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The exact same happened with the draft feature. The importance of habit forming UI is very well documented, going back at least as far as Jef Raskin's The Human

by chx 7y ago

The exact same happened with the draft feature. The importance of habit forming UI is very well documented, going back at least as far as Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface and the draft feature completely breaks it -- if you as much as accidentally leave a character in there, you can't find the channel/DM at its normal place. Despite repeated calls to make it optional, nothing. Threads are also broken, has always been. For example, if you get a notification in mail and it's in a thread, you can't jump to it, clicking the link dumps you into the channel and you are left wondering. Previously (as in, going back at least to '90 or so with IRC) you were able to skim the entirety of discussion in backscroll, now you'd need to open every thread on its own. As a senior developer, this was tremendously helpful to everyone because I could just skim a larger batch of discussions at a time and give some advice later as needed. Both of these problems could be solved if threads could be opened, you know, thread style into the channel. But... no. Also, if you answer in the special "threads" view then you will need to click the new answers link every time someone answers. It's terrible UX. It used to be that adding a text snippet was right in the "add" menu you opened on the right hand side of the text, now it's in a submenu, seriously slowing down creating one. The menu wasn't getting large at all, no reason to do this. It's very strange, they are the top dog, with immense inertia but it doesn't mean a younger, more eager, better UX, slimmer chat won't replace them. Digg to Reddit, remember? Until then, does anyone want to write a "Better Slack" collection of scripts injected into the app? I pledge 20 USD to fix these three problems, anyone else?

ben174 7y ago
I've had these exact same problems with Slack and every application that evolves and makes decisions for you. Usually they have the right idea, but sometimes they take decisions way too far and don't let us as users decide for ourselves. I understand the concept of continual updates but these are some breaking changes and it scares me that they just show up overnight with no warning.
- t34543 7y ago
  At some point the product is no longer about pleasing users, it’s about the product managers getting kudos and promotions. I believe this is what we’re seeing now. Someone at Slack has a strong incentive to change things for changes sake and they will spin this as being wildly successful and get a bonus.
gkoberger 7y ago
I actually love that drafts are brought to the top; it keeps things from getting lost for me. I even sometimes will write one character as a reminder I need to finish. But still, I understand your frustration. That being said, search makes it really easy to solve this. I rarely do anything other than Cmd+K/Ctrl+K, and type a character or two. For me, it's become second nature, and I never find myself searching around for where to go. For me, the left sidebar is more of a status report, while Cmd+K is how I navigate.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  The infuriating thing is that these would be some of the easiest possible features to add a toggle for. There's nothing wrong with liking drafts that float to the top, or rich text editing, but when a significant portion of your users is extremely upset about a tiny UX behavior like this, even if they end up being a minority, there's no excuse to not add an opt-out.
  - hunter2_ 7y ago
    The real problem is that companies seem to think that users hate toggles. It's extremely hard for me to understand how valid this might be since I have techy people around me most often, but even when I don't, I've never heard someone complain about excess toggles. Ever. Is this a thing people do? I hear orders of magnitude more complaints about lack of toggles.
    - chx 7y ago
      Then bury them so deep they will never see it. There's already a Preferences // Advanced tab. Do whatever you need to appease the wide population. It appears only in desktop app or browser even though it's under advanced? Deal! I will still be happy. Is it a CLI option? Fine. I have been using Unix-ish command lines since 1993. I can deal with an option or two. Yeah that wouldn't work on mobile but the primary audience here is not mobile -- and I could see that toggle saved and applied across platforms as well. Make it a slash command. If need to be, I will hexedit the living shit out of your Electron app, I have first written assembly code in 1987 and while it's been a very, very long time since I've done so, I am on good terms with hex editors still. Whatever. Just give us the options, 'mkay?
larkeith 7y ago
Hmmm... It might be worth making a Slack-style interface for Matrix. It already supports replies, these could be flavoured as threads instead.
- cwilson 7y ago
  I believe that's what https://www.riot.im https://www.riot.im is?
city41 7y ago
The draft feature positively boggles my mind. The intention seems to be to collect all your drafts into one location. But that comes with the assumption people will have multiple drafts for ... chat channels? Do people really work that way? If the actual intention is to remind you you have a half written message, seems some kind of indicator on the channel would suffice. Having my channel “disappear” on me is maddening.
- seandougall 7y ago
  It did suffice! There used to be a pencil indicator next to the channel name in its usual spot, and it worked great. It maybe could have been more visually obvious, since leaving a draft in a chat so really is a rare phenomenon, but it was still massively preferable to the capricious ordering it does now.
- baddox 7y ago
  It’s so simple. They could add the channel/DM to the Drafts list while also keeping it in its normal spot. I cringe with sympathetic embarrassment just thinking about how ridiculously obvious this is and how easy it would be to implement.
  - chx 7y ago
    Hold on, if you have a dict like structure with the channels as keys then no, implementing that is not so easy.
- Doxin 7y ago
  I can't imagine anyone who has a job that doesn't consist mostly of talking to people doing that. But people with manager or sales-type jobs? I bet they could really love this feature. Start typing your message, discover you're missing info, task someone with finding that info. get back to the message whenever. Still though, making it break the sort should really be a setting. Or even better, just show people twice if there's a draft open. Once in their normal place and once under the draft header.
  - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tiborsaas 7y ago
What's wrong with the drafts feature? I tend to use it if I'm messaging someone and I don't have all the info yet or I might have forgotten to reply :)
- spurgu 7y ago
  Or if you get a more urgent message that you really need to reply to while typing.

