Facebook and How UIs Twist Your Words | Hacker News Reader

Facebook and How UIs Twist Your Words

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252 pointsleavjenn74 comments

I think it's very important to note that the writer of this post deliberately split the chat version into 4 separate messages instead of one, while it's really only a single message (and you can send a single message with line breaks on Facebook).

This changes the perception drastically and, more importantly, isn't a fair comparison. The "control" wasn't presented as 4 different messages and it makes total sense that sending more messages would appear more desperate.

Consider other mediums:

* Phone: someone leaving 4 voicemails in a row is perceived as super desperate in comparison to someone who leaves a single voicemail of the same total length. This is literally a sitcom trope.

* Email: someone sending 4 different emails (1 per paragraph) would definitely create a different (negative) impression than someone sending a single email

The author pretends to be demonstrating a way that the Facebook UI twists a message but is actually just affirming what is likely a universal trait of messaging: sending more messages before a response signals social awkwardness and desperation.

It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter", I believe only a few percent of facebook users know that shortcut. So if you want to create a longer message on facebook than "sup? wanna hangout?" you probably will compose a few messages and treat them as one.

>It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter", I believe only a few percent of facebook users know that shortcut

This convention is used in a lot of IMs on desktop that predate Facebook

Yes, and only a small percentage of users knew about it then too.

> It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter"

Sadly, it depends on the exact input field used. I believe that in full-conversation, "shift+enter" means "send", but in brief mode, "shift+enter" means "newline".

Shift+enter is new line in all the contexts, though. Are you quite certain you've seen it elsewise?

There used to be a difference between what shift+enter meant on facebook. I'm glad to hear they corrected it.

This is not the case with my setup. Win7 Chrome

> It might look like this because new line in facebook chat is "shift+enter", I believe only a few percent of facebook users know that shortcut

Perhaps, and maybe Facebook should be criticized for making shift+enter less obvious. But it's still there and, in general, when I see an "email-like" Facebook message it has line breaks done properly.

IIRC or previously, there was a checkbox in chat (esp. fullscreen chat) that changes the behavior of enter - newline or send message.

I have to agree. Or even if people know of it, it's simply easier to press Enter than Shift + Enter.

Thinking about it I don't think I know a single person who uses shift + enter aside from myself. I went back and checked my last 20 chats...no one used it. In a way, the separate messages help organize separate thoughts a bit better.

It’s a fair comparison … just because your own suspicions are confirmed doesn’t mean it’s not one.

To be honest, I find this criticism baffling and confusing. I would agree that I would want to dig deeper now and figure out the exact variables that explain the difference – but what we have here is an extremely compelling starting point and an extremely interesting difference.

How is it a fair comparison though? In a study, you should clearly express what variable(s) you're changing with each variation and only change those.

In this case, the author varied both the number of messages and the medium. That makes it impossible to say which is actually the cause of the effect, and I speculate that the number of messages is the better explanation.

It's like comparing the reliability of USPS and UPS by sending 4 different packages on the former and 1 on the latter. That's obviously not a valid study.

There are many hundreds of variables that are different between the variants … you chose to focus on this one for some weird reason. Such is comm research. There is no other way, there really isn’t.

This makes sense as a starting point.

The author did not vary the number of messages. The author sent the same number of messages in both cases. Facebook's "Full Conversation" view automatically collapses multiple messages together, but the author was explicit in that they sent the messages in exactly the same fashion:

"As well, there have been a few comments on how each messaged as typed. Please note that both Facebook Chat and Facebook Full Conversation allow you to send a new message on pressing enter, which I did in both cases. The input was identical, the visual output was not."

Furthermore doesn't facebook actually merge messages sent in quick succession? So you'd only get this effect if the messages were sent with some decent time between them, which might also be what people are reacting to.

> This changes the perception drastically

That's the entire point. Different UI's can radically change perception!

Facebook could have merged those four messages. Some UIs do that. In Slack there is no different in sending 1 message on 4 lines or 4 messages each 1 line each. The observable result is identical.

But Facebook didn't do that. So the perception was one thing. A different UI and it'd be perceived differently. Just like the author was trying to say!

The problem is that the author didn't give the same input to all 3 UIs. On Facebook, she sent each paragraph as a new message but the "control" was presented as a single message.

Email clients also don't merge multiple messages sent in rapid succession. Does that mean they're "twisting your words?"

I'd argue the input was the same in the three cases: "Hey! Press enter What a show last night! Pretty sure my ears will be ringing for the next week. lol enter [etc.]"

The way the UI handled those "enters" made all the difference.

> sending more messages before a response signals social awkwardness and desperation.

I just fundamentally disagree. I'll often have text convos where we're both spitballing multiple messages and crossed thoughts all because each individual line is sent separately. Similarly when replying to someone who sent me a long message I will often have a send event per point.

