23 ms·

How Zoom works [slides]

187 points by Spidery 6y ago

BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
Heh, I expected it to dive into the fact that Skype also had some troubles with claiming E2E without actually implementing it, if I remember correctly. However, seeing a detailed takedown of poor design is always fun. I tend to overlook these things as a user or at least I'm unable to put into words why the design frustrates me, this is helpful.
- Spidery 6y ago
  "I'm unable to put into words why the design frustrates me" is the best summary of 99.9% of users.
  - edejong 6y ago
    And the remaining 0.1% actually read some UX design textbooks from the 90's: 1. Incomprehensible icons 2. No use of color to indicate the most likely new action 3. Weird and inconsistent transitions and dialogs 4. Many different fonts, font-sizes and text decorations. 5. Flat design makes it difficult to know what to click on. The list goes on, and on, and on. It seems the team did no UX testing at all.
    - battery423 6y ago
      i always thought its common sense until i realized its not. We just switched to a new ticketing system, now the description field is 2 rows high. 2 rows! for a fucking issue description field -_-
      - Spidery 6y ago
        "i always thought it's common sense until i realized it's not." ^ 90% of CEOs.
- edejong 6y ago
  Actually, Skype was designed from the start to use e2e p2p communication. First thing after the Microsoft acquisition was to remove e2e and introduce dozens of new features no-one actually asked for. In addition, they turned the UI into a dumpster fire and allowed Chinese, Russian and United States law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on any Skype conversation without intervention of a judge.
Spare_account 6y ago
Ironically, I found this style of presentation difficult/annoying to navigate through
- Spidery 6y ago
  Doh—the irony. What'd you prefer?
  - Spare_account 6y ago
    I stopped halfway through your presentation, even though I am a Zoom-objector so I thought I would be the perfect audience for this kind of content. Here's a recent hackernews-frontpage blog post which relied heavily on images, but I found it less onerous to read: It's the old fashioned way I'm afraid (longform single page, vertical scrolling, visible proportional scrollbar), perhaps I'm just old. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983 https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
    - Spidery 6y ago
      Yeah, this is a great blog. Certainly some things that are easier to read about that.
mifeng 6y ago
The only UX that matters in video conferencing software is connection UX, which is where Zoom excels.
- Spidery 6y ago
  Have you ever tried to join a Cisco Web X meeting? Takes longer than the meeting...
- contravariant 6y ago
  Does it though? I've found that Jitsi Meet makes it pretty easy join by just clicking an URI. No apps to install, just clicking a link. Zoom on the other hand pesters me endlessly into installing their software, making it unnecessarily difficult to just join by browser.
fnord123 6y ago
Title is "How Zoom works". It's a good article with valid points but nothing about Skype. The editorialized title "Turns out Zoom isn't all that different to Skype after all" has no appreciation for how hostile Skype's technology has become in the past 10 years. It went from nicely working Qt program that worked well on OSX, Linux, and Windows to Electron beast that maybe works on Windows, could possibly be mining bitcoins on OS X (judging by how much it spins up the fans), and I think it stopped working on Linux altogether, replaced by a web client.
- zekrioca 6y ago
  It is crazy how much CPU on Linux Skype uses. And it used to be very light weight. I simply closed it to avoid making my computer slower. And I only open it when in need to answer something that my phone notified me..
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  10 years ago is about when Microsoft purchased Skype... If I remember correctly they received money from the government to do it and then stopped using the P2P supernodes model and switched to their own servers to track users more easily... It used to work great, I wish the pre-MS source code would get leaked.
  - jonathankoren 6y ago
    http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/05/skype-replaces-...
    - mkl 6y ago
      Part of the reason for the switch was more and more users on mobile devices, so the proportion of users that could act as supernodes got much smaller. I think I remember one of the Skype developers describing this in a comment on HN, but I can't find it now.
  - ew6082 6y ago
nelaboras 6y ago
Rumor was always that Skype used to have E2E, then Microsoft bought it for a susprising amount of money and as first action removed server-side encryption... And therefore of course the rumor/assumption thay the NSA or similar was in the back funding the deal.
- milankragujevic 6y ago
  AFAIK it wasn't about E2E encryption, but P2P calls, and mega-peers which would serve as ad-hoc "servers" for coordination of other clients. That was dropped when Microsoft bought Skype and instead switched it to using central servers. However, I notice these days that calls are P2P, meaning I see in my PC's connections the IP of the person I'm talking to, so not sure what's going on there...
  - marios 6y ago
    My guess is that the signaling servers are centralized. You need those for connection establishment between two peers. Once they 'know' each other, they may aswell talk to each other directly. Routing all calls through central servers would yield an enormous bill every month. On the other hand, it is sometimes necessary as direct communication between peers may not be possible (NAT, firewalling). IIRC, a central server is also required for multi-party calls.
    - milankragujevic 6y ago
      Yes, signaling is definitely centralized, before it was done by mega-peers. P2P contact does work behind NAT if it's a cone NAT. Symmetric NAT would require that the signaling server assign a forwarding server to handle data from and to each peer. In general CGNAT applications with cone NAT, UDP hole punching can be used to communicate between peers, organized by the signaling server.
goldcd 6y ago
I came away from that somewhat nonplussed. Think I've maybe used Zoom 3 times, but even I was mentally shouting answers to the rhetorical questions. "Well it does that because.." or "Well if it didn't do that, then users would.." etc
