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Is it just me or is Discord super unintuitive? And Slack is becoming that way too. Telegram by contrast is a pleasure!

by EGreg 3y ago

jabroni_salad 3y ago
I wish telegram didn't have so much shady stuff under it. It's by far the nicest chat experience.
- fodkodrasz 3y ago
  I don't know if I think it has more shady stuff than whatsapp or other mainstream platforms (so sad we have to write this as there is no open federated standard *in widespread use* as with email), which are backed by megacorps famous for spying on users and selling it to whoever, and being digital goons of governments when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech. All are the same from my perspective, with UX being a main differentiator.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    > I don't know if I think it has more shady stuff than whatsapp or other mainstream platforms The preferred channel for Russian warmongers, AIUI.
batiudrami 3y ago
Discord’s interface is extremely busy but if you ever used IRC I think it’s fairly intuitive. It’s a much more complicated app than Telegram with a lot more functionality.
- kalikrates 3y ago
  As a long-time IRC user who never had problems with various IRC clients, I find Discord's interface quite counter-intuitive. First example that comes to my head: I click on a channel that I haven't visited for some time, the view focuses on old messages (from the last time I visited it) rather than on the newest ones (which is typically what I want). And going to the newest ones isn't even trivial, I don't know a way other than scrolling down all the way, which may be quite annoying if the channel is very active and there is a lot of material to scroll past.
fodkodrasz 3y ago
Unfortunately Telegram is getting more and more useless gimmick anti-features. It was better 3-5 years ago, when it didn't have so much useless junk. Still the most streamlined experience. While voice and video calls, screen sharing is nice, they are not very polished, good quality, and UI is overloaded, but the last useful feature additions. (useless junk: animated stickers, custom wallpapers, emoji responses (though I use them), premium emojis, collectible usernames, (i get that it needs money to run infra), channels and social-media-platform related stuff (i guess those are revenue drivers and signup-funnels as well) Discord has one killer UX feature: voice chatrooms. It is great for gaming, and great for remote work too for small flat-hierarchy companies. (no setting up of a meeting, just dropping in to a "meeting room". I have worked on a product with similarly streamlined ad-hoc remote meeting user experience, but it is defunct now unfortunately.)
- pluto_modadic 3y ago
  I like telegram's slick UI library. making an app using it would be nice. That and stickers, reaction emojis (which I also like in Slack, and teams only lets you have one reaction) calls, video, screen sharing, animated stickers, premium-stuff however... all junk.
  - fodkodrasz 3y ago
    Telegram is Qt based as far as I know. Funny that I would find the other basic comms channels integrated a good thing, if they would be properly polished, and the stuff you like is what I find junk.
    - EGreg 3y ago
      How do you know? It seems Telegram Web looks very similar
      - fodkodrasz 3y ago
        This one is made with Qt: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop I remembered this one. But having checked clients for other platforms they are not made with Qt. You can check them all here: https://telegram.org/apps https://telegram.org/apps
pluto_modadic 3y ago
slack hides their settings in absolutely awful places teams is constantly broken on linux discord's ACL system is... a mess. meanwhile IRC clients are brutalistic and painful to look at (or really any open source chat app) nobody (commercial or open source) has an incentive to make a truly intuitive app that doesn't screw the user or ignore their needs.
- anthk 3y ago
  > Open Source Eh, Qutecom, AMSN, Ekiga, Kopete... these looked fine and modern 15 years ago.
- troupo 3y ago
  > slack hides their settings in absolutely awful places So does Discord. The 15000 notifications settings it has is spread over three or four places behind completely different settings/dropdowns/sheets: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1695121977118245145 https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1695121977118245145
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
> Is it just me or is Discord super unintuitive? I'm always baffled when people say this. I understood Discord immediately and fail to understand why people are so confused by it. You have a list of servers you're in on the far left, you click one, and you get a list of channels. Click the channel, and if it's a voice channel, you can now talk. If it's a text channel, it shows the channel and you can chat. Voice channels have a speaker icon that make it obvious it's a voice channel. Some servers will initially hide all the channels except one where you need to click a reaction on some bot's message to acknowledge their rules. The only thing that Discord screws up on, IMO, is the configuration of notifications. You've got your account-wide notifications, server notifications, channel notifications, and the handling of @everyone and @here. Getting the exact behavior you want is tricky sometimes.
vonjuice 3y ago
man every time I want to respond to a message in telegram I end up in the forward mode, it's so intuitive in whatsapp but so backwards in telegram. Likewise when trying to react to a message with any emote other than the one set by default. And then I couldn't even find the setting to change the default emote reaction. So I guess I disagree with that assessment. I do agree about discord tho.

