Monica: Rename Conversations & Phone Calls

[Venhaus]

In my opinion the current separation of "Conversations" and "Phone Calls" is suboptimal. Conversations in their current incarnation are limited to exchanges via instant messengers while phone calls are only, well, phone calls. This means that in the current state there is no designated way to record conversations that happened in person, via email or through whatever other medium.

I understand that the Conversations tab was added to allow for a more representative documentation of chats, however in this case the label "Conversations" is not fitting - it should be called "Instant Messages", "Chats", or something similar.

At the same time, the current "Phone calls" section title is unnecessarily limiting. Why is this only labelled as phone calls? Due to its free-form nature, this field can be used for any kind of conversation or summary of one, especially those that happened in person. Similarly, the "Last called" item at the top of a contact's page would be more useful if it then was labelled "Last contacted" (or similar) and thus also included the last time you spoke to that person vis-a-vis instead of only via the telephone.

I therefore propose the following changes:

1. Rename "Conversations" to "Instant Messages" (or similar) to emphasize that this is meant as an interface to record instant messaging conversations
2. Rename "Phone calls" to "Conversations" (or similar) to make it more inclusive of all kinds of exchanges, especially those that happened in person, that don't fit the current "Conversations" instant messaging format (or for people like me who prefer summaries of their conversations instead of copying whole chat logs).

I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this!

[tbirrell]

To provide an alternate view, I use the conversations to save important conversations. I don't import every communication. So switching "Last Called" to "Last Contacted" would be equally misleading. Though there is an argument to be made that in this day and age, "Last Called" isn't particularly helpful either.

[Venhaus]

I maybe should not have written "whole" chat logs - I understand that this feature is most likely used for specific messages.

[djaiss]

Thanks for this issue. Glad to see a discussion around this topic.
My philosophy with Monica is to ship features that are very basic and improve them over time. This is exactly the case with phone calls and conversations.

• Rename "Conversations" to "Instant Messages" (or similar) to emphasize that this is meant as an interface to record instant messaging conversations

What if we also add in the conversation type dropdown the ability to record face to face conversations? There is some feedback about this already - in this case, instant messages wouldn't make much sense, would it?

[Venhaus]

The problem I would have with this solution is that in my opinion "normal" conversations don't lend themselves well to an instant-messaging-style interface.

If I want to record a conversation I had with someone in person I would rather say _"We talked about this and that and he made these good points"_ (as is possible with the current "Phone call" field) instead of recording it like _"djaiss said X, I replied Y, djaiss then said Z"_ (as would be the case using the current "Conversations" field).

From a top-level usability view, I regard a general purpose, free-form field as the most important interface for users to record any kind of exchange they have with someone. As an added bonus then, it is great to have to have a separate way of logging conversations that happened via chat services or email in an IM-style interface that represents the structured nature of these exchanges.

[djaiss]

Good point. Food for thoughts here.

[Venhaus]

Well, how do we progress from here? 😄

[alexkadis]

+1 to merge conversations and phone calls

[Venhaus]

Merging even goes one step further. How would you imagine this merge to be implemented @alexkadis?

[pqhf5kd]

Any thoughts on this? I'm for merging with the option to choose message by message or general overview when logging.