- Spidery 6y ago
  If I could refund you your time, I would.
rayhano 6y ago
I’ll never look at Zoom the same way again. It was frustrating before. But now I know all of these UX faux pas... Thanks BuiltForMars for taking away my blissful ignorance.
sschueller 6y ago
What are some open source skype alternatives? The ones I have used all require central server. I would like to see something which is more p2p with super nodes.
- simfoo 6y ago
  https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
- lxgr 6y ago
  Is that a model that would actually still scale? As far as I remember, supernodes require an unfirewalled public IP and clients that are available for extended periods of time, i.e. somebody's desktop tower PC. How many of these are still around these days and are allowed to run non-corporate approved software?
- pmlnr 6y ago
  There isn't any.
fabian2k 6y ago
A large part seems to be about the invite feature and UI, which is something that I never encountered because I wouldn't even think about inviting people from inside a video conference software. Passing links around in other channels seems far more useful to me, and is the only way I access or share meetings. And Skype, where you first have to find the people you want to talk with is much, much more annoying there than just sending or receiving a link via an established channel like email. Of course there are many different use cases, and mine isn't necessarily representative. But in general the most important part of the user experience for video conferencing is the amount of errors or bad connections that happen. For example, I recently use Microsoft Teams, one person was sharing the screen to present something, and for some people the shared screen simply froze and didn't update anymore. That kind of thing is seriously annoying. The UI doesn't seem too important to me in this case because I almost never use any of it. After connecting in general the only button I use are mute and share screen. Doesn't mean the UI can't be significantly improved, but for me it isn't the most important part of the experience for a video conferencing tool.
- SifJar 6y ago
  For what it's worth, Skype does have the ability to invite people to group chats via shared links - I don't think it's always had this, but has had it for a while now
- close04 6y ago
  Well the byline is "but is their UX any better than Skype or Cisco". So the focus wouldn't necessarily be on what's under the hood.
- WiiManic 6y ago
  Yeah, I would say that I don't think I've joined Zoom and used it that way, its almost always either a set scheduled meeting where there is a dedicated room, or just an always up room that you join at a given time for more ad-hoc meetings. At least part of the issue will probably be the disconnect between that style of more "work" usage and the fact its become tool at the moment for families to connect. In that regard, going through the UI as shown may be more common, and does have some more issues, though its also maybe less of a focus for a more work-focused tool. It does seem to be decent enough for the non-host at least, where if they just blindly press the blue button on entering they'll be in the call/waiting room, which is at least fairly frictionless from a non-host point of view, and for me the bigger concern. I can deal with the UI, I'm more worried about my Grandpa or something working it out if I was doing a family call.
lxgr 6y ago
Spot on. I really wonder if all those people claiming "Zoom just works, unlike x" have really believed that the first time joining a meeting, or if they're just used to its weird UX quirks.
- Spidery 6y ago
  I think people just jumped on the 'Zoom bandwagon' and assumed it was great, because everyone kept saying how great it was.
  - yomly 6y ago
    Zoom does just work - I've used hangouts/meet, skype, whereby/appear.in, discord, talky Of all those Zoom had the best balance of stability/resource use/call joinability I find meet a PITA to set up and invite random people WebRTC browser chat is great for rooms >= 6 people and is my preferred choice But zoom works pretty well from 1:1 up to 500:1 and is very easy to join Don't get me wrong, I hate the Zoom client but when the target audience is everyone in your company, including your PC illiterate middle managers, then I can see how Zoom is quite good
    - Macha 6y ago
      I have to say, I've found both Google Meet and Discord to be more reliable in the "just works" department (despite neither being perfect). My experience with Zoom was a job interview where the link kept asking me to install a browser plugin, even though I already had, even if I clicked a link that was apparently a web fall back. I think I had to use a phone dial in in the end
      - wenc 6y ago
        I wonder if you might have been sent a WebEx link? That doesn’t sound like Zoom. AFAIK Zoom doesn’t use browser plugins but WebEx definitely does.
        6y ago
beyondcompute 6y ago
Great-great analysis! We need more of those exposing apparent lack of understanding of basic principles of usability by designers of many modern products. My instinct is to tell them, “Read The Design of Everyday Things at least, please!”
- Spidery 6y ago
  Awesome, thanks!
KorfmannArno 6y ago
Again, what about Zoom's remote control feature (or annotate/whiteboard)? Is any competitor doing that?
- Spidery 6y ago
  Didn't include that, but that's a great feature.
- mkl 6y ago
  Zoom's whiteboard is pretty bad. Slow, clunky, weird bugs on some OSes (pen draws in wrong place on Android IME), no pressure sensitivity. There are loads of shared whiteboard type services (search on HN; IIRC we've had a few discussions recently), but most of them don't support audio and video as well. I think Zoom for audio and video while using a separate shared whiteboard might work quite well, but I haven't had reason to try it yet.
- tatersolid 6y ago
  The remote control and whiteboard in Microsoft Teams are better in my experience. In fact, Teams seems to have better (although still not good) UX and connection reliability as well, at least for corporate meetings. There’s generally no P2P possible from behind “enterprise” security gear or VPNs, so Zoom suffers a bit falling back while Teams blissfully just works via TCP/443 or a browser.
0xDEEPFAC 6y ago
