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Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

pragli.com

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Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#91

Post by mosselman »

andyfleming wrote: post #54
p_l wrote: post #2

So it removes one of the biggest benefits of remote work, ability to concentrate?

We use Pragli, and I feel like it's the opposite. Rather than a Slack back and forth to see if someone is available, setting up a video conference, connecting, etc, you can pop in and say "hey, you have a minute?". They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?". It's like stopping by someone's desk. If they really wanted to be heads down they can be in do not disturb mode. They can still show as online (so their pre…

I am not sure you really know how concentration works.

For example:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-28923-001

"We found that cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants did not directly interact with a mobile device during the task."

Imagine then what damage random people's voices asking you things while working would do to your concentration.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#92

Post by jiofih »

mosselman wrote: post #91
andyfleming wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Pragli, and I feel like it's the opposite. Rather than a Slack back and forth to see if someone is available, setting up a video conference, connecting, etc, you can pop in and say "hey, you have a minute?". They can say "no" or "can you come back in 10?". It's like stopping by someone's desk. If they really wanted to be heads down they can be in do not disturb mode. They can still show as online (so their pre…

I am not sure you really know how concentration works. For example: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-28923-001 "We found that cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants did not directly interact with a mobile device during the task." Imagine then what damage random people's voices asking you things while working would do to your con…

Did you read the Pragli article at all? It specifically addressss this.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#93

Post by p_l »

jiofih wrote: post #92
mosselman wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you really know how concentration works. For example: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-28923-001 "We found that cellular phone notifications alone significantly disrupted performance on an attention-demanding task, even when participants did not directly interact with a mobile device during the task." Imagine then what damage random people's voices asking you things while working would do to your con…

Did you read the Pragli article at all? It specifically addressss this.

I did. I see no mention of special do not disturb handling, instead high value placed on others being able to start voice communication without waiting for you to accept - the only thing that is opt-in is answering them, by the time your attention is already wrecked.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#94

Post by tom_mellior »

p_l wrote: post #93
jiofih wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the Pragli article at all? It specifically addressss this.

I did. I see no mention of special do not disturb handling, instead high value placed on others being able to start voice communication without waiting for you to accept - the only thing that is opt-in is answering them, by the time your attention is already wrecked.

> no mention of special do not disturb handling

There's a section on setting manual statuses, including one specific example of "focussing - do not disturb". The animated screengrab below suggests that if someone wants to contact you with such a status set they will get a window informing them and the option to bother you anyway. Not sure how special you would want your handling, but something is definitely there. Though it isn't really clear to me if the example in the screengrab is based on a status or on a calendar entry.

I do agree that this isn't something I would want to work with, and as I wrote elsewhere, if my company had this I would set it to perpetual DND or just not run the software at all.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#95

Post by cryptica »

6510 wrote: post #74
jonas21 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, you built Sqwiggle! A couple of friends and I used to work together remotely and we used it every day. It was awesome -- just the right balance between being unobtrusive yet easy to have a quick discussion when needed. We loved it so much, we even made a (much less-polished) clone after you shut down so we could continue with the same workflow.

I think many to one eventually becomes the real challenge. IOW how to get the message to the lowest ranking person able to deal with the issue depending on its content.

I think it's still fine. My experience with many-to-many conversation is that there is always someone whose computer is configured in such a way that it causes everyone's speech to echo and makes it difficult to understand. With a walkie-talkie approach, you bypass this problem entirely.

I think probably the commenter's startup failed because of competition from big hyped, well funded players like Slack. Maybe when the hype settles, they would have a chance. Timing is everything.

Only a handful of lucky few who are well connected don't have to worry about competitors, everyone else needs to assume a competitive landscape full of noise and misinformation.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#96

Post by p_l »

tom_mellior wrote: post #94
p_l wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. I see no mention of special do not disturb handling, instead high value placed on others being able to start voice communication without waiting for you to accept - the only thing that is opt-in is answering them, by the time your attention is already wrecked.

> no mention of special do not disturb handling There's a section on setting manual statuses, including one specific example of "focussing - do not disturb". The animated screengrab below suggests that if someone wants to contact you with such a status set they will get a window informing them and the option to bother you anyway. Not sure how special you would want your handling, but something is definitely there. Th…

The resigned me would accept that DND mode because somehow it would be made hard to work without this software, possibly with HR involved. The naive me would think there's going to be something better or that people would actually respect that. The cynical experienced me wants a progressively higher level of pain delivered before you can call someone in DND mode.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

xfalcox wrote: post #45
leetrout wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I LOVE having always on push to talk audio like mumble or discord. If you want to focus just log off. If you want to chat with the group jump in. Want to have a side convo without screen share? Pop to another channel. Mumble (speex codec) is great quality and low latency. Just has a poor UI / UX.

I'm trying to convince my team to adopt a opt-in, voice only watercooler like that for some time, without success so far. I makes a lot of sense to me, who have been doing this for over a decade with my friends. Are you busy, don't join / mute yourself / go to the afk channel. Are you waiting for a long build, just reading HN, between tasks? Join the channel and people can bond and talk about work/life.

Do you know a voice chat like this where I could get real-time information whether or not someone is there without having to join?

We use Hangouts and WhereBy (formerly appear.in) for some projects, but when you're in the "about to join" screen, the list of other people in the room isn't updated past initial load.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#98

Post by mprev »

andyfleming wrote: post #55
chrisfrantz wrote: post #6

I’m pretty sure we don’t actually need any remote specific tools. The last thing I want is random coworkers suddenly speaking in my headphones.

You can opt-out of the click to connect type of calls by setting the option in your status.

Opting out isn't free, though.

It's a social signal and one that, potentially, brings with it additional stress as you're actively opting out of something your colleagues/superiors believe is good enough an idea that they've implemented it.

Re: Building a walkie-talkie for remote work

#99

Post by _-___________-_ »

dsaffy wrote: post #42

Quick note from the author: Pragli has a feature that is inspired by a walkie-talkie. Pragli itself is not just an online walkie-talkie. Check out our homepage if you want to learn more about Pragli (pragli.com)

May I suggest that "Building a walkie-talkie for remote work" might not be a good way to market it then?

As a remote worker for more than 10 years, the horror of the idea almost stopped me even clicking the link.

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