Facebook, for example, has a "shift to send" option which pretty much encapsulates this thinking of each pseudo paragraph will be a separate message and that's fine, normal, it'll only show as one "new" message on my facebook homepage.

Equating voicemail/email to IM is just absurd since they represent longform communication mediums, not shortform ones.

To be clear, I don't actually think this means you're desperate.

I'm just offering an alternative (and, in my view, more consistent) explanation for the survey's results.

But I assume you're doing this with a friend with whom you often text. It's a totally different situation when you're texting with an acquaintance, especially a new one. You have less history to base judgments off of, so you rely on heuristics to a much greater degree (the above quote being one of them).

If you're on a phone or a tablet, there is no way to press shift-enter. So if you did the exact same sequence of keystrokes into Faceboom chat or email you'd get different results.

For Facebook Messenger on iOS , the "return" button on the keyboard only creates line breaks. To send the message you have to click the send button above the keyboard.

Huh, didn't know that. I never use Messenger.

I don't understand this notion.

I disagree that sending more messages before a response is a "universal trait of messaging" that signals social awkwardness and desperation.

I communicate with many of my friends of FB Messenger (and SMS etc.) and write my thoughts down quite liberally, spreading them across several different "messages". Sometimes I'll literally type a paragraph by typing one sentence at a time and pressing enter after completing each one. I guess it's a "fuck it, we'll do it live" mentality to writing.

As an aside, I'd love to see some research or discussion (perhaps someone knowledgeable can point it out?) about that very phenomena - writing very short sentences in succession over messenger and the relation of that to a in-person conversation.

You have to keep the context of the medium in mind when describing this. Voicemails and emails are one thing and are meant to carry an entire cohesive message of longer sizes.

Chat is intrinsically different and almost every single chat conversation I've had in my life has responses broken down into multiple lines. It's just the way thought is translated and how it's often easier to send a line in most apps then try to enter multiple paragraphs. It's also fairly easy for the receiving party to see that the "full" message is still pending and they'll wait until all the lines are received.

Chat also seems to have a slow-start (like TCP) personality where each party initially sets up the connection with a short "hi" first before really getting into conversation. Even though it can be asynchronous like the other types, it's mostly used in a constant synchronous fashion.

One of my friends includes line breaks in his iMessages, which I find strange because it takes extra effort to accomplish the same effect of sending multiple messages. But it also allows me only one chance to respond. I can't respond to his first paragraph while he's typing the second, because he sent them both at the same time.

This makes me think that the critical difference between the "Chat" and "Full" case is the number of messages, not the UI. I would expect similar results if the "Full" case was three separate messages as opposed to one message in multiple paragraphs. A better "Control" case would have been a single message in the chat UI, with line breaks (i.e. shift+enter while in FB chat), in order to eliminate text density as a variable.

Dividing one message into multiple creates anxiety for the reader by obscuring when the writer expects a response. Each individual message could stand on its own, but the writer does not expect a response to each. When three messages are condensed into one, the reader has an easier time inferring that the writer expects only one response to the whole message, not one to each individual paragraph.

This seems to relate to the feeling of sending two highly coupled messages in quick succession, only to lose service just after the first one says "Delivered."

I had the same thought. The "neediness" of the sender is enhanced by the idea that Alex sent _4_ messages rather than 1. Geee, how desperate is this person to get a response, that she gets to send 4 messages with no reply?

I had almost the opposite thought. When I see the full message/control it looks like "too much". The chat window is how people normally write, so it felt more casual. The other ones looked more "formal"

Or worse: having only the second message delivered and being then asked to re-send the first one, which will now show after what logically was supposed to be the second part.

Basically Hipchat.

I agree wholeheartedly with what you say but let's not forget that the Enter/Shift+Enter difference is a UI decision.

Interestingly I apply different techniques to messaging depending on the platform.

When I'm sending an SMS I'll add line breaks because I don't want to bombard the receiver with multiple messages. My human interaction to date has taught me that sending more than one SMS before receiving a response it at best, weird? At worst it can be annoying and desperate.

Whatsapp changed all of this for me. I'll happily write a string of individual messages to somebody or a group of people with absolutely no fear that I'm being weird, annoying or desperate. I think the fact that they can see I'm still writing helps with this? There's also just something more "joined up" about the Whatsapp environment which makes me more comfortable taking this approach.

I really think that the message can be adjusted to the medium it is conveyed over. Chat is meant for quick one line exchanges and I do believe that the long message was not appropriate for a chat exchange.

The same way an email is way less formal than a written letter or those rare SMSes from relatives that come full with salutation and signature.

Heck, even in a forum like this one: we don't add the salutation nor signature, but in an email we would.