When everything is chromium there is no competitive advantage for any of these chat applications. For example, before, Skype used to be based on the Qt framework and it used less resources and actually had more features - like universal push-to-talk and better integration into the OS. Welcome to the future - lets Javascript all the things... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U
- buboard 6y ago
  ^ This. Skype as an app was downgraded, features gone never to return. I know nobody in MS uses it, because otherwise they d know of its glaring bugs
- azangru 6y ago
  > used less resources and actually had more features I remember the time when there was a native client for Skype on Linux. It probably used less resources, yes, but it was horribly lacking in features compared to Windows or MacOS native clients. Now that everything is javascript, Skype on Linux works great, apart from being a godawful resource hog. I found it really pleasant to use over the last several years. Video calls work great, screen sharing works great, even conference calls work, which they never before did on Linux. Couldn't be happier with the changes.
  - 0xDEEPFAC 6y ago
    So why did they force everyone else to use the Javascript version instead of only Linux? Why didn't they just improve the Linux version. I use Skype everyday for work and my quality of life is noticeably different in a bad way :( Plus, my poor laptop is now forced to run Skype, Zoom, Slack, Google Docs, and Discord. Its turned into a cooktop...
    - azangru 6y ago
      > Why didn't they just improve the Linux version. You know, write once, run everywhere. It's programmer's dream :-)
martopix 6y ago
My main complaints are two: - It takes 4-5 clicks to create a meeting and share the URL, which is what I want to do most of the time, multiple times a day. I end up preferring Skype (when with only 1-2 other people) just because of the hassle of "Creating a meeting". - The UI randomly moves around: the chat button and the chat, for example, are in a place when Zoom is in window mode, in a different place when Zoom is fullscreen, and yet another place when I'm sharing the screen. If I have to teach, I prepare the various zoom windows (chat, participants, videos) in a certain configuration. As soon as I start sharing screen everything changes. It goes fullscreen whenever it likes, and all that.
- Spidery 6y ago
  Yeah, really annoying ^^
hutzlibu 6y ago
Modern Browser have already build in, p2p, encrypted video chat functionality. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/Signaling_and_video_calling https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/... I played around with it years ago, and it worked quite good and should have improved a lot since then, so why has no one come up with a solid solution, that does not require us to route our video calls through china, or microsoft servers? I suppose the devil is, like always, in the details. So what am I missing? Probably, that webrtc via p2p is hard to do for more than 2 people? But someone should have at least tried it?
- Lex-2008 6y ago
  Yes. From my experience (as a user), webrtc is good for up to 4 people, and is rarely supported for more than 8. Reason is that few laptops can cope with many more incoming and outgoing videostreams in parallel. Also, when in our company we tried using webrtc for standups, we often faced issues when participant A couldn't hear participant B, but participant C could hear them both. All that with video working in all directions. Or sometimes we had this issue with video. Another reason why standalone applications like Skype and Zoom (which is known for trying to install its client too much) might be better than webrtc is that they might have better noise-cancelling algorithms than browsers. Also, point of usability - compared to browser, standalone apps don't have permission dialogs ("do you want to allow this website to access your camera"?) and might be smarter with choosing correct microphone by default - this might be important for non-techy users who don't understand why system suggests them to choose from two microphones when there's only one plugged into the computer.
  - danogentili 6y ago
    It really depends on your configuration (server-side configuration also plays an important role). Jitsi has an excellent webrtc server-side SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) which does a seamless job at redirecting multi-layer VP8/H264 streams to the most appropriate user. Each jitsi browser instance tells webrtc to encode and send multiple spatial layers of the same video stream (at different qualities), allowing users (and the SFU) to automatically choose which one to receive, according to bandwidth and network congestion. The result is a seamless experience that just works, even with 16+ people (we've been doing jitsi conferences nearly every working day since April at our dance school, it works like a charm and is easily customizable). Other solutions also use custom additional WASM modules for echo cancelation and noise suppression in webrtc; and jitsi has an excellent dropdown UI with previews for choosing audio/video sources (and sinks!).
perryizgr8 6y ago
I really don't like the Mute/Unmute button in Zoom. It shows a button showing a crossed out mic with "Unmute" below it. And the other state for this button is a mic with "Mute" below it. The button's icon and text are always opposite of each other. It is so confusing. I always have to think twice before clicking it.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I spend a lot of time on calls, but it’s always felt clear to me. The icon is the state and the text is the action that will happen if you click it.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    But that's not how buttons work usually. Look at the reload button in Chrome. The icon shows you what will happen if you click it. The tooltip text also shows you what will happen if you click it. The text and icon are never opposite. At least I cannot think of another app that does this.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      I happen to be standing in front of my coffee maker waiting for it to finish. It has a lit green LED (indicating it’s brewing) and a button under it labeled “Off”. Same conflict, but perfectly clear IMO.
      - zaroth 6y ago
