Using Snapchat for project-related communication

Does it sound serious? It’s that super silly messenger app used mostly by teens, isn’t it? Doesn’t the pic say it all?

We like experimenting, so we tried to use Snapchat for a part of project related communication for a couple weeks now. What I can tell so far is that it facilitates an interesting kind of communication that plays very well with strategies described in Async & Remote.

Of course it’s not a good fit for every kind of project-related communication, but there’s one thing where Snapchat shines: overcommunication. You might not appreciate it without understanding of what overcommunication is and why it’s beneficial (or even crucial — especially in work environments which are async & remote).

Overcommunication

It doesn’t mean superfluous communication or —-verbose mode. It’s an ongoing process of broadcasting your status to your teammates so that they may know where you’re at and let them provide feedback if they like. You don’t expect anybody to react. You just give them the opportunity to do it if they like. It’s crucial if you’re remote because you won’t have your colleague walk behind your back and see your screen when you’re stuck.

• It gives an opportunity to have others validate your current approach and let you know if you’re deluded :)
• It lets others get familiar with your work so that it’s easier for them to jump into it later.
• All this without interrupting anyone (and getting them out of their zone), without blocking, without forcing to respond.

You may think of overcommunication as Push-Style Communication, Tell-Don’t-Ask Communication, or even Async Pairing. More on that in Async Remote.

What Snapchat allows (among others)

• it’s super handy to post short videos (recording is literally one click away if the app is open).
• it’s super handy to consume these videos
• and they disappear automatically (this is something that positively affects attention given by consumer)

What are the benefits?

• Broadcasting your status can be less cumbersome. Instead of writing it on slack, just post a video with your head talking. Remote teammates will have a chance to see you :)
• You can also easily record your current screen, show the piece of code you’re talking about, point out a line with your finger. This is all doable with other tools like screenshots, but what I’m arguing is that it’s less “friction” this way.
• You can record a piece of paper where you’ve drawn a diagram as you were trying to understand a particular concept.
• You can do it without pinging anybody. Pinging means someone needs your attention — with overcommunication that mostly isn’t the case.
• It’s easier to just share a thought, a finding, an insight — without even switching to a different window. Just grab your phone, post it, put it away.
• When it comes to watching the videos — it’s also easier. The videos are automatically concatenated and played one after another even when someone was posting them throughout the whole day. You don’t have to click to open the next one.
• You can quickly skip watching a snap (ie. the 10 seconds piece of video) and go to the next one — just one tap. Works really well if you’re not interested in this particular part of the “utterance” and see if there’s something interesting later on.
• It can possibly replace sync video calls in some of the situations where we’d like to have one.
• You can post your updates without consuming new unread ones. Can be nice when you just wanna leave some status from your side, but you don’t wanna get distracted by your teammates’ updates at the moment.
• It’s easy to have some fun sometimes. Try some crazy augmented reality filters. Fun is important too :)

For me it’s maximum communication and minimum friction without violating asynchronicity. Eliminating friction here is very important because overcommunication ideally shouldn’t make you lose focus — which can happen if the process is not effortless enough.

Cons

• I have a feeling that Snapchat is a battery intensive app.
• For a lot of people Snapchat sounds super weird in a professional context.
• Not searchable. I’d intend this for stuff that you don’t plan to be searching for and that you don’t mind disappearing.
• Snapchat’s growth has slowed down and it might not be the top platform in some time, but the style of communication it promoted made it to some other platforms: Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram. Maybe some of them can be used in similar fashion as well. For me Snapchat still has a special vibe to it. UX details can make the whole difference, especially when handiness is so important (see Slack vs competitors).

Protips

• There are group chats & group stories. In case of group stories you can only post a video or a pic. In case of group chats you can additionally text or send a voice message.
• Group stories disappear after 24 hours. Group chats have a different policy (some of them disappear right away or give you a chance to replay).
• Group chats will notify you when there’s something new, group stories won’t — whatever you like.
• Group stories can be easily dumped to a concatenated video — in case some conversation was so valuable that you’d wanna save it for later or share it with others.
• It might be a sensible approach to setup both a group story and a group chat and post snaps to both of them (easily doable) — if you wanna have the benefits of both.
• In case of group stories you need’ll need to rely on “Recent Updates” section to be able to check out newly published content.
• You can easily add a piece of text to a series of videos. It can be a short description of what you’re currently talking about. It might help others quickly decide if they wanna focus on this part or rather skip it.

If you’re not sold on an async workflow (especially when you’re doing remote) I really recommend you to have a look at our Async Remote book (ping us for a discount code if you like).

BTW, in case you didn’t know, it’s been some time since we tried to make sense of Snapchat as developers — not for project communication, though — just like Twitter — who’d think at the beginning that professionals will pick it up? A part of this initiative was the Devsnap Project where developers active on Snapchat can start following each other. There are still a lot of developers

Here are the Snapchat usernames of some Arkency Folks if you wanna get in touch: andrzejkrzywda, pankowecki, mambo_dzambo,szymon.fiedler, mpraglowski, tomdzordzo (me).

Your thoughts?

[Update] Here’s a story of another company employing Snapchat in a workplace. Interesting perspective.