3 ms·
Chat is a terrible primary interface for working with people, too. It's fine for cursory stuff, but it doesn't suffice for anything that requires high informati
by lolinder 2y ago
Chat is a terrible primary interface for working with people, too. It's fine for cursory stuff, but it doesn't suffice for anything that requires high information throughput. You can use it to follow up on a conversation that you had in person or in a video call, you can use it to check in about something that was fleshed out on a real doc, and you can occasionally use it to brainstorm a quick solution to something.
But at some point in real work, you always need to move up to a higher bandwidth medium. If that medium is going to be text then it's got to involve rigorous specification to avoid ambiguity. If it's going to be quick and casual then it has to have other channels to convey meaning than just the words used—real humans use body language, tone of voice, and back channeling to ensure the message is getting across with high fidelity. There's no such mechanism in chat, which makes it frustrating to use with people or with robots.
- mikepurvis 2y agoI suppose those higher fidelity things are why it's so exhausting trying to voice-command a bot like Siri/Cortana/GA— at the end of the day, they're just doing a straight transcription into text, and then operating on that text. So rather than the machine benefitting from that extra info, it's actually just making it worse by introducing another link in the telephone chain; hence users getting exasperated and giving up to go back to conventional HMI paradigms of keyboard/mouse/touch.
- _ea1k 2y agoIDK, to me text has higher information density and throughput than a video meeting. Ever listened to a swagger file?
- haswell 2y agoThat really depends on the meeting and the nature of the information being shared. If you’re communicating purely technical information about a subject everyone is already aligned on, text is fine. But the information density present in facial expressions, vocal inflection, body language, etc. is significant and much is lost without it.
- _ea1k 2y agoMeh, I go to three types of video meetings. The ones where the speakers have their cameras off, the ones where noone watches the screen, and the ones where its a screenshare. You are right, though. If all your meetings are about persuasion, video and audio will be best. If someone is in a technical role and most of their meetings are like this, that's a bad sign.
- lolinder 2y agoI'm not contrasting voice with text, I'm contrasting chat with voice and with most other forms of text.
- alabastervlog 2y agoText is excellent for communication if all involved parties are decently literate. This, admittedly, means it's very often not excellent.
- lolinder 2y agoText != Chat. Chat is an abbreviated form of text that isn't particularly great for most purposes even among literate people.