        This is an age old debacle with toggle switches. How do you indicate it is ON/OFF and how do you indicate pushing it will turn OFF/ON particularly when the states are binary but not as simple as ON/OFF and you’re working in two dimensions. You’re trying to show status and allow toggling all at once. There are basically 4 ways to do it with a binary setting and no one right way. - Icon shows current status, Text shows current status. My coffee maker does this with a button that goes from “Single” to “Double”. - Icon shows current status, text shows what a click will achieve (Zoom) - Icon shows what a click will do, text shows current status (Example?) - Icon shows what a click will do, text shows what a click will do (Play/Pause buttons typically work like this) As a result, as a user you have to spend the cognitive load analyzing the icon, maybe trying to guess what the current setting is, to try to intuit what a click will actually achieve.
kebos 6y ago
Zoom has great video and audio. I think good echo cancellation, video that copes well with the network, lower latencies - we don't experience that directly but the after effect is you feel subjectively better about the experience. I think picking each part of the UX apart is secondary to making the key feature work well.
- rjmunro 6y ago
  Absolutely. The other big innovation is you can see who's making a noise in the call in the list of participants and mute them. The UX is terrible, and totally not their strong point. When you install it should have a test my audio and video thing, and set use computer audio as the default meaning you never have to see the "join with computer audio" thing ever again. Joining with a phone is useful for people without a computer, but the main UI doesn't need to mention it, the details are in the invitations.
- robbrown451 6y ago
  Considering the number of people using it, addressing those (considerable) UI glitches is worth talking about. People video chat with non-technical people (elderly parents, etc) and it really sucks when you have to go through these sort of awful experiences just to get two people communicating.
robsws 6y ago
I was surprised they didn't mention that after clicking 'Leave Meeting', a popup comes up with a 'Leave Meeting' button in it, that actually leaves the meeting. This inevitably means in every single Zoom meeting that everyone says goodbye and then spends a few awkward seconds actually leaving the meeting.
- beyondcompute 6y ago
  That’s a very good point!
- jjice 6y ago
  GoTo Meeting does this too. I always get a laugh from watching my coworkers faces drop while they navigate to the actual end button.
- conductr 6y ago
  Better than risk of accidentally dropping out of meetings abruptly. I see many people still manage to do this and it takes a couple minutes to get them back on. There’s also the real fun one when the host ends meeting for all on accident. It’s same IRL when every says bye then awkwardly gathers belongings and leaves a conf room in silence
  - chrismorgan 6y ago
    An alternative design, which I would generally consider superior, is to make it easy to undo leaving a meeting. (This wouldn’t work for the host under the current behaviour model, because the host leaving needs to either assign someone else to be host, or close the meeting for everyone. But you could do it this way for everyone else. Whether it would require waiting room approval again would be an interesting question, however. As usual, there are complexities to be considered.)
- wayneftw 6y ago
  There is a setting to disable it.
- Sodman 6y ago
pteraspidomorph 6y ago
> Which does nothing unless you already have Zoom installed At least on desktop, even though the help text explicitly says "If you have Zoom Client installed", you can actually click the Launch Meeting button/link to reveal a hidden option for joining the meeting without actually installing (which requires an additional click). I imagine this never shows up if you actually install; they're just trying to get people to install unnecessarily.
dandare 6y ago
Irrelevant title but the UX analysis is on spot. It is a shame that many companies will spend millions on infrastructure and programming but don't pay for a decent UX team - or just do not bother implementing good UX. (Microsoft is the most striking example.)
llagerlof 6y ago
Tweet that article mentioning the Zoom founder @ericsyuan and @zoom_us
azangru 6y ago
I find the metaphor of a "call" in Skype or Google Meet easier to use for chats with relatives than the metaphor of a "meeting". The latter one works great in a business setting, when you "schedule a meeting" and post its details to Slack, or email them, or stick them in a calendar; but when you want an immediate one-on-one chat, it's so much easier to "call" a person. Zoom weirds me out in that in order to chat with someone you need to "create a meeting", then copy the meeting url/id, and send it via a different channel to the person you want to chat with.
- shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
  On the surface, it doesn’t sound like a big difference. In reality, I find using the native /call command in slack a game changer. It opens up a call immediately, no links, copy/pasting, changing applications etc. It just feels right.
- chirag64 6y ago
  That's not entirely true. Zoom does have tabs called 'Chat' and 'Contacts' where you can find all your contacts & initiate a 'Call' with them without ever having to share a URL / ID
  - zaroth 6y ago
    Discoverability is everything!
- toxik 6y ago
  Zoom could easily subsume this though, just add a contact list and a call UI. I guess that actually isn’t entirely trivial but certainly doable.
  - mkl 6y ago
    That's already in Zoom. That's all you do: click Contacts, click the person, click Meet, and they answer the call. It also shows you if they're available, on another call, etc.
- 6y ago
henron 6y ago
I agree with many of the observations in the deck, but how would you go about prioritizing the most impactful improvements? Is there a best in class method of quantifying how UX hurdles?
jarnix 6y ago
Am I the only one to avoid Zoom for all the strange things reported these past few months ?
aardvark291 6y ago
This isn't "How Zoom works". It's a 72 slide deck of complaints about the Zoom UI.
robbrown451 6y ago
Very well done, and very thoroughly delves into my own initial "WTF?" reaction to using Zoom for the first time (and second and third times). Although I think the title is misleading. I was expecting something more technical, as most "how X works" articles and videos tend to be. "Zoom's UI is bad" would be more descriptive. Even "How Zoom doesn't work" would be more accurate to the content.