Context matters a lot and the ability to adjust the message to match the context is also part of communication skill.

The reason why I believe that chat is different from mail or a forum post is that chat messages cause your phone to make sounds and/or vibrate. They are shown on your home screen where they also will share the screen estate with other people's messages. Shorter messages are more useful.

Which makes Facebook's case interesting, since you can't control through which UI your recipient will view your message.

I once had to reconnect with someone whom I only know how to contact via Facebook, and sent an email-style message broken into a few short paragraphs. I did this in the "full screen" messages window, and later happened to view my sent message in the tiny chat box.

If I had received that huge message in a tiny chat box I would have had a very negative reaction: "Ugh, what does THIS guy want and what's he rambling about?"

I haven't used facebook in s long time, but I would have said that messages posted on people's walls (the more emails looking screenshot) are different from Facebook messenger chat messages (the chat looking screenshot), so it's totally up to the user to decide which one is posted where. At least that was the case in 2011ish when I last used FB

The email style message view is the same chat content in a different UI. It's a full screen view that looks vaguely like Outlook - message threads are listed on the left and the majority of the screen is dedicated to reading the messages.

It's much nicer to use for browsing your message history or writing something more detailed without having to mess around with tiny chat windows.

There is also https://www.messenger.com/, which is a similar UI but available as standalone site.

Messages posted on people's walls are also public to all their friends, which I'm sure plays a larger role in reception than the UI they use to consume the message, and certainly influences what you're willing to say.

If a person contacts me and asks a question or says something that requires a fuller response, am I then meant to replay "sorry, this isn't the medium for that"? Or should developers and companies start putting more effort into good UX?

Twitter is another one, the desktop version of Twitter serves a mobile version of Twitter; a timeline that is less than a third of the width of the screen I'm now using. Now, I realise that the brevity of the messages means they could appear strange looking if stretched accross the page, but as Twitter expands to include more than simple text media, the UI needs to adapt. Twitter appears quite silly on a desktop as of today (imo) and doesn't even make good use of the Bootstrap 12 column layout.

I don't agree that it's the UI that makes the difference here. I think it's the context. In an "email" like context, it's not uncommon to write a few sentences. However in a chat its usual only to write one or two sentences, wait for a response, and then respond to that again. Its not an mail that your sending and hoping to receive a response later, its instant chat. If you had just said "Hey, what a show last night! Pretty sure my ears will be ringing for the next week. lol", and then waited for a response before writing anything more, then you probably wouldn't look that desperate. It's not about the UI, it's about the expectations for the medium.

I'm glad someone else realized this too. The author didn't try to tailor the message to the medium and as a result his control is the medium that the message is best targeted towards. Not a great control if you ask me. I think tailoring the message to the medium is the main takeaway here rather than the conclusions the author drew.

So the takeaway is always send less words as you don't know on what device the recipient will read it.

You can guess however where the user will read your message on. Business related it's most probably an email client on a desktop. Sending personal messages most likely on phone. So format accordingly.

In this sitation its better to format: "Hey! It was great meeting you! Pretty sure my ears will be ringing for the next week haha"

And then wait for the girls reply. Regardless on the device she reads, it will look good and doesn't come off as needy. Then your next message will be to ask her out on Saturday. And if she doesn't reply, she's not into you and leave it there ;)

Or we should invent responsive texts, depending on the device it adds or removes words...

> So the takeaway is always send less words as you don't know on what device the recipient will read it.

The real takeaway is to learn to judge the character of the people you meet, and not to waste time with vapid morons who are intimidated by four paragraph messages. How are you going to have any kind of meaningful adult relationship with such a creature? Even assuming that you don't want a relationship, and merely want to navigate her arbitrary tests for long enough to score a quick sexual fling -- what's the point? You jumped through some hoops and scored a pointless hedonistic trophy. Whoop.

This is my problem with advice like yours. You change your behaviour to avoid coming across as "needy" -- but you're still making your primary goal winning the approval of an irrational person. Be more selective, know your own value, understand what kind of person you value -- then just be straightforward and direct when you do meet that kind of person.

I wish the world was just like you described. Everyone be a rational meaningful responsible adult. But it's far from perfect and to fit in you need to adjust and then suddenly people call you "social".

This applies for interacting with people, businesses, be to the point, and concise, so there's less noise for misinterpretation.

Most aren't, but some are. You give up something priceless if you adjust to fit in -- and though it's hard not to, you don't need to.

I think age has to do something with this too. I'm in my twenties and I do both have groups of friends who are working and who are student. Obviously maturity and responsibility comes with age and experience.

It's not only UI's twist words. It's surveys and the questions they ask. The fact they ask "How desperate is her?", makes me view them as some level of desperate. But I never found her desperate in the first place until he asked me.

Would be nice to have the charts start at 0. Otherwise the delta looks bigger than it really is.

