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This has been really frustrating to me lately with Microsoft Teams. If I'm in their app, the mute button is a microphone with a line through it (if mute is act

This has been really frustrating to me lately with Microsoft Teams. If I'm in their app, the mute button is a microphone with a line through it (if mute is activated, i.e. if the mic is off). And the icon changes to a microphone without the slash over it to indicate that you are no longer muted. Makes sense. But if I join using the phone app on my phone, the same microphone with a line through it (that means you are muted on Teams) indicates that you are currently NOT muted, but you can use that button to activate mute. After pressing it, the icon is still a mic with the line, but it changes to a filled in background (reverse video). Is this because in one case, that button is a "mic on" button, but in the other it is a "mute on" button, using the same icon? And the button still does an OK job of indicating what state you are currently in, as long as you know what the button looks like in the opposite state (I always have to toggle the mute button a couple times to observe what paradigm the given app is using). I wonder if this is the price we pay for "flat UI", where designers are still figuring out design elements without a real-world reference to look back on.

Kuraj 3y ago
Man... That's one button where you really DON'T want to be confused
- m463 3y ago
  I have a hardware button on my headset mic. Wish there were a hardware button for "accept cookie" or "yes send me email offers" dialogs to conquer the not clearness.
- khana 3y ago
  [dead]
the_other 3y ago
There's a pretty interesting (to me) aspect of the mic indicator/controller problem: without direct visual feedback, you can't tell what mode your mic is in until _other people_ respond, or don't. It's a very laggy tool in terms of feedback even when it's "on". In fact, you often need to test it two or three times to be sure, because your fellow meeting members might have frozen, might just be thinking before they respond, etc It's quite different from, say, dark mode, which is pretty obvious when toggled on/off. So the feature benefits a lot from a visual indicator of current state regardless what you choose to do for the button. It's unsurprising people try to smudge the "state" and "control" together, for the mic more than many other controls.
- ambigious7777 3y ago
  I think the solution to this problem would be to have a indicator on your profile that say is green when you can talk, but red or gone when you can't.
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    On the flip side, a red light has been the symbol for "recording" for several decades. If you do an image search for "record button", it is invariably red.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
Discord is worse. Their buttons for mute-microphone and turn-off-camera are inverses of each other.
- causal 3y ago
  Yes! So confusing.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  I hadn’t noticed- or struggled with this, but I guess it makes sense. The channels are primarily audio and stream focused, with users video being second in priority (makes sense when you consider its initial target audience). So by default mic is active, video is not. When you mute yourself, you get a “muted” indicator next to your name anyway.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    Those defaults make sense, but the UI used to literally have the indicators swapped. (They seem to have fixed this since last time I used it.)
- deathanatos 3y ago
  They are? Whether the icon has a slash or not: Device is currently ->| On | Off ------+-----------+------ Camera| unslashed | slashed Mic| unslashed | slashed The camera button is on a different row, and gets a background rect that the mic button doesn't, and turns green when on (vs. the red for the mic when off) … but I think that's sort of a mapping to the default Discord state & showing things that are "against normal expectations"…?
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    I stand corrected after confirming this for myself, but I swear it used to be the opposite.
gedy 3y ago
This is a case where I think the indicator (LED in real world) should be separate from the button, which label does not have to change.
- cobbal 3y ago