187 points by Spidery 6y ago

Heh, I expected it to dive into the fact that Skype also had some troubles with claiming E2E without actually implementing it, if I remember correctly. However, seeing a detailed takedown of poor design is always fun. I tend to overlook these things as a user or at least I'm unable to put into words why the design frustrates me, this is helpful.

Spidery 6y ago
"I'm unable to put into words why the design frustrates me" is the best summary of 99.9% of users.
- edejong 6y ago
  And the remaining 0.1% actually read some UX design textbooks from the 90's: 1. Incomprehensible icons 2. No use of color to indicate the most likely new action 3. Weird and inconsistent transitions and dialogs 4. Many different fonts, font-sizes and text decorations. 5. Flat design makes it difficult to know what to click on. The list goes on, and on, and on. It seems the team did no UX testing at all.
  - battery423 6y ago
    i always thought its common sense until i realized its not. We just switched to a new ticketing system, now the description field is 2 rows high. 2 rows! for a fucking issue description field -_-
    - Spidery 6y ago
      "i always thought it's common sense until i realized it's not." ^ 90% of CEOs.
edejong 6y ago
Actually, Skype was designed from the start to use e2e p2p communication. First thing after the Microsoft acquisition was to remove e2e and introduce dozens of new features no-one actually asked for. In addition, they turned the UI into a dumpster fire and allowed Chinese, Russian and United States law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on any Skype conversation without intervention of a judge.

Spare_account 6y ago

Ironically, I found this style of presentation difficult/annoying to navigate through

Spidery 6y ago
Doh—the irony. What'd you prefer?
- Spare_account 6y ago
  I stopped halfway through your presentation, even though I am a Zoom-objector so I thought I would be the perfect audience for this kind of content. Here's a recent hackernews-frontpage blog post which relied heavily on images, but I found it less onerous to read: It's the old fashioned way I'm afraid (longform single page, vertical scrolling, visible proportional scrollbar), perhaps I'm just old. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23551983 https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/ https://tonsky.me/blog/monitors/
  - Spidery 6y ago
    Yeah, this is a great blog. Certainly some things that are easier to read about that.

mifeng 6y ago

The only UX that matters in video conferencing software is connection UX, which is where Zoom excels.

Spidery 6y ago
Have you ever tried to join a Cisco Web X meeting? Takes longer than the meeting...
contravariant 6y ago
Does it though? I've found that Jitsi Meet makes it pretty easy join by just clicking an URI. No apps to install, just clicking a link. Zoom on the other hand pesters me endlessly into installing their software, making it unnecessarily difficult to just join by browser.

fnord123 6y ago

Title is "How Zoom works". It's a good article with valid points but nothing about Skype. The editorialized title "Turns out Zoom isn't all that different to Skype after all" has no appreciation for how hostile Skype's technology has become in the past 10 years. It went from nicely working Qt program that worked well on OSX, Linux, and Windows to Electron beast that maybe works on Windows, could possibly be mining bitcoins on OS X (judging by how much it spins up the fans), and I think it stopped working on Linux altogether, replaced by a web client.

zekrioca 6y ago
It is crazy how much CPU on Linux Skype uses. And it used to be very light weight. I simply closed it to avoid making my computer slower. And I only open it when in need to answer something that my phone notified me..
coronadisaster 6y ago
10 years ago is about when Microsoft purchased Skype... If I remember correctly they received money from the government to do it and then stopped using the P2P supernodes model and switched to their own servers to track users more easily... It used to work great, I wish the pre-MS source code would get leaked.
- jonathankoren 6y ago
  http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/05/skype-replaces-...
  - mkl 6y ago
    Part of the reason for the switch was more and more users on mobile devices, so the proportion of users that could act as supernodes got much smaller. I think I remember one of the Skype developers describing this in a comment on HN, but I can't find it now.
- ew6082 6y ago

nelaboras 6y ago

Rumor was always that Skype used to have E2E, then Microsoft bought it for a susprising amount of money and as first action removed server-side encryption... And therefore of course the rumor/assumption thay the NSA or similar was in the back funding the deal.

milankragujevic 6y ago
AFAIK it wasn't about E2E encryption, but P2P calls, and mega-peers which would serve as ad-hoc "servers" for coordination of other clients. That was dropped when Microsoft bought Skype and instead switched it to using central servers. However, I notice these days that calls are P2P, meaning I see in my PC's connections the IP of the person I'm talking to, so not sure what's going on there...
- marios 6y ago
  My guess is that the signaling servers are centralized. You need those for connection establishment between two peers. Once they 'know' each other, they may aswell talk to each other directly. Routing all calls through central servers would yield an enormous bill every month. On the other hand, it is sometimes necessary as direct communication between peers may not be possible (NAT, firewalling). IIRC, a central server is also required for multi-party calls.
  - milankragujevic 6y ago
    Yes, signaling is definitely centralized, before it was done by mega-peers. P2P contact does work behind NAT if it's a cone NAT. Symmetric NAT would require that the signaling server assign a forwarding server to handle data from and to each peer. In general CGNAT applications with cone NAT, UDP hole punching can be used to communicate between peers, organized by the signaling server.

