Comms Product Values

What are the fundamental principles of what we’re solving for in order of importance?

Maximize deep work (outside of communication)

Prevent false dopamine loops, information priority and interrupts, scheduled delivery, reduce communication anxiety, make sure that people can do their real work, “minimum amount of communication necessary to do your job effectively, but not less”

Performance (inside of communication)

• Hotkeys, latency, reducing anything that breaks flow while writing communications

• Uptime is crucial because people rely on this tool to do work

• We need to maintain trust that messages have been delivered and received

Filtering (signal to noise)

• Solve the signal-to-noise ratio of information

• Do you have the information you need to do your job effectively?

• Information priority

Discoverability

• Can you find the information you need?

• Search must be a first-class citizen

• “Fight until your dying breath the formation of information silos”

User Experience Values

Minimalism

The aesthetic is not intended to be artistic or stylistic. The primary colors are black and white, with single-pixel black lines and shades of grey.

Don’t go out of your way to make it an art piece - this is a functional tool and it’s not intended to look pretty. We don’t want people to feel bad using the tool, but keep in mind that we want people to spend the minimum time needed to handle their communications

Color is for Actions

The app is black and white with as little styling as possible.

Color should almost exclusively be used to draw attention when an action is needed. Otherwise, keep it in grey tones.

Nudge Towards Hotkeys

Shortcut All the Things - Why We Emphasize Keyboard Shortcuts

We want to nudge people towards using hotkeys for frequently used actions. Most people resist learning them, but once they do, they’re anywhere from 10% to 50% more productive, depending on the tasks they’re doing on a regular basis.

New Information At The Bottom

We want to avoid nested threading confusion, where you don’t know where new information lives. Just like with email, you should be able to scroll to the bottom of a page and know that it contains the latest information.

Use Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for Discoverability

For infrequently used functionality, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are preferred. They also serve the purpose of allowing for the discoverability of new features that they might not have known about.

We should always nudge people towards using hotkeys, but interfaces are useful for

Not a Slot Machine

We want to break the pattern that email and Slack have taught us. We’ve been taught that we need to check our communication tools every 6 minutes on average and that deep work is an afterthought.

We want to make sure we build a tool that helps detox people from compulsively checking their communications tool every few minutes.

Accessibility over Elegance

Err on the side of accessibility and clarity over design aesthetic. Use lots of tooltips, simple, clear buttons, and language, and don’t worry about things that look redundant or awkward if they improve accessibility.