Is it just me or is Discord super unintuitive? And Slack is becoming that way too. Telegram by contrast is a pleasure!

by EGreg 3y ago

Is it just me or is Discord super unintuitive? And Slack is becoming that way too. Telegram by contrast is a pleasure!

jabroni_salad 3y ago

I wish telegram didn't have so much shady stuff under it. It's by far the nicest chat experience.

fodkodrasz 3y ago
I don't know if I think it has more shady stuff than whatsapp or other mainstream platforms (so sad we have to write this as there is no open federated standard *in widespread use* as with email), which are backed by megacorps famous for spying on users and selling it to whoever, and being digital goons of governments when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech. All are the same from my perspective, with UX being a main differentiator.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  > I don't know if I think it has more shady stuff than whatsapp or other mainstream platforms The preferred channel for Russian warmongers, AIUI.

batiudrami 3y ago

Discord’s interface is extremely busy but if you ever used IRC I think it’s fairly intuitive. It’s a much more complicated app than Telegram with a lot more functionality.

kalikrates 3y ago
As a long-time IRC user who never had problems with various IRC clients, I find Discord's interface quite counter-intuitive. First example that comes to my head: I click on a channel that I haven't visited for some time, the view focuses on old messages (from the last time I visited it) rather than on the newest ones (which is typically what I want). And going to the newest ones isn't even trivial, I don't know a way other than scrolling down all the way, which may be quite annoying if the channel is very active and there is a lot of material to scroll past.

fodkodrasz 3y ago

Unfortunately Telegram is getting more and more useless gimmick anti-features. It was better 3-5 years ago, when it didn't have so much useless junk. Still the most streamlined experience. While voice and video calls, screen sharing is nice, they are not very polished, good quality, and UI is overloaded, but the last useful feature additions. (useless junk: animated stickers, custom wallpapers, emoji responses (though I use them), premium emojis, collectible usernames, (i get that it needs money to run infra), channels and social-media-platform related stuff (i guess those are revenue drivers and signup-funnels as well) Discord has one killer UX feature: voice chatrooms. It is great for gaming, and great for remote work too for small flat-hierarchy companies. (no setting up of a meeting, just dropping in to a "meeting room". I have worked on a product with similarly streamlined ad-hoc remote meeting user experience, but it is defunct now unfortunately.)

pluto_modadic 3y ago
I like telegram's slick UI library. making an app using it would be nice. That and stickers, reaction emojis (which I also like in Slack, and teams only lets you have one reaction) calls, video, screen sharing, animated stickers, premium-stuff however... all junk.
- fodkodrasz 3y ago
  Telegram is Qt based as far as I know. Funny that I would find the other basic comms channels integrated a good thing, if they would be properly polished, and the stuff you like is what I find junk.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    How do you know? It seems Telegram Web looks very similar
    - fodkodrasz 3y ago
      This one is made with Qt: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop I remembered this one. But having checked clients for other platforms they are not made with Qt. You can check them all here: https://telegram.org/apps https://telegram.org/apps

pluto_modadic 3y ago

slack hides their settings in absolutely awful places teams is constantly broken on linux discord's ACL system is... a mess. meanwhile IRC clients are brutalistic and painful to look at (or really any open source chat app) nobody (commercial or open source) has an incentive to make a truly intuitive app that doesn't screw the user or ignore their needs.

anthk 3y ago
> Open Source Eh, Qutecom, AMSN, Ekiga, Kopete... these looked fine and modern 15 years ago.
troupo 3y ago
> slack hides their settings in absolutely awful places So does Discord. The 15000 notifications settings it has is spread over three or four places behind completely different settings/dropdowns/sheets: https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1695121977118245145 https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1695121977118245145

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

> Is it just me or is Discord super unintuitive? I'm always baffled when people say this. I understood Discord immediately and fail to understand why people are so confused by it. You have a list of servers you're in on the far left, you click one, and you get a list of channels. Click the channel, and if it's a voice channel, you can now talk. If it's a text channel, it shows the channel and you can chat. Voice channels have a speaker icon that make it obvious it's a voice channel. Some servers will initially hide all the channels except one where you need to click a reaction on some bot's message to acknowledge their rules. The only thing that Discord screws up on, IMO, is the configuration of notifications. You've got your account-wide notifications, server notifications, channel notifications, and the handling of @everyone and @here. Getting the exact behavior you want is tricky sometimes.

vonjuice 3y ago

man every time I want to respond to a message in telegram I end up in the forward mode, it's so intuitive in whatsapp but so backwards in telegram. Likewise when trying to react to a message with any emote other than the one set by default. And then I couldn't even find the setting to change the default emote reaction. So I guess I disagree with that assessment. I do agree about discord tho.