i'll take it one further and say that having a messenger app that shows "online" or "active" status is not something I like. In addition to the problems with having an app that sends an indicator to the other party that somebody is actively typing.<p>I like how Signal just shows that the person exists as a contact. Whether they're awake or not, or active, or idle is opaque to me and I'm totally fine with that.<p>One of the <i>reasons</i> for text based chat/messenger apps, going all the way back to the earliest days of IRC, is the benefit in having asynchronous communications. If I absolutely need an immediate answer from someone or a realtime 1:1 conversation on something urgent I'll call them on the phone instead.<p>In things like facebook messenger I bet that 99% of users never dig into the settings to turn OFF the "show your activity status to other people" option.<p>For something like a work place communication tools such as Slack I can understand the purpose of setting yourself active or idle manually to indicate whether you're available for messages, or in a different time zone, or whatever. That's a different use case.
Glad someone brings up this issue. Intrusive and “slippery” UI made me use external text editors to write most of what I send on web platforms. I have social anxiety and even the thought that someone can see that I am writing stresses me out because then I feel pressured to send something to not keep them waiting (and I am a very slow writer). It is similar when I see someone else writing.<p>I understand that this may not be an issue for most people, but for me it is just another stress factor which keeps me from interacting with other people (other examples are the reading checkmark and the uncertainty if hitting enter sends the message or not). It would be fine for me if it was opt-in or at least can be turned off.
On the flip side I greatly prefer the indicator. It lets me know if I should wait for a response or move on to other things. When I message someone I wait a few seconds to see if they start typing and if they do I just wait and if not I can start focusing on something different.
This article touches on something that I have been recently thinking about - remote work vs. async work. Remote work is in vogue these days but a lot of these companies don't allow or encourage async work. They equate remote work with async work but then institute tools like slack which are antithetical to async work. Typing indicators are one such way where slack encourages synchronous work.
Non-disableable typing indicators is one of the few things I very much dislike about Slack. I don't want people to see whether I'm typing, and this means I have to use an external editor. (The big other thing is @here/@channel notifications by default being on. No fucking thanks -- I turn that shit off on almost every channel.)
Perhaps it should be more obvious to everyone if the particular form of communication you are using is meant to be synchronous or asynchronous. Talking on the phone is clearly synchronous and sending emails is clearly asynchronous. However everything else seems to have gotten confusing. People have started moving what was traditionally forum based long term asynchronous communication to Discord.
Things I wish messaging apps had:<p>1. Forward a message to someone else. Sometimes you're not the best person to answer, but a colleague is. Forwarding should be easy and feature minimal friction.<p>2. Auto-deleting of messages in a DM after X _messages_ (e.g. only the last 100 messages are retained as scrollback). It forces you to document knowledge in more suitable forms; than having it lost in DM silos. Furthermore, it keeps conversations with your regular contacts more candid and natural; but retains the information and context for infrequent contacts.<p>3. No typing status (thanks Cardinal!)
Typing status is one of the worst UX misfeatures ever devised, and any app that includes them automatically comes across as amateurish, as though the project manager was just ticking boxes rather than actually bothering to consider the experience of using the app. I applaud any attempt to put more nails in this coffin.
Never heard of Cardinal either, and I like that they don't show typing status. If I see someone is typing in a Slack channel, or typing to me privately, it takes all my focus away until it is complete. Interesting though that they don't show their pricing on the website. Why's that?
Chat is not asynchronous communication. It's not the best synchronous communication, sure, but it's certainly not asynchronous. Dropping typing indicators isn't necessarily going to make everything more asynchronous. There are business patterns and pressures that push us to need realtime or semi-realtime answers. And so often, the tool we use for that is chat. True asynchronous communication is a change in business, not just the tools we use.<p>Typing indicators can be useful in some situations. It's nice not having to wait for someone to finish a thought to know that an issue is being addressed. Heavyweights can jump into a conversation and pause it immediately so people aren't spinning their wheels trying to figure out something they really don't know much about.<p>It's also useful in 1:1 chats to know if the person on the other side is there or not. If I don't see an indicator (or read-receipt) in the next few seconds, I'll go make another cup of coffee.
MS Teams has the worst ever "typing status" implementation I've ever seen. In certain cases it shows you're typing by just having the conversation opened, which is extremely frustrating. Maybe just because the cursor is in the text box. It should only show typing if I have at least 1 letter...
I’ve never heard of Cardinal but I liked the fact you could actually see what people were typing, character by character, in ytalk. Sped up a lot of conversations.
> In most discussion apps that show your typing status, you feel pressure to wait for your peers to finish typing and sending a message before typing one yourself.<p>> wait for those above them to speak up first<p>Do others think of these as universal rules? Common? Situational? Non-existent?<p>Reading the OP, I fear I don't know the rules at all. I've participated in online forums in every medium and for a long time, and never thought about these. Maybe I've been disruptive or rude without realizing it. :(
Typing status aside, there's nothing worse than a semi-realtime conversation.<p>A true realtime conversation, rapid chat replies, is fine and sometimes needed when something important is happening.<p>A true async conversation that is slow and may take days, is also fine.<p>A semi-realtime conversation though is the horror. A "realtime" conversation where for some reason the other party takes 2 minutes to type any response, every single message. The 2 minutes is enough of a wait to get enraged but too short to go do something else.<p>My solution: call the person unannounced. Just say: "I figured it'd be quicker to talk directly". This forces them to drop whatever the hell else they were doing and get to the damn point.<p>Intrusive? No. Not if you let me wait a full hour for what should be a 5 minute interaction.
If you're stuck using Slack and don't like their behavior of sharing typing status, I made a browser extension years ago that blocks that: <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slack-hide-typing/oeedcdnohdcpcadbjakljhnmdlhcgnch" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slack-hide-typing/...</a>
I think its interesting that this article isn't about <i>your opinion</i> on typing status, its about the user story they are building that messenger for. Yet most of the comments are about an opinion on typing status in general. So... what do people think about the cardinal messenger and their exclusion of typing status?
At a place where I used to work, event systems triggered by the in-house instant messaging app were inundated with "typing status change" events.<p>They could be filtered out, but it made me think I'd resist that feature in my instant messenger app.
I wish Matrix/Element had optional read receipts and typing status. In some circumstances, I prefer to avoid the artificial time pressure added by the knowledge that others can see when you have read their messages, as well as the sense of commitment from starting to type a message.
Anyone remember Google Wave? My friends and I used to have conversations and being able to see live input on multiple threads was so good for speeding up conversations as you'd be able to see what they're all typing at the same time. Shame that got canned.
zulip allows configuring both your “typing” indicator and online status indication.<p>Twist takes it one step further and has no online indicator at all; twist is a somewhat different paradigm though.
> Inclusive By Default<p>> We all tend to operate within explicit and implicit hierarchies within our teams. Explicitly we know we have a manager we should defer to, and that there are executives and other roles that are important to the team. Implicitly we know there are people with more experience in particular topics or simply more social capital within the team. If you see someone above you in either of those hierarchies, you're more likely to pause and listen, and potentially to decide it's not worth the effort to bring your ideas forward.<p>> Our goal by removing typing indicators is to help teams build environments where anyone can think through an idea and bring it forward without having to wait for those above them to speak up first. We want everyone to feel included in discussions when they have an important idea to bring to the table.<p>We make a chat app for teams with a clear chain of command (I don’t know just going by context). By removing this one super-modern chat app quirk we will be able to say that we are “inclusive by default”, even though the whole context that your team operates in contradicts our stated aim.<p>I don’t know I just think that the hierarchy of the group trumps such trivialities.