[guardian-dev] Fwd: [liberationtech] Heml.is - "The Beautiful & Secure Messenger"

[Guy Tavor]

Sorry for jumping in:

If Gibberbot is targeting everyone and want to become a "WhatsApp"
alternative, then - yes - product design (including "beauty") is very
important, and still is a long way from market leaders. When I was still at
Google, we ran some usability tests from which I've learnt some surprising
product-design truths, manily around how a person's mind solidifies their
opinion based on sensory inputs it is not aware of.
The most mind-blowing (for me anyway) example was around how
people perceive search-results as of higher-quality if they come in 50ms
earlier. So - "beauty" is just a general name for a "pleasing product" - it
should not disturb the eye, UX should be intuitive, product should be very
fast and responsive, product should give value within 30 seconds after
installation.

If the target audience are people who depend their lives / careers /
well-being on secure channel chat, then "Beauty", speed, usability and even
performance is only secondary.

My 2 cents.

G


Guy
*scoompa*


On 11 July 2013 00:05, Nathan of Guardian <nathan at guardianproject.info>wrote:

> On 07/10/2013 04:58 PM, Lee Azzarello wrote:
> > Many of the critical use cases for
> > secure messaging have a pretty bad taste. Other's don't. I like to
> > explore the role of beauty in software tools, since beauty is
> > subjective.
>
> I like to think that Gibberbot is beautiful on the inside. We hope soon
> its acne will clear up, and those braces we have been investing in will
> straighten out its teeth.
>
> +n
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