  Should the LED indicate mute on or mic on? I could see it both ways, and so I would also have a hard time trusting this UI at first.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Should be a text label in present tense not (or not only) an "LED". I like radio buttons but something equally unambiguous could also work. Microphone Status [ ] Muted [x] Unmuted
    - gedy 3y ago
      Amen on radio buttons. It's been really challenging to get UX people in my companies to use these for some reason.
    - terribleperson 3y ago
      This takes up a lot more space, but I like how absolutely unambiguous it is.
  - kqr 3y ago
    It should have a label saying "recording" or something to that effect. I don't know microphone terminology, maybe it's "picking up". With a label, a light indicator is unambiguous.
spookie 3y ago
Wholeheartedly agree with your conclusion! Thankfully we're seeing a shift to more nuanced skeuomorphism called neuomorphism.
AceyMan 3y ago
When I was just starting in IT (~1999) it was already a joke that you could identify where different MSFT teams wrote elements of software (say, Outlook) when a common action was implemented two different ways (explained by Conway's Law as I know now).
- kqr 3y ago
  This is an older joke than that. My parents used to say the same about switches in cars going the opposite direction for activating stuff.
kortex 3y ago
I think part of this confusion stems from the "default mic on" mindset, where "mic active" is assumed to be the default, and mute is a deviation from that state. We can trace this pattern back to the UI of phone conference systems, back through analog phones, back to the time of a literal wire connection between parties. Many/most audio mixers (in the context of live music and recording) and their digital brethren use the same pattern - a "Mute" button which lights red to indicate that channel is silenced. But a few have an ON button above the fader which lights to indicate the channel is active. I think it's about time conference applications rip off the bandage and take the "audio off by default" approach. We can kinda see it already with UI elements that light up when a speaker is talking.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  I think Discord gets the UX right: Default state is mic active. There’s no slash through the mic, when you speak (and it’s above the noise cancellation threshold) you’ll get a green indicator on your name in the participant list. Press mute, you get a slash through the mic and you get the same indicator, in red, next to your name in the participant list. So in many ways they do both.
- citrin_ru 3y ago
  With a good UI one should not know what is the default - the current state should be clearly indicated. Different backgrounds / colour shades is not a clear indication even if it looks nice this way.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  >Many/most audio mixers (in the context of live music and recording) and their digital brethren use the same pattern - a "Mute" button which lights red to indicate that channel is silenced. But a few have an ON button above the fader which lights to indicate the channel is active. Hm, this is the opposite of what I've seen. On recording interfaces I'm used to having a button that lights up red when an input is armed -- unmuted and ready to record. In fact I have a digital 8-track sitting next to me that works this way. Traditional recording studios would follow this pattern too -- the ON AIR sign is lit when the mic is hot, and off when the room is "muted" Video conference software could certainly stand to adopt this model instead of default unmuted -- I certainly spend more time in meeting muted than with a hot mic.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
Slack is similarly confusing. I've really never seen a conferencing app that does this well.
- beezlewax 3y ago
  Zoom has mute or unmute coupled with icons the least silly choice I've seen regarding this.
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    Unfortunately, every other UX and technical choice zoom makes is so pants on head dumb, that is disqualifies them from being taken seriously.
mvdtnz 3y ago
I have a similar frustration with UI differences between apps with Plex. If I look at a TV show season on my phone, episodes I've watched have a blue check mark. When I look at the same season on my TV, there's no blue check but episodes I haven't watched have a yellow triangle. It always makes my brain double take when moving between them.
zamadatix 3y ago
This isn't the case for me, I wonder what's different between us as I just tested: Desktop: slashed = currently muted, plain = currently listening Phone: slashed = currently muted, plain = currently listening. I'm using the latest version of Teams for Windows and iPhone respectively.