goldcd 6y ago

I came away from that somewhat nonplussed. Think I've maybe used Zoom 3 times, but even I was mentally shouting answers to the rhetorical questions. "Well it does that because.." or "Well if it didn't do that, then users would.." etc

Spidery 6y ago
If I could refund you your time, I would.

rayhano 6y ago

I’ll never look at Zoom the same way again. It was frustrating before. But now I know all of these UX faux pas... Thanks BuiltForMars for taking away my blissful ignorance.

sschueller 6y ago

What are some open source skype alternatives? The ones I have used all require central server. I would like to see something which is more p2p with super nodes.

simfoo 6y ago
https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/
lxgr 6y ago
Is that a model that would actually still scale? As far as I remember, supernodes require an unfirewalled public IP and clients that are available for extended periods of time, i.e. somebody's desktop tower PC. How many of these are still around these days and are allowed to run non-corporate approved software?
pmlnr 6y ago
There isn't any.

fabian2k 6y ago

A large part seems to be about the invite feature and UI, which is something that I never encountered because I wouldn't even think about inviting people from inside a video conference software. Passing links around in other channels seems far more useful to me, and is the only way I access or share meetings. And Skype, where you first have to find the people you want to talk with is much, much more annoying there than just sending or receiving a link via an established channel like email. Of course there are many different use cases, and mine isn't necessarily representative. But in general the most important part of the user experience for video conferencing is the amount of errors or bad connections that happen. For example, I recently use Microsoft Teams, one person was sharing the screen to present something, and for some people the shared screen simply froze and didn't update anymore. That kind of thing is seriously annoying. The UI doesn't seem too important to me in this case because I almost never use any of it. After connecting in general the only button I use are mute and share screen. Doesn't mean the UI can't be significantly improved, but for me it isn't the most important part of the experience for a video conferencing tool.

SifJar 6y ago
For what it's worth, Skype does have the ability to invite people to group chats via shared links - I don't think it's always had this, but has had it for a while now
close04 6y ago
Well the byline is "but is their UX any better than Skype or Cisco". So the focus wouldn't necessarily be on what's under the hood.
WiiManic 6y ago
Yeah, I would say that I don't think I've joined Zoom and used it that way, its almost always either a set scheduled meeting where there is a dedicated room, or just an always up room that you join at a given time for more ad-hoc meetings. At least part of the issue will probably be the disconnect between that style of more "work" usage and the fact its become tool at the moment for families to connect. In that regard, going through the UI as shown may be more common, and does have some more issues, though its also maybe less of a focus for a more work-focused tool. It does seem to be decent enough for the non-host at least, where if they just blindly press the blue button on entering they'll be in the call/waiting room, which is at least fairly frictionless from a non-host point of view, and for me the bigger concern. I can deal with the UI, I'm more worried about my Grandpa or something working it out if I was doing a family call.

lxgr 6y ago

Spot on. I really wonder if all those people claiming "Zoom just works, unlike x" have really believed that the first time joining a meeting, or if they're just used to its weird UX quirks.

Spidery 6y ago
I think people just jumped on the 'Zoom bandwagon' and assumed it was great, because everyone kept saying how great it was.
- yomly 6y ago
  Zoom does just work - I've used hangouts/meet, skype, whereby/appear.in, discord, talky Of all those Zoom had the best balance of stability/resource use/call joinability I find meet a PITA to set up and invite random people WebRTC browser chat is great for rooms >= 6 people and is my preferred choice But zoom works pretty well from 1:1 up to 500:1 and is very easy to join Don't get me wrong, I hate the Zoom client but when the target audience is everyone in your company, including your PC illiterate middle managers, then I can see how Zoom is quite good
  - Macha 6y ago
    I have to say, I've found both Google Meet and Discord to be more reliable in the "just works" department (despite neither being perfect). My experience with Zoom was a job interview where the link kept asking me to install a browser plugin, even though I already had, even if I clicked a link that was apparently a web fall back. I think I had to use a phone dial in in the end
    - wenc 6y ago
      I wonder if you might have been sent a WebEx link? That doesn’t sound like Zoom. AFAIK Zoom doesn’t use browser plugins but WebEx definitely does.
      - 6y ago

beyondcompute 6y ago

Great-great analysis! We need more of those exposing apparent lack of understanding of basic principles of usability by designers of many modern products. My instinct is to tell them, “Read The Design of Everyday Things at least, please!”

Spidery 6y ago
Awesome, thanks!

KorfmannArno 6y ago

Again, what about Zoom's remote control feature (or annotate/whiteboard)? Is any competitor doing that?

Spidery 6y ago
Didn't include that, but that's a great feature.
mkl 6y ago
Zoom's whiteboard is pretty bad. Slow, clunky, weird bugs on some OSes (pen draws in wrong place on Android IME), no pressure sensitivity. There are loads of shared whiteboard type services (search on HN; IIRC we've had a few discussions recently), but most of them don't support audio and video as well. I think Zoom for audio and video while using a separate shared whiteboard might work quite well, but I haven't had reason to try it yet.
tatersolid 6y ago
The remote control and whiteboard in Microsoft Teams are better in my experience. In fact, Teams seems to have better (although still not good) UX and connection reliability as well, at least for corporate meetings. There’s generally no P2P possible from behind “enterprise” security gear or VPNs, so Zoom suffers a bit falling back while Teams blissfully just works via TCP/443 or a browser.

