Simplified mode which hides public room functionality

[iiitomo]

Edit by SpiritCroc:

A simplified mode (-> setting) with reduced functionality, hopefully improving accessibility for 'non-tech' users, with following changes:

• Hide public room functionality (rationale: people chatting with strangers on the internet can be considered advanced users)
  • Clicking on + / Rooms goes directly to "Create new room" instead of the intermediate step which allows joining public rooms
  • The "New room" screen would hide the setting to make the room public and publish it in the room directory
  • Hide room address settings in the room settings
• Hide encryption settings (rationale: encryption is hard to explain to users without background knowledge) -> Always encrypt by default when creating a new room (like Element does)
• Possibly add a prompt after first login whether to use simple or advanced mode, or maybe also show once in retrospective for existing users (rationale: optimally, 'non-tech' users do not need to configure any settings, which might be challenging, but we probably have a significant amount of users who would miss public room joining if we hide it by default)
  • Possible descriptions:
    • "I only plan to chat with people I know"
    • "I'm looking for full functionality, including the possibility to join public rooms"

Original issue

Context Users in my family only use the Direct Messages, and don't use the Rooms, so would like to hide all features related to Rooms.

Solution I'd like In Settings, I'd like to find a 'Hide Rooms' option (toggle) that removes all Room features. (maybe this should be possible only if user hasn't joined any Room)

Thanks for your great work!

[SpiritCroc]

This doesn't sound too useful to me. At the protocol level, direct chats and rooms are currently the same thing except for one flag that tells if a chat is direct or not. You can also create multiple "direct" chats with the same user, and invite other users into "direct" chats.

[iiitomo]

Hi SpiritCroc, I agree but non-tech users don't know that. So I'll try to reformulate :-) The purpose here is to make Schildi more attractive for 'non-tech' people, e.g. coming from Whatsapp/Facebook Messenger and similar. These don't use/need public rooms (at least by default), and are uncomfortable with the 'Direct messages'/'Rooms' double-choice of the (+) button.

My first (and preferred) proposal is to show a very simplified UI by default: a simple (+) button that goes directly to the 'Direct messages' menu. But with possibility for intermediary/advanced users, via Settings (or top-right menu for easier access) to 'Enable public rooms' that would switch to the (+) button with double-choice.

Alternatively (I like this one too), you could propose to user: 'Do you want a simple interface without Public Rooms? (public rooms can be enabled later on)' in the start screens just after install. This would trigger start choice between (+) button with Simple or Double-choice.

And worst case, please just add in Settings the possibility to switch to simple (+) button, I will use it when I install/show Schildi on the phone of my 'non-tech' contacts.

What do you think ?

[SpiritCroc]

From how I understood your initial suggestion, I thought you wanted to hide all kinds of group chats, including private groups, which is a common use-case for most users - the only messengers that do not feature this natively that come to my mind right now would be SMS and E-Mail probably. Whatsapp definitely allows for group chats; I don't know about Facebook, which I never used.

Now after reading your reformulation, it makes more sense to me: the keyword is "public" rooms. So to check if I understood it correctly now what such a setting would do:

• Clicking on + / Rooms goes directly to "Create new room" instead of the intermediate step which allows joining public rooms
• The "New room" screen would hide the setting to make the room public and publish it in the room directory
• Hide room address settings in the room settings

Is this what you want? Is there any other public room functionality that should be affected?

[iiitomo]

Yes, very good idea! I think you understood my point now :-) Please also hide the setting to disable encryption, in my opinion the private rooms should always be encrypted.

[SpiritCroc]

Good idea, I updated the issue with my current thoughts on the topic, so I can remember them faster when I find time to look into this.