somehow add another layer of order on top of chronological order. Like threads in e-mail, Usenet, forums on WWW? IMO those are perfect examples of a combined logic and chronology. I'll speak for myself, but I absolutely prefer threads in the mentioned examples. It makes the content better readable. For me, there's no question about that. Although that isn't any proof; it'd be best to have usability studies about it.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Threads is Gmail aren't perfect. Some threads aren't nice neat linear threads and I find I can lose track of branches. But, overall, that's been one of the big wins of switching to Gmail for professional stuff. Now some long but uninteresting thread in a mailing list or whatever is one line rather than overwhelming my inbox.
  - u801e 9y ago
    > Threads is Gmail aren't perfect. If you're referring to conversation view, then they're not as good as traditional threads since they don't handle keeping track of conversation between multiple people that may branch off into different topics.
wpietri 9y ago
I don't think it's impossible. Slack's threads work pretty well for me in busy channels.
errnoh 9y ago
I've seen a lot of failures in this space as well, but I still think Flowdock was the only product so far that got the second layer right. It never tried to hide messages from you, the threads worked more like filters. Instead of finding the discussion you wanted you filtered out messages that weren't related to that discussion.

amelius 9y ago

Do you think HN solves point 2 correctly?

cygx 9y ago
What's the proper way to only show 'new' comments on HN?
- usrusr 9y ago
  Text search for " minute"? Haven't done that in a long time because it is so cumbersome. But the friction it adds is part of what shapes the discussions here. Adding a feature like that (or making it more visible if it already exists) could have unpredictable side effects, with symptoms almost impossible to trace back to the causing change.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    > Text search for "minute" This is the sort of thing I love about the web, and composability in general I suppose. The people who designed the HN UI didn't think or care about that feature at all, but just by virtue of the fact that the user has powerful general-purpose tools at his disposal, and the HN UI is just as valid as content as the actual content is, the user can piece it together for himself. This would not be possible if HN were a traditionally-designed desktop application instead of a web page. The web returns us lots of the composability that was lost when "progressing" from CLI applications to GUI applications.
    - wruza 9y ago
      Iow, everything is searchable if you put it into Word-like text container. Of course Word had issues like jumping tables and blocks floating at wrong positions between versions, but who doesn’t.
    - KajMagnus 9y ago
      @cygx, @usrusr, @jstanley: Here's one way to show new comments at HN: https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-3-things https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-... — part 1: "Finding new comments". Video, + live demo if you click "Recent comments" in the upper right corner.

HenryBemis 9y ago

As the article quotes:"I was one of about four people who thought that Wave would have been a good project", and I really loved Google Wave (while at the same time I don't like many of Google's anti-privacy practices). The fact that 2-5-10 people can simultaneously work on the same piece of text, eliminating the risk of forking, enabling tracking/auditing for every key-press.. that was a dream come true. I am saddened by the fact that this went to sleep. I do understand that Google Docs is (somewhat) involving this, and that's something positive. As far as "collaborative editing environment(s)" go, I would love to see more alternatives with such capabilities.

trevyn 9y ago
For anyone interested in working on such a project, I highly recommend checking out the Automerge library, posted on HN ~2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16309533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16309533

jasonlotito 9y ago

Wave didn't have a UI, it had clients. Google's client might have been a problem, but that would be like me complaining about email because the client I'm using one accepts a single email address at a time.

opencl 9y ago
If every email client currently in existence only accepted a single email address at a time it would be a perfectly valid complaint about email. It's like all those W3C standards that none of the browsers actually implement, "it's not a problem with <protocol> it's just a problem with every implementation in existence" is not a useful distinction to make.
- tatersolid 9y ago
  > If every email client currently in existence only accepted a single email address at a time it would be a perfectly valid complaint about email. Sounds like Nirvana to me. No more eternal “reply to all” chains that span months? I’m in.

thefifthsetpin 9y ago

I viewed design error #1 as the killer feature of wave. What I found is that it turned IM-like communication into a high-bandwidth medium comparable to what you get in a phone conversation. It managed that while also retaining nearly all of the advantages of an IM client.

renox 9y ago
I think that you're right #1 is a 'killer feature' in that it killed Wave: think about such feature at work, would you really like to see your boss see when you made a big mistake without having the time to think twice? Even if you can disable this setting, good default matters!