0xDEEPFAC 6y ago

When everything is chromium there is no competitive advantage for any of these chat applications. For example, before, Skype used to be based on the Qt framework and it used less resources and actually had more features - like universal push-to-talk and better integration into the OS. Welcome to the future - lets Javascript all the things... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U

buboard 6y ago
^ This. Skype as an app was downgraded, features gone never to return. I know nobody in MS uses it, because otherwise they d know of its glaring bugs
azangru 6y ago
> used less resources and actually had more features I remember the time when there was a native client for Skype on Linux. It probably used less resources, yes, but it was horribly lacking in features compared to Windows or MacOS native clients. Now that everything is javascript, Skype on Linux works great, apart from being a godawful resource hog. I found it really pleasant to use over the last several years. Video calls work great, screen sharing works great, even conference calls work, which they never before did on Linux. Couldn't be happier with the changes.
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y ago
  So why did they force everyone else to use the Javascript version instead of only Linux? Why didn't they just improve the Linux version. I use Skype everyday for work and my quality of life is noticeably different in a bad way :( Plus, my poor laptop is now forced to run Skype, Zoom, Slack, Google Docs, and Discord. Its turned into a cooktop...
  - azangru 6y ago
    > Why didn't they just improve the Linux version. You know, write once, run everywhere. It's programmer's dream :-)

martopix 6y ago

My main complaints are two: - It takes 4-5 clicks to create a meeting and share the URL, which is what I want to do most of the time, multiple times a day. I end up preferring Skype (when with only 1-2 other people) just because of the hassle of "Creating a meeting". - The UI randomly moves around: the chat button and the chat, for example, are in a place when Zoom is in window mode, in a different place when Zoom is fullscreen, and yet another place when I'm sharing the screen. If I have to teach, I prepare the various zoom windows (chat, participants, videos) in a certain configuration. As soon as I start sharing screen everything changes. It goes fullscreen whenever it likes, and all that.

Spidery 6y ago
Yeah, really annoying ^^

hutzlibu 6y ago

Modern Browser have already build in, p2p, encrypted video chat functionality. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/Signaling_and_video_calling https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebRTC_API/... I played around with it years ago, and it worked quite good and should have improved a lot since then, so why has no one come up with a solid solution, that does not require us to route our video calls through china, or microsoft servers? I suppose the devil is, like always, in the details. So what am I missing? Probably, that webrtc via p2p is hard to do for more than 2 people? But someone should have at least tried it?

Lex-2008 6y ago
Yes. From my experience (as a user), webrtc is good for up to 4 people, and is rarely supported for more than 8. Reason is that few laptops can cope with many more incoming and outgoing videostreams in parallel. Also, when in our company we tried using webrtc for standups, we often faced issues when participant A couldn't hear participant B, but participant C could hear them both. All that with video working in all directions. Or sometimes we had this issue with video. Another reason why standalone applications like Skype and Zoom (which is known for trying to install its client too much) might be better than webrtc is that they might have better noise-cancelling algorithms than browsers. Also, point of usability - compared to browser, standalone apps don't have permission dialogs ("do you want to allow this website to access your camera"?) and might be smarter with choosing correct microphone by default - this might be important for non-techy users who don't understand why system suggests them to choose from two microphones when there's only one plugged into the computer.
- danogentili 6y ago
  It really depends on your configuration (server-side configuration also plays an important role). Jitsi has an excellent webrtc server-side SFU (Selective Forwarding Unit) which does a seamless job at redirecting multi-layer VP8/H264 streams to the most appropriate user. Each jitsi browser instance tells webrtc to encode and send multiple spatial layers of the same video stream (at different qualities), allowing users (and the SFU) to automatically choose which one to receive, according to bandwidth and network congestion. The result is a seamless experience that just works, even with 16+ people (we've been doing jitsi conferences nearly every working day since April at our dance school, it works like a charm and is easily customizable). Other solutions also use custom additional WASM modules for echo cancelation and noise suppression in webrtc; and jitsi has an excellent dropdown UI with previews for choosing audio/video sources (and sinks!).

perryizgr8 6y ago

I really don't like the Mute/Unmute button in Zoom. It shows a button showing a crossed out mic with "Unmute" below it. And the other state for this button is a mic with "Mute" below it. The button's icon and text are always opposite of each other. It is so confusing. I always have to think twice before clicking it.

sokoloff 6y ago
I spend a lot of time on calls, but it’s always felt clear to me. The icon is the state and the text is the action that will happen if you click it.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  But that's not how buttons work usually. Look at the reload button in Chrome. The icon shows you what will happen if you click it. The tooltip text also shows you what will happen if you click it. The text and icon are never opposite. At least I cannot think of another app that does this.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    I happen to be standing in front of my coffee maker waiting for it to finish. It has a lit green LED (indicating it’s brewing) and a button under it labeled “Off”. Same conflict, but perfectly clear IMO.
    - zaroth 6y ago
      This is an age old debacle with toggle switches. How do you indicate it is ON/OFF and how do you indicate pushing it will turn OFF/ON particularly when the states are binary but not as simple as ON/OFF and you’re working in two dimensions. You’re trying to show status and allow toggling all at once. There are basically 4 ways to do it with a binary setting and no one right way. - Icon shows current status, Text shows current status. My coffee maker does this with a button that goes from “Single” to “Double”. - Icon shows current status, text shows what a click will achieve (Zoom) - Icon shows what a click will do, text shows current status (Example?) - Icon shows what a click will do, text shows what a click will do (Play/Pause buttons typically work like this) As a result, as a user you have to spend the cognitive load analyzing the icon, maybe trying to guess what the current setting is, to try to intuit what a click will actually achieve.