csydas 3y ago
I don't mean to just blanket shit on Teams, but Teams is just a confusing mess of UI choices and UX design that makes no sense even within the context of using Teams. The meeting icons are of course pretty awful as you cited, but it's even more things for me [0]: - When joining a Teams call, the toggle for video gets "selected" so that pressing Return or spacebar (I think one or both) will toggle the video on -- noticing that you did this or that the video toggle is selected is a matter of chance as it's hard to see - For some bizarre reason Teams has a "start call" shortcut that just immediately starts a call without the usual pre-call warning items. Joining a meeting from your calendar gives you a "pre-meeting room" where you can confirm your mic/video settings before joining, but hitting the call shortcut or button immediately starts a call - Sometimes right-click menu loads slowly and additional options load after you right-click and move the mouse -- it so happens this will usually put the cursor on Pinning the message instead of selecting reply or edit - Regarding Reply/Edit, there is a nice button to jump right to both, but for chats one button is showed, for private messages another is shown - All teams messages are linkable; whether or not you right-clicked on a link in the message and are copying the link or if you're getting a link to the message itself depends on if you happen to notice whether you have 2 options on right-click or 3+ options - Copying a linked item (e.g., document, media, picture) will have Download or Copy Link button. Copy link for some reason puts up a text box across the conversation you're having that is dismissible with escape or clicking usual x in box corner -- other "copy link" options just copy the link normally, other ones (like copying channel link) will open a window with the link for you to copy - it is huge pain for me personally that the links you copy from Teams are Sharepoint links and pasting it in a browser tries to open files in Sharepoint browser, even if Sharepoint absolutely cannot display a preview of the file: you sit while Sharepoint tries to load a preview, and only after a few seconds of Sharepoint trying does it show you a download button to get the file (thankfully there are browser extensions like Redirector [1] which can be used to create redirects for auto-downloads...just Microsoft likes to change the URL for actual downloads relatively often so occasionally you need to update your redirects..) Teams is so inconsistent and the UI and UX are equally inconsistent -- Teams is also not shy about showing tutorial prompts for features just whenever it wants to, no matter how long you've been using Teams, sometimes it will just block the entire app to highlight some feature it wants to advertise. I honestly don't think this or anything has to do with flat UI versus other ones, it's just plain lack of attention. maybe flat ui's give the impression of a "completed" thing, but I just can't see that most of the UI/UX issues for apps like Teams are about the aesthetic so much as just a complete lack of concern over what actually using the app is like. 0 - All points here were observed on vanilla teams installations on different computers -- maybe my work just has weird defaults, but I'm not confident that is the case 1 - https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector
clolege 3y ago
IMO "muting" as a user-facing concept should be done away with. It's inherently negative, basically meaning "not enabled" and as such, `not muted` == `not not enabled`. Just say whether their mic is on or off, and reflect that with the UX elements and writing. Done.
ClassyJacket 3y ago
IS THIS WHY NOBODY CAN EVER HEAR ME ON TEAMS ON MY PHONE!? I thought it was just super slow to connect and never worked. This would explain alot.
emeril 3y ago
I use teams all the time but only use the mobile app for audio since that's less crap than the desktop electron/etc. based apps I recommend everyone to just the mobile app for audio since most people can't manage to get pc/windows audio working consistently and it's just works on most people's phones without issue while I can certainly get it working fine on my pc, I have a nice bluetooth headset that is a pain to repair to my pc so I always just use the headset so I can walk anywhere and not be tethered to my pc (where bluetooth always seems unreliable in windows...)

