DingTalk — An all-in-one mobile workplace powered by Alibaba
Due to Corona Virus, people around the world are blocked at home. Remote work and education become a popularity. In 2020, DingTalk, an all-in-one mobile workplace powered by Alibaba, is used by a big number of people in China, especially it is school’s appointed remote education app.
Actually DingTalk 1.0 is launched by the end of 2014. And current version is the latest 5.0 version and its functions have been expanded. There are four major features：Contacts, Messages, Meetings, and Live.
Contacts & Message
This feature is the same as social media platform, and UI design is almost the same like iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger. Due to its work property, there are several functions like calendar, to-do-list on the top session.
Meeting
The meeting part is one of its another core feature. This part’s UI design is also similar to Zoom and the features are the same.There is one part that I would like to emphasize here. When DingTalk is working on screen sharing function, for host, he/she could not only see their screen which they would like to share, but also a little thumbnail on the corner of the screen that how others see that sharing. Actually when I used zoom to participate my class remotely, I met a situation that my professor complained that they would like to show the screen including their zoom interface but zoom could not achieve that. And when I used DingTalk, I have not met that kind of problem.
Live
The last feature is more commercial. It provides a possibility for host to organize a public and a large number of participators activity, like TedTalk, or launch event.
All in all, DingTalk is more like an app synthesizing the function of Zoom (meeting), Canvas (assignment setting and check, calendar), Google Drive, iMessage and Contacts. At the same time it could connect many extra plugin to assist. On one hand, as an app, it has comprehensive features, on the other hand, due to its too many function how to better organize the interface in order to make it more concise and help new users to get used to it functions are two major concerns.
But, comparing to Zoom, DingTalk’s initial target group is company, the major function design is for better remote work, like clock in & clock off, read & unread message status. However, there are a lot of workers complained some functions like message read & unread status provide a lot of stress for them. Sometimes people have some necessary things need to handle when they receive the boss’ message, usually people would like to delay the response after they have done other things, but their “read status” push them to reply the message as soon as possible.
