[mortenjorck]

The choice to use color as a primary axis for differentiating users in a thread is interesting. I can see the appeal in it – disentangling voices at a glance is potentially high-value in a group conversational UI – but it also comes at a pretty high cost in terms of visual complexity, as evidenced by some of the reactions.

Another drawback to assigning colors to users is that you tend to run out quickly: Do those users carry their bubble colors across the entire workspace? If they do, in a company of more than ten or so people, you end up with repeats, and threads where everyone will be the same or similar colors. Conversely, if colors are assigned dynamically per thread, it will be confusing switching context and having the same person appear in different colors!

If I were designing something like this, I'd look into other axes on which to vary chat bubbles to promote differentiation. Avatars are a reliable source of high-entropy variance, so maybe you could utilize them in a novel way. It could even be a generating a combination of colors using a scheme similar to the old iTunes album cover color matching.

Anyway, it's an exciting product, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes!