Michael-Kellogg
commented
3 years ago Being able to schedule messages is an especially valuable feature when messaging across widely varying time zones.
I am located on the west coast of the US and message frequently to western Europe. There is a nine hour time difference between these locations. I would frequently like to initiate messages during my afternoon/evening, but that is the middle of the night in western Europe. Given that many Signal users are receiving Signal messages on their cell phones, messaging in the middle of their night may not be attractive (or polite). Being able to schedule messages would entirely alleviate this problem.
stale[bot]
brainchild0
indutny-signal
sanjay
tendermario
A key concern with messaging platforms, such as SMS or Signal, is the tension between a user receiving immediate notification of an incoming message, versus simply noticing when reviewing a conversation at a convenient time.
Some SMS clients support enhanced flexibility by allowing message transmission to be scheduled at some particular time subsequent to that time at which it is composed and submitted. The receiving user gains notification of the message, and access to the message itself, only once the scheduled time is reached. Thus, a sending user may submit a message at a time that the receiving user may wish not to be disturbed, without taking further action at a later time when the receiving user may be available to receive notification.
Message scheduling might enhance the usability of the platform.
A further feature improving usability under such kinds of circumstances, but with greater flexibility, might be one that offers the ability to the sending user to mark certain messages as silent. Messages marked as such would appear immediately in the conversation transcript for the receiving user, but without triggering usual notification behavior. A further usability enhancement might allow a sending user to place an entire conversation in a silent mode, such that all messages sent by that user in the conversation would be automatically marked silent, until the user reverts the mode of the conversation.
Broadly, giving some of the control to the sender of whether or how a receiving user is notified of each message may offer a better experience for both, by allowing senders to transmit messages free of concerns over making unwarranted intrusions, and allowing receivers to experience fewer unnecessary interruptions without preventing necessary ones.
The same effect might be generalized by assigning a numeric priority to each message.