Chat Interfaces
Started August 2021
Current chat systems work badly for high signal conversations.
Historically, chat conversations have always only been scrollable on the Y axis, or time, and as time progresses, you keep moving further down.
But this has also meant that we severely restrict the kinds of things we can do.
In high signal group settings, you want to allow conversations to take place with minimal disruption.
This experiment began with us wondering if we could reimagine what chat interfaces looked like.
What could message references look like in a conversation where it's important to have access to both past and current context?
Conversations are usually messy, and people tend to refer to things they've said in the past.
It would be cool to see if we could not jerk them out of the moment and instead use the space around the 'current' window to add meaning to the conversation.
What if you could 'compress' time by scroll left or right? Conversations should collapse themselves into threads, for better organization.
Better threading
it should be possible to thread multiple messages together to automatically create a new thread. This allows threads to be cultured across time and not just in the moment.
Real time, emotive texting
A friend was playing with streaming text across windows and we discovered that it really unlocks something special in the conversation.
The feeling of being able to see someone hesitating, typing fast in excitement or slowly in frustration is pretty incredible.
What next?
We've built a demo, that will hopefully take over our group's conversation and become the primary way that we talk to one another.