Remove video chat list from LH sidebar?

[bcpierce00]

Stephanie and I wonder whether it might be conceptually and visually simpler to just delete the Video Chat Rooms bit of the left sidebar and let people get to these rooms via the People/Places page...

[jon-bell]

This will remove the ability to see who else is in a breakout room while you are in a breakout room. I don't think that's quite the right design.

[bcpierce00]

(a) It will not completely remove this ability -- you just have to open another tab onto People/Places.

(b) The current design is not quite the right thing either:

• If there are a lot of rooms or a lot of people in rooms, it will eat into the space for the PaaG
• it doesn't belong with the program (semantically, it would make more sense on the right)

(c) I'm still concerned about how busy / complex the overall interface is.

[crista]

+1 for removing the video chat list from the left side bar for now. We need to simplify the UI... after ICFP

[bcpierce00]

I will remove it for now

[jon-bell]

For the record, I still think this was a very hasty decision. The key advantage in my mind of our breakout rooms over Zoom’s is that you can tell who is in which breakout room and see “Oh, @bcpierce00 came into this other room - maybe I want to drift over there” - but now this interaction is prohibited. I thought that we had discussed with Stephanie an approach like: Only show the list of video chats in the sidebar if you are in one

[crista]

What I'm about to write won't be for ICFP, but here it is.

I think it's starting to be pretty clear in my head where this is going, and how we can simplify the interface. Basically, a hybrid of Discord and something that doesn't exist yet, as such: a conference program's executor.

Channels should be on the left (like in Slack/Discord), program should be on the right. The middle pane is divided in two halves, the top has the media panel for program activities (the current scene for each user), the bottom has the text chat panel, both of which should be collapsable.

Then we need to focus on two things:

• Left side panel: all the channels -- text, voice/video -- with expandable option to see who's there. We just need to decide what kinds of channels to have pre-made, how people subscribe/unsubscribe to them, how people create new channels, and the dynamic bindings of the contextual channel (called "local chat" in OpenSim), which is the only point of contact with the right-side panel world.

• Right side panel: the execution of the event's program, how to navigate through the available media, whether the execution is automatic or manual (by conference organizers / session chairs), etc.

Specifically, we don't need the contextual chat on the right side panel. The contextual chat is just a special channel listed with the others on the left, under its own category ("local chat" or some other name). When we select a program event on the right, the contextual channel binding changes.

[bcpierce00]

I think I like this, Crista. IMO, two big things it’s missing are (a) some way of watching multiple channels at once, and (b) a really good story about multiple browser windows.

Best,

 - Benjamin

[EdNutting]

Funny, I was just showing Benjamin and Harry a prototype that is a similar idea of simplifying to a Slack/Discord style UI. The initial work is in my branch ui-overhaul in my fork. We should discuss this on Sunday when you've got time?

[EdNutting]

Early work but you can see the basic idea. The sidebar collapses uses the burger button top-left. Various of us were discussing on a video room on ICFP Clowdr ideas for UX/UI - I'll allocate time on Sunday to log them on this ticket.

[crista]

Yes, let's discuss this! But we need to include @bcpierce00 and @jon-bell. Let's coordinate in Slack.