Slapp: get delivered all together
This is a concept I created during my Capstone Project for UCC San Diego Input Interaction Specialization at Coursera. See, we had to choose one of three briefs: Time, Glance, or Change — and to work in terms of chosen brief for the duration of the project. For me, the choice was obvious immediately: Time is both the most elusive and the most dynamic axis in our life. The concept of time, the perception of time can be changed momentarily, and the change can easily go unnoticed.
For some years, I’ve felt that texting is the most difficult human activity in terms of time. All contemporary messengers create an illusion of presence, of outspoken in-person conversation, ignoring the fact that many things in texting differ drastically from what we experience in real life while conversing to another human. But that’s me, right? Who knows what people do and how they feel?
The first surprise awaited me at a park next block where I conducted my first in-person research for what would in two months become Slapp. All three people I spoke to that afternoon (a young cadet, an office worker, and a contractor) told me in perfect concordance about their rule of immediate response. If they see an unread message in any of their social media, they tend to read it right away and answer right away, as well. No one ever thought why: the person on the other end is waiting, why make them wait, why be rude? And that’s how the infinite self-propagating circle of texting is fueled.
Although I watched people in leisurely context and well, I haven’t noticed any need to change how texting works when it’s just a way to have some fun — experience told me that in more strict conditions of team work infinite circle of texting may be quite a problem, as well. People quit team chats because they are too clingy. That was when I came up with the idea I wanted to test.
Texting can be efficient, fun and friendly without mimicking live conversation
But what can it be then, if not a clone of real-life dialogue? What had we been doing before instant messaging? I thought a lot about telegrams: how transparent they were, how much discipline they took to be useful, how efficient they were because every word cost money.
What I eventually came up with was an idea for periodic messenger. We waste a lot of time switching between tasks. If someone distracts you from what you’re doing, when you return to your task, it takes about 15 minutes to ramp up to full speed you had before the distraction. Also, switching between tasks often leads to depression because it robs you of your feeling of fulfillment. Doing everything at the same time amounts to doing nothing. So what if your work chat stopped distracting you? The healthiest idea is to give you space to do what you have to do — and then to slap you with all the texts people sent you at some moment. This moment should be agreed upon, of course. Like this, for example:
The idea usually receives mild to strongly positive feedback, once successfully communicated. A lot of people whom I showed Slapp felt tired of constant switching. The main problem was to communicate the idea. The habits of using other messengers are so strong and the limitations of Slapp are so unexpected, that even the final version of prototype after 4 iterations can easily leave people thinking it was the other guy’s fault to have kept them waiting for almost two hours. Check out the prototype here, if you want to try it for yourself, and feel free to leave comments on it: I am grateful for any type of feedback. Here are some screens, if you don’t feel like link traveling:
The most successful way to explain the idea behind Slap turned out to be this simple video. Maybe because it literally sits you down and explains things to you.
If you like the idea and want some kind of periodic messenger to become a reality, join app’s Facebook page. Some people told me they’d be happy to use Slapp for Facebook — an early prototype I had for social media add-on which does exactly the same thing: periodically delivers your incoming and outgoing messages pacing not you work, but your private life. Who knows, maybe we’ll find out together that’s the way to go.
