Discord: Actually Harmony?
Discord is a pretty popular instant messaging and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service. It got its start in 2015 and has skyrocketed to unimaginable heights. Its userbase is now in the hundred millions and only appears to be growing. Its original intended market was for gaming communication, but has now evolved to a much wider audience. Now, there is use of the freeware even in the classroom. Professors have started implementing it for collaborative problem solving between students or if a student has a quick question to run by them. This is of no coincidence though, there is really great design behind the app.
Let’s start with how the base service works: instant messaging between friends.
You can initiate a chat with anybody if you are friends with them or they allow messages from strangers. More on that, you can create a group to send messages to each other. There’s not much to sending messages but what is there is pretty nifty. Upon sending a message, you can edit it, delete it or even pin it so that others in the DM can see it. For attachments, you get a preview of what you’re about to send before it goes through. This is a really nice feature to ensure images come through correctly, as they could show up differently depending on the file format. This preview also makes sure you don’t send the wrong files to a user. These features give the user a lot of control over the app.
Extending from that, a huge boon to Discord’s messaging is its search bar. The search bar has a bunch of discerning filters to choose from. When you click on the search bar, a list of the filters are shown to you, as well as what you’ve recently searched for. The filters include searching by date, user and if it has attachments. All of these filters are easy to invoke too, all having easy to understand command names. For example, to search if a post has a certain kind of attachment, the user types “has:’insert attachement here’.” The rest of the commands run very similar conventions, asking a question, a colon and then the desired search parameter. Not only is it easy for users to grasp this, it gives a lot of agency to what you can search for. You can search for messages from a certain user, that was before December 2019 but after November 2019, that also have embedded links. It’s very powerful for a search bar, but it’s also very user friendly.
Now for it’s standout feature, video and voice chat!
Discord is known far and wide for having great video and voice chat. Because Discord was designed with gaming in mind, these features were designed with priority. You can either directly chat with people through DMs or in dedicated voice channels you can congregate in. You can even set limits on how many people can join voice channels to avoid crowded discussions. Video chat is no slouch either. You can share your screen, specific programs or your computer’s camera. It also specifies between your screen and other programs. This makes it easy for the user to understand what they’re displaying and avoiding the common blunder of sharing something you didn’t want others to see. And unlike other collaborative apps, these features are available without any paywall behind them. They are fully functional and customizable upon your account creation.
Another huge leg up for Discord: it’s lightweight and easy to access.
A problem with business and collaborative apps is that they can be very intensive on memory to use. As well, they can be tricky to get access into. This is where Discord is actually quite different. Discord is actually very light to process. On desktop, it only takes a tiny bit of memory to run.
Discord is also versatile with its platforms of access. It has full API implementation and can be accessed through mobile, desktop and browser. A lot of collaborative apps can’t all boast this.
Is Discord secure?
Discord is a current and happening app. It is constantly getting updates and support as we speak. The team behind Discord is very active on social media and in development and troubleshooting for the app. They have a dedicated support site of common issues and guides for new users (https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us). They also have an activity site just for monitoring Discord’s status. Along with displaying if Discord is down or not, it also logs the causes of downtime and even graphs out it’s own status.
It is very clear that the love Discord gets from its fans are reciprocated back from the team behind it. So many features and so much support for what is essentially a free app. While it’s taken some time for it to grow root in professional settings, I see Discord becoming the main communicative app for team projects and all other group developmental work.
