zlacker

> they are all "too hard" or something

Users vote with their feet based on cost and UX. While intertia is certainly a thing, there's a reason Zoom got a foothold while others didn't. The ability to send out links and having people join the meeting without creating accounts or manually installing clients first is huge in most real-world scenarios. Could you do that with... Teams? Skype? Hangouts if they weren't gmail users? Do those people know anyone with the knowledge and gumption to host something?

From the beginning of my involvement in FOSS like 25 years ago, developers have griped about non-technical users being intimidated, or even just really annoyed by UX resistance that we consider trivial. That's the primary reasons open source alternatives are alternatives rather than the standard in user-facing software.

>>chefan+(OP)
[The ability to send out links and having people join the meeting without creating accounts or manually installing clients first is huge in most real-world scenarios ]

this is how it used to be, until HTTPS and cloudflare-like hosting solutions, were guzzled back like electric kool-aid. all you really needed was an IP and perhaps a port number if endpoint was behind NAT.

>>rolph+4f
I worked in technical support when techniques like that were de rigeur. Your average adult would be exponentially less likely to navigate that process successfully than a zoom invite. Sure, it's more simple from a technical perspective, but not even close to as simple from a user flow standpoint.

>>chefan+CB
I notice in these comments it’s really hard to drive home User Experience and friction (sometimes!) and what seems easy to you (just an IP address!) is really like talking magic to your average user.

>>chefan+(OP)
You can do that in Google Meet. I just checked in an incognito window, the only thing I needed to enter to join a meeting was a name.

I never really understood why people like Zoom's UX, I find it unintuitive and awkward.

>>prox+Qi1
Yeah, and that makes sense to some extent. We often understand that it's hard to think like someone without our knowledge when writing docs for other developers, and that's more extreme with end users. The hubris is what kills me, though. Empathy is hard, but developers tend to be so arrogant and dismissive, sometimes even disgusted by others not knowing what they know. It's kind of funny: on one hand, many people in tech-- developers, ops, IT, etc.-- have an intense feeling of superiority based on their knowledge, but act like people without that knowledge are imbeciles.

Even worse, it tends to go hand-in-hand with astonishing overconfidence in their understanding of other fields. I've had two other primary careers-- designer, and chef-- and I can't count how many developers have "explained" parts of those fields to me despite knowing I'm a subject matter expert. Like their astonishing intellect and that related Metafilter thread they skimmed makes them authoritative. I get supernova-intensity cringe when I hear other developers shoot off Dunning-Kruger-esque oversimplifications of other fields' genuinely hard problems.

When I hear developers talk about the arrogance of designers, I can't help but laugh... then maybe cry. Many seem genuinely aggrieved that interface designers have more input on the interface design than they do.

>>bspamm+Cx1
Smart update. At the beginning of the pandemic-- the most critical time for Zoom's ramp-up-- Google Meet was only available to Google Workspace users. Their userbase is currently about half of Zoom's, which is a pretty impressive ramp-up. Looks like users have voted with their feet to put it in that position, but that's where intertia does actually make a difference. People aren't constantly evaluating all of their options to see which one works best in case they should switch; they use whatever solution works best when they're evaluating solutions and then stick with that until there's a problem or someone informs them of something better with minimal switching cost.

>>prox+Qi1
Those in HN even today continue to echo the famous Dropbox comment with gusto.

>>satvik+KX2
Indeed