Kuraj 3y ago

Man... That's one button where you really DON'T want to be confused

m463 3y ago
I have a hardware button on my headset mic. Wish there were a hardware button for "accept cookie" or "yes send me email offers" dialogs to conquer the not clearness.
khana 3y ago
[dead]

the_other 3y ago

There's a pretty interesting (to me) aspect of the mic indicator/controller problem: without direct visual feedback, you can't tell what mode your mic is in until _other people_ respond, or don't. It's a very laggy tool in terms of feedback even when it's "on". In fact, you often need to test it two or three times to be sure, because your fellow meeting members might have frozen, might just be thinking before they respond, etc It's quite different from, say, dark mode, which is pretty obvious when toggled on/off. So the feature benefits a lot from a visual indicator of current state regardless what you choose to do for the button. It's unsurprising people try to smudge the "state" and "control" together, for the mic more than many other controls.

ambigious7777 3y ago
I think the solution to this problem would be to have a indicator on your profile that say is green when you can talk, but red or gone when you can't.
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  On the flip side, a red light has been the symbol for "recording" for several decades. If you do an image search for "record button", it is invariably red.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

Discord is worse. Their buttons for mute-microphone and turn-off-camera are inverses of each other.

causal 3y ago
Yes! So confusing.
FridgeSeal 3y ago
I hadn’t noticed- or struggled with this, but I guess it makes sense. The channels are primarily audio and stream focused, with users video being second in priority (makes sense when you consider its initial target audience). So by default mic is active, video is not. When you mute yourself, you get a “muted” indicator next to your name anyway.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  Those defaults make sense, but the UI used to literally have the indicators swapped. (They seem to have fixed this since last time I used it.)
deathanatos 3y ago
They are? Whether the icon has a slash or not: Device is currently ->| On | Off ------+-----------+------ Camera| unslashed | slashed Mic| unslashed | slashed The camera button is on a different row, and gets a background rect that the mic button doesn't, and turns green when on (vs. the red for the mic when off) … but I think that's sort of a mapping to the default Discord state & showing things that are "against normal expectations"…?
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  I stand corrected after confirming this for myself, but I swear it used to be the opposite.

gedy 3y ago

This is a case where I think the indicator (LED in real world) should be separate from the button, which label does not have to change.

cobbal 3y ago
Should the LED indicate mute on or mic on? I could see it both ways, and so I would also have a hard time trusting this UI at first.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Should be a text label in present tense not (or not only) an "LED". I like radio buttons but something equally unambiguous could also work. Microphone Status [ ] Muted [x] Unmuted
  - gedy 3y ago
    Amen on radio buttons. It's been really challenging to get UX people in my companies to use these for some reason.
  - terribleperson 3y ago
    This takes up a lot more space, but I like how absolutely unambiguous it is.
- kqr 3y ago
  It should have a label saying "recording" or something to that effect. I don't know microphone terminology, maybe it's "picking up". With a label, a light indicator is unambiguous.

spookie 3y ago

Wholeheartedly agree with your conclusion! Thankfully we're seeing a shift to more nuanced skeuomorphism called neuomorphism.

AceyMan 3y ago

When I was just starting in IT (~1999) it was already a joke that you could identify where different MSFT teams wrote elements of software (say, Outlook) when a common action was implemented two different ways (explained by Conway's Law as I know now).

kqr 3y ago
This is an older joke than that. My parents used to say the same about switches in cars going the opposite direction for activating stuff.

kortex 3y ago

I think part of this confusion stems from the "default mic on" mindset, where "mic active" is assumed to be the default, and mute is a deviation from that state. We can trace this pattern back to the UI of phone conference systems, back through analog phones, back to the time of a literal wire connection between parties. Many/most audio mixers (in the context of live music and recording) and their digital brethren use the same pattern - a "Mute" button which lights red to indicate that channel is silenced. But a few have an ON button above the fader which lights to indicate the channel is active. I think it's about time conference applications rip off the bandage and take the "audio off by default" approach. We can kinda see it already with UI elements that light up when a speaker is talking.

FridgeSeal 3y ago
I think Discord gets the UX right: Default state is mic active. There’s no slash through the mic, when you speak (and it’s above the noise cancellation threshold) you’ll get a green indicator on your name in the participant list. Press mute, you get a slash through the mic and you get the same indicator, in red, next to your name in the participant list. So in many ways they do both.
citrin_ru 3y ago
With a good UI one should not know what is the default - the current state should be clearly indicated. Different backgrounds / colour shades is not a clear indication even if it looks nice this way.
dingnuts 3y ago
>Many/most audio mixers (in the context of live music and recording) and their digital brethren use the same pattern - a "Mute" button which lights red to indicate that channel is silenced. But a few have an ON button above the fader which lights to indicate the channel is active. Hm, this is the opposite of what I've seen. On recording interfaces I'm used to having a button that lights up red when an input is armed -- unmuted and ready to record. In fact I have a digital 8-track sitting next to me that works this way. Traditional recording studios would follow this pattern too -- the ON AIR sign is lit when the mic is hot, and off when the room is "muted" Video conference software could certainly stand to adopt this model instead of default unmuted -- I certainly spend more time in meeting muted than with a hot mic.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

Slack is similarly confusing. I've really never seen a conferencing app that does this well.

beezlewax 3y ago
Zoom has mute or unmute coupled with icons the least silly choice I've seen regarding this.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  Unfortunately, every other UX and technical choice zoom makes is so pants on head dumb, that is disqualifies them from being taken seriously.