kebos 6y ago

Zoom has great video and audio. I think good echo cancellation, video that copes well with the network, lower latencies - we don't experience that directly but the after effect is you feel subjectively better about the experience. I think picking each part of the UX apart is secondary to making the key feature work well.

rjmunro 6y ago
Absolutely. The other big innovation is you can see who's making a noise in the call in the list of participants and mute them. The UX is terrible, and totally not their strong point. When you install it should have a test my audio and video thing, and set use computer audio as the default meaning you never have to see the "join with computer audio" thing ever again. Joining with a phone is useful for people without a computer, but the main UI doesn't need to mention it, the details are in the invitations.
robbrown451 6y ago
Considering the number of people using it, addressing those (considerable) UI glitches is worth talking about. People video chat with non-technical people (elderly parents, etc) and it really sucks when you have to go through these sort of awful experiences just to get two people communicating.

robsws 6y ago

I was surprised they didn't mention that after clicking 'Leave Meeting', a popup comes up with a 'Leave Meeting' button in it, that actually leaves the meeting. This inevitably means in every single Zoom meeting that everyone says goodbye and then spends a few awkward seconds actually leaving the meeting.

beyondcompute 6y ago
That’s a very good point!
jjice 6y ago
GoTo Meeting does this too. I always get a laugh from watching my coworkers faces drop while they navigate to the actual end button.
conductr 6y ago
Better than risk of accidentally dropping out of meetings abruptly. I see many people still manage to do this and it takes a couple minutes to get them back on. There’s also the real fun one when the host ends meeting for all on accident. It’s same IRL when every says bye then awkwardly gathers belongings and leaves a conf room in silence
- chrismorgan 6y ago
  An alternative design, which I would generally consider superior, is to make it easy to undo leaving a meeting. (This wouldn’t work for the host under the current behaviour model, because the host leaving needs to either assign someone else to be host, or close the meeting for everyone. But you could do it this way for everyone else. Whether it would require waiting room approval again would be an interesting question, however. As usual, there are complexities to be considered.)
wayneftw 6y ago
There is a setting to disable it.
Sodman 6y ago

pteraspidomorph 6y ago

> Which does nothing unless you already have Zoom installed At least on desktop, even though the help text explicitly says "If you have Zoom Client installed", you can actually click the Launch Meeting button/link to reveal a hidden option for joining the meeting without actually installing (which requires an additional click). I imagine this never shows up if you actually install; they're just trying to get people to install unnecessarily.

dandare 6y ago

Irrelevant title but the UX analysis is on spot. It is a shame that many companies will spend millions on infrastructure and programming but don't pay for a decent UX team - or just do not bother implementing good UX. (Microsoft is the most striking example.)

llagerlof 6y ago

Tweet that article mentioning the Zoom founder @ericsyuan and @zoom_us

azangru 6y ago

I find the metaphor of a "call" in Skype or Google Meet easier to use for chats with relatives than the metaphor of a "meeting". The latter one works great in a business setting, when you "schedule a meeting" and post its details to Slack, or email them, or stick them in a calendar; but when you want an immediate one-on-one chat, it's so much easier to "call" a person. Zoom weirds me out in that in order to chat with someone you need to "create a meeting", then copy the meeting url/id, and send it via a different channel to the person you want to chat with.

shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
On the surface, it doesn’t sound like a big difference. In reality, I find using the native /call command in slack a game changer. It opens up a call immediately, no links, copy/pasting, changing applications etc. It just feels right.
chirag64 6y ago
That's not entirely true. Zoom does have tabs called 'Chat' and 'Contacts' where you can find all your contacts & initiate a 'Call' with them without ever having to share a URL / ID
- zaroth 6y ago
  Discoverability is everything!
toxik 6y ago
Zoom could easily subsume this though, just add a contact list and a call UI. I guess that actually isn’t entirely trivial but certainly doable.
- mkl 6y ago
  That's already in Zoom. That's all you do: click Contacts, click the person, click Meet, and they answer the call. It also shows you if they're available, on another call, etc.
6y ago

henron 6y ago

I agree with many of the observations in the deck, but how would you go about prioritizing the most impactful improvements? Is there a best in class method of quantifying how UX hurdles?

jarnix 6y ago

Am I the only one to avoid Zoom for all the strange things reported these past few months ?

aardvark291 6y ago

This isn't "How Zoom works". It's a 72 slide deck of complaints about the Zoom UI.

robbrown451 6y ago

Very well done, and very thoroughly delves into my own initial "WTF?" reaction to using Zoom for the first time (and second and third times). Although I think the title is misleading. I was expecting something more technical, as most "how X works" articles and videos tend to be. "Zoom's UI is bad" would be more descriptive. Even "How Zoom doesn't work" would be more accurate to the content.