| Having recently moved (trying to, at least) to Signal, there are a few UX issues indeed that I can see as show stoppers for greater adoption, especially in the older, non-tech-savvy population: - get rid of the pin as a default option, it will confuse and put people off, keep that in the settings for people who care - allow pictures/files to be sent to multiple targets (users or groups) - this one is SO annoying! - save received media in the gallery automatically by default, most of the time they are precious memories and they need to be easily picked up by cloud uploaders, backup apps etc. Make this an option in the settings for people who care or do not want it. - better error handling (as pointed out by the article) - had friends who joined, but then quit/deleted the app, Signal still shows them.. this needs fixing, too As mentioned in the article, WhatsApp UX is pretty world class, it's smooth, it's fast. Just copy it as much as you can. I have tried to move some of my younger friends over and they appreciated the privacy angle, but I can see unless I actively push for it, they will "unknowingly" revert to WhatsApp. I am holding off trying to migrate my older friends and family who are less flexible with tech stuff, I know I only probably have one shot at this and as it is Signal will fail. I will wait a couple more months and see if things have improved, if not, I'll just push for Telegram.
Telegram is not as good as WhatsApp either UX-wise, but it's much better than Signal.. and the fact they have some really nice apps for desktop without requiring the phone as a "source of truth" is actually a big usability advantage. As others said, it's not that I'm paranoid about state actors and am not adamant on perfect e2e encryption, I just don't want Zuck to take a peak or my children's photos to be used in some FB deep learning face recognition DB or god knows what else. |