mvdtnz 3y ago

I have a similar frustration with UI differences between apps with Plex. If I look at a TV show season on my phone, episodes I've watched have a blue check mark. When I look at the same season on my TV, there's no blue check but episodes I haven't watched have a yellow triangle. It always makes my brain double take when moving between them.

zamadatix 3y ago

This isn't the case for me, I wonder what's different between us as I just tested: Desktop: slashed = currently muted, plain = currently listening Phone: slashed = currently muted, plain = currently listening. I'm using the latest version of Teams for Windows and iPhone respectively.

csydas 3y ago

I don't mean to just blanket shit on Teams, but Teams is just a confusing mess of UI choices and UX design that makes no sense even within the context of using Teams. The meeting icons are of course pretty awful as you cited, but it's even more things for me [0]: - When joining a Teams call, the toggle for video gets "selected" so that pressing Return or spacebar (I think one or both) will toggle the video on -- noticing that you did this or that the video toggle is selected is a matter of chance as it's hard to see - For some bizarre reason Teams has a "start call" shortcut that just immediately starts a call without the usual pre-call warning items. Joining a meeting from your calendar gives you a "pre-meeting room" where you can confirm your mic/video settings before joining, but hitting the call shortcut or button immediately starts a call - Sometimes right-click menu loads slowly and additional options load after you right-click and move the mouse -- it so happens this will usually put the cursor on Pinning the message instead of selecting reply or edit - Regarding Reply/Edit, there is a nice button to jump right to both, but for chats one button is showed, for private messages another is shown - All teams messages are linkable; whether or not you right-clicked on a link in the message and are copying the link or if you're getting a link to the message itself depends on if you happen to notice whether you have 2 options on right-click or 3+ options - Copying a linked item (e.g., document, media, picture) will have Download or Copy Link button. Copy link for some reason puts up a text box across the conversation you're having that is dismissible with escape or clicking usual x in box corner -- other "copy link" options just copy the link normally, other ones (like copying channel link) will open a window with the link for you to copy - it is huge pain for me personally that the links you copy from Teams are Sharepoint links and pasting it in a browser tries to open files in Sharepoint browser, even if Sharepoint absolutely cannot display a preview of the file: you sit while Sharepoint tries to load a preview, and only after a few seconds of Sharepoint trying does it show you a download button to get the file (thankfully there are browser extensions like Redirector [1] which can be used to create redirects for auto-downloads...just Microsoft likes to change the URL for actual downloads relatively often so occasionally you need to update your redirects..) Teams is so inconsistent and the UI and UX are equally inconsistent -- Teams is also not shy about showing tutorial prompts for features just whenever it wants to, no matter how long you've been using Teams, sometimes it will just block the entire app to highlight some feature it wants to advertise. I honestly don't think this or anything has to do with flat UI versus other ones, it's just plain lack of attention. maybe flat ui's give the impression of a "completed" thing, but I just can't see that most of the UI/UX issues for apps like Teams are about the aesthetic so much as just a complete lack of concern over what actually using the app is like. 0 - All points here were observed on vanilla teams installations on different computers -- maybe my work just has weird defaults, but I'm not confident that is the case 1 - https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector

clolege 3y ago

IMO "muting" as a user-facing concept should be done away with. It's inherently negative, basically meaning "not enabled" and as such, `not muted` == `not not enabled`. Just say whether their mic is on or off, and reflect that with the UX elements and writing. Done.

ClassyJacket 3y ago

IS THIS WHY NOBODY CAN EVER HEAR ME ON TEAMS ON MY PHONE!? I thought it was just super slow to connect and never worked. This would explain alot.

emeril 3y ago

I use teams all the time but only use the mobile app for audio since that's less crap than the desktop electron/etc. based apps I recommend everyone to just the mobile app for audio since most people can't manage to get pc/windows audio working consistently and it's just works on most people's phones without issue while I can certainly get it working fine on my pc, I have a nice bluetooth headset that is a pain to repair to my pc so I always just use the headset so I can walk anywhere and not be tethered to my pc (where bluetooth always seems unreliable in windows...)