Wire-ios: Voice message UX suggestions

[anatoli26]

I get a lot of complaints from users I invite (some quite severe) about voice messages UX. And taking into account that (IMO) the voice messages is the second most important use case for any modern messenger, here are some suggestions to improve its UX.

First of all, and this issue also badly affects me: I can't get Wire to start recording on the first press of the mic icon. Sometimes it takes up to 4 tries (extremely annoying as you can imagine). I believe the problem is the sensitivity/active area/activation surface % of the button AND the fact that the bottom space dedicated to the buttons also activates the swipe functionality, so sometimes a button press is interpreted instead as a millimetric swipe.

So the 1st suggestion is to remove swipe from the buttons area.

The 2nd suggestion is to enhance the activation area/surface %. I believe that for any press-and-hold in the vicinity of the mic button, no matter how small is the pressure surface (to a reasonable value, say >=20-25%), it should activate it. Same for the force-press: no other buttons nearby have any reason for press-and-hold or force-press activation.

The 3rd suggestion is to place the mic button where the sand watch (hourglass) is now. The current place of the sand watch is a privileged location. It could have a significantly bigger activation surface, also no confusion with respect to nearby buttons' activation surfaces. And it stands apart visually, no need to look for the needed button in the buttons row.

The rationale here is that (at least for me and all my contacts) for 4 months that I use Wire, I haven't pressed the sand watch button yet (simply not needed it yet), but I send more voice messages than text messages.

The 4th suggestion is to send a voice message being recorded just after the button is released (like all other messengers do). The rationale here (and this is the issue that gets the most severe complaints) is that the users are already extremely accustomed to the common behavior of other messengers, they just press-and-hold the mic button, record the message, release the button and turn off the screen/switch to another app or chat inside Wire without checking the screen. Then, when they return to the chat, they realize that either the voice message disappeared completely or it's sitting there awaiting the green check click. When this repeats all the time, they become frustrated to the point that they insist on returning to wapp/telegram.

I personally like the possibility to be able to take an action after recording a message, but this is not the case with all my contacts. So the suggestion is actually not to remove the current behavior altogether, but to make it either selectable in the options (with the default set to "send voice message right after button release") AND/OR to activate the current behavior of showing the 3 buttons (reproduce, send, cancel) when the user swipes to the left, i.e. now in wapp/telegram on swiping to the left during the recording it is canceled altogether, but we could show the 3 buttons instead.

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A suggestion unrelated to voice UX: change the order of the other buttons. I would place the sand watch on the 2nd page/row (the one that is shown with the 3-dots button) and bring to the first row the ping button. The GIF button could be hidden altogether before any text is entered in the message field (it does nothing without text), and when some text is entered, it appears to the left of the 3-dots button, shifting to the 2nd row the button that was there before.

Consider the following layout. 1st row:

2nd row:

When some text is entered in the message input field, GIF appears at the place of the ping button and ping is shifted to the 2nd page/row.

By the way, I bet 99% of mainstream users don't understand and will never use the GIF button, also I believe it's a privacy issue - the text from the input field is sent to an external service (could be an accidental press for some sensitive long message), so the GIF button could be always on the 2nd row actually - OR (better yet) the order of buttons and if to hide any of them could be made selectable in the Advanced settings (I would remove drawing, GIF & clip buttons, this way I would have only one row of buttons so no need for the 3-dots button).

Here is a possible non-swipable area and the voice button activation area (with 20% or more of surface pressed activating it):

[mikeger]

Hey @anatoli26 ! Thanks for the feedback, it's really valuable one. We would need some time to process it.

[priiduzilmer]

@anatoli26 Hi. We have a new design for the input area that takes care of all of the above issues. In addition to that, what you suggest regarding removing the swipe gesture from the area, makes a lot of sense as well. The main concern now is to find the development time to implement this… it still may take a while, but we will definitely do it…

[stacktrust]

Some people use the timer/hourglass extensively, and would like to see it improved, e.g. to quickly toggle between the last-used time and untimed messages. I never use audio messages.

Please do not allow audio to be sent without confirmation. This would be a privacy violation. I have several times pressed the microphone button by accident and would like to remove the microphone icon/option on a per-conversation basis, to eliminate the risk of unintended audio broadcast. This is especially problematic in a large group.

[anatoli26]

@priiduzilmer, thanks for considering the suggestions.

@richpersaud, wapp/telegram have an accidental press prevention: if the voice button is pressed for less than some time (I guess some 500-700ms, that is much longer than a typical "click" on a button), they don't send the recording. Anyway, I also like the current way of handling the voice messages too, but the mainstream users don't care. And they are some 90-95% of the user-mass of any popular messenger. Actually, an app becomes popular when the masses start using it.

What I always thought as a solution, is to permit advanced customization. Say, in the advanced settings there could be a check-box "I'm advanced user", that would show additional advanced options in all configuration sections. In the View/Interface section there could be the options I previously mentioned to show/hide the input buttons and to reorder them. But these advanced options would have to be set by default to what the masses expect/are already accustomed to.

This way the mainstream users feel comfortable and the advanced users can adapt the app to their special needs.

[stacktrust]

If Wire is changed to send audio without user confirmation, it may be less appealing to people who care about security, e.g. corporate users. Without user confirmation before sending an audio message, pocket "dialing" could broadcast audio in unwanted situations, e.g. business meetings.

In 2018, EU GDPR regulations take effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation. If someone holds their phone without looking at the screen, accidentally pressing a button for 700ms, should that count as legal consent for audio broadcast?

One workaround for unwanted audio broadcast would be to prevent Wire from accessing the microphone. This would make Wire useless for live voice/video calls, which have more use cases than asynchronous voice/video messaging. Wire can choose a product vision that goes beyond copying/cloning the interface of competing apps.

[anatoli26]

@richpersaud, IMO you're exaggerating a bit the issue. For security-sensitive users don't you think that the screen should be locked when a device is placed in the pocket? Because if not, someone could steal it and you'd have much larger problems than accidental mic press. Do you have any statistics on how widespread is the "pocket dialing" problem for people who care about security?

Anyway, the ideal solution, as already mentioned twice, is to permit users to configure buttons so everyone is happy. Let's hope Wire team finds time to implement it.

With respect to "copying/cloning the interface", wapp and especially telegram interface is extremely well polished for the functionality they provide. Don't you think that the UX team alone at whatsapp is much larger than the entire Wire team? What about their feedback channel with millions of beta users? There's nothing wrong to take the best approaches already tested on billions of users instead of reinventing the wheel.