by chx 7y ago

ben174 7y ago

I've had these exact same problems with Slack and every application that evolves and makes decisions for you. Usually they have the right idea, but sometimes they take decisions way too far and don't let us as users decide for ourselves. I understand the concept of continual updates but these are some breaking changes and it scares me that they just show up overnight with no warning.

t34543 7y ago
At some point the product is no longer about pleasing users, it’s about the product managers getting kudos and promotions. I believe this is what we’re seeing now. Someone at Slack has a strong incentive to change things for changes sake and they will spin this as being wildly successful and get a bonus.

gkoberger 7y ago

I actually love that drafts are brought to the top; it keeps things from getting lost for me. I even sometimes will write one character as a reminder I need to finish. But still, I understand your frustration. That being said, search makes it really easy to solve this. I rarely do anything other than Cmd+K/Ctrl+K, and type a character or two. For me, it's become second nature, and I never find myself searching around for where to go. For me, the left sidebar is more of a status report, while Cmd+K is how I navigate.

_bxg1 7y ago
The infuriating thing is that these would be some of the easiest possible features to add a toggle for. There's nothing wrong with liking drafts that float to the top, or rich text editing, but when a significant portion of your users is extremely upset about a tiny UX behavior like this, even if they end up being a minority, there's no excuse to not add an opt-out.
- hunter2_ 7y ago
  The real problem is that companies seem to think that users hate toggles. It's extremely hard for me to understand how valid this might be since I have techy people around me most often, but even when I don't, I've never heard someone complain about excess toggles. Ever. Is this a thing people do? I hear orders of magnitude more complaints about lack of toggles.
  - chx 7y ago
    Then bury them so deep they will never see it. There's already a Preferences // Advanced tab. Do whatever you need to appease the wide population. It appears only in desktop app or browser even though it's under advanced? Deal! I will still be happy. Is it a CLI option? Fine. I have been using Unix-ish command lines since 1993. I can deal with an option or two. Yeah that wouldn't work on mobile but the primary audience here is not mobile -- and I could see that toggle saved and applied across platforms as well. Make it a slash command. If need to be, I will hexedit the living shit out of your Electron app, I have first written assembly code in 1987 and while it's been a very, very long time since I've done so, I am on good terms with hex editors still. Whatever. Just give us the options, 'mkay?

larkeith 7y ago

Hmmm... It might be worth making a Slack-style interface for Matrix. It already supports replies, these could be flavoured as threads instead.

cwilson 7y ago
I believe that's what https://www.riot.im https://www.riot.im is?

city41 7y ago

The draft feature positively boggles my mind. The intention seems to be to collect all your drafts into one location. But that comes with the assumption people will have multiple drafts for ... chat channels? Do people really work that way? If the actual intention is to remind you you have a half written message, seems some kind of indicator on the channel would suffice. Having my channel “disappear” on me is maddening.

seandougall 7y ago
It did suffice! There used to be a pencil indicator next to the channel name in its usual spot, and it worked great. It maybe could have been more visually obvious, since leaving a draft in a chat so really is a rare phenomenon, but it was still massively preferable to the capricious ordering it does now.
baddox 7y ago
It’s so simple. They could add the channel/DM to the Drafts list while also keeping it in its normal spot. I cringe with sympathetic embarrassment just thinking about how ridiculously obvious this is and how easy it would be to implement.
- chx 7y ago
  Hold on, if you have a dict like structure with the channels as keys then no, implementing that is not so easy.
Doxin 7y ago
I can't imagine anyone who has a job that doesn't consist mostly of talking to people doing that. But people with manager or sales-type jobs? I bet they could really love this feature. Start typing your message, discover you're missing info, task someone with finding that info. get back to the message whenever. Still though, making it break the sort should really be a setting. Or even better, just show people twice if there's a draft open. Once in their normal place and once under the draft header.
- 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tiborsaas 7y ago

What's wrong with the drafts feature? I tend to use it if I'm messaging someone and I don't have all the info yet or I might have forgotten to reply :)

spurgu 7y ago
Or if you get a more urgent message that you really need to reply to while typing.