And a Kruskal-Wallis test instead of an ANOVA, so no "magic" would be required.

Funny how an article about presentation skewing interpretation (most likely unintentionally) does the same.

The ratings are subjective and nonlinear. No need the way I see it.

Also I'm pretty sure you would want to start from 1, the minimum rating.

One weird trick: Use "cliffhangers". They make it apparent that it is a coherent whole

Hey! What a show last night! Pretty sure my ears will be ringing for the

next week. lol. It was great meeting you. I’m surprised we hadn’t met before; we have

so many mutual friends. We should hangout. Free on Saturday? I know a great

coffee shop near Chinatown that has a killer view.

That would look really strange.

It might look strange but it would at least look like the original user crafted the entire message at once.

I think the appearance of 'desperation' arises in the reader's head because it looks like the author was hoping to receive a reply after each sentence (even if they weren't).

i.e. when received as several messages it looks like

Hello.

Are you there?

Why are you ignoring me?

Why is everyone ignoring me?

I have no life?

Waaaaaah?

Or just send it as a single message...

If you don't know how to line break (large percentage of users?) then multi-line messages aren't available in the UI...

An observation based on my own interpretation of the three: As someone who doesn't use Facebook, I instinctively interpreted the Facebook Chat screenshot as a mobile-to-mobile communication medium. I interpreted the others as platforms that involve full-size keyboards.

That alone makes the Facebook Chat conversation appear more laborious. I imagine the time that went into typing all of those words on a phone versus the comparatively effortless scenario of typing the same paragraphs of text on a regular computer. The different apparent expenditure of effort weighs significantly on my own judgment of the three.

I don't think that there's enough to say here that anything is inherently due to the UI until the context of it being on Facebook is removed.

I would bet that are broadly acceptable use cases for FB chat and ones that are not. At best, this is saying that in the context of a chat, communicating like this comes off differently than using the full conversation, or, say, an email.

I'd love to see this repeated with white labeled mockups, and remove the Facebook branding as a variable.

I've always thought about this when responding to emails in clients where the text in the mail you are replying to is formatted differently than the text in your input window. Sometimes the incoming mail may look like a huge wall of text compared to the one you are typing due to fewer column count and you are feeling this pressure to put more text into the response as your text looks so pale because the input window is wider.

I find it fascinating how much people give into first impressions in dating, given the fact that when you have a baby with someone, it's an affair for at least 20 years.

It is an open question whether super-rational AI will spell doom for humanity, but I am sure, it will be infinitely more boring. :-)

But first impressions aren't used to make the decision for whether you should have a baby with someone. They are used as an initial-filter to reduce the number of people that one should invest more time in.

It's obviously impractical to put the same amount of effort into every potential partner to determine if they're the person you want to spend 20 years with. You need a way to filter from an incredibly large number of potential partners down to a shorter set that you can invest more time in and get to know really well.

If there were a lot of people dating for a couple years and then giving into first impressions your point would have more traction for me. But I don't see a way to manage the "top of the dating funnel" without giving into first impressions.

I understand they are used as filter, but isn't result just completely random, since the first impressions are unlikely to yield very relevant information. Since you cannot try all the potential partners anyway, why apply such a filter at all? Why not just inspect more thoroughly anybody who randomly falls your way?

It may be just that we want to have a feeling of being in control.

This is something I have been rambling about in front of others for quite some time, but I haven't gone as far as to actually look into it more closely like what you did with this survey. So definitely a good read and thanks for putting the effort!

To add to what others have said, this isn't really testing uis. This is testing different forms of media. A letter is obviously inappropriate in IM, and text speak is inappropriate in a paper.

I wonder how this varies by country. Does this interface seem friendlier in China?

Sounds like Alex had no chance to start, regardless of the UI.

Interesting concept but the post was pretty weak. I keep finding this happening on Medium: I'm intrigued by the subject, but the post ends significantly too early. Optimal length is 7 minutes, you should use it.

This probably has a little to do with UI (and it is an interesting post, thanks for doing the research), and a lot to do with the general inability of millenials today to socialize properly with other humans. "Eww, what a novel" says more about the recipient than the person sending the message.

It IS about UI! Users don't know how to insert line-breaks! (non-discoverable).

Yes, the idea of showing interest but not too much interest in a casual setting was invented only a handful of years ago. You cracked the code.

Absolutely. "Alex"'s mistake was not the content of his message, but in sending any message at all. What value could there be in a relationship with such a vapid creature?

(1) Chat and email have different purposes and etiquette , people are aware of that. Test message is definitely an email, and that's how it looks in full text view. (2) You don't have to send each paragraph in it's own message. (3) You usually switch to conversation view once you already heavily engaged in conversation, which makes long messages more acceptable.

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