> We still don't have a button to signal that we intend to speak
MS Teams has a "raise hand" feature, is that the type of thing you're thinking about?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/raise-your-hand-i...
MS Teams has a "raise hand" feature, is that the type of thing you're thinking about?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/raise-your-hand-i...
Basically the situation we need to avoid is the example raised in the article, wherein two people stumble around each other trying to figure out who should speak and who should back off. The reason that happens is that both participants have no clue that the other person is about to speak until they already have.
Discord solves this beautifully with push-to-talk. Since I have to press the push to talk button _before_ I speak, the UI can hook into that to naturally indicate that I intend to speak just by lighting myself up. I can just hold down the button and wait for the current speaker to cede, or jump in myself at a suitable pause. This latter case is now possible since everyone in the chat can see that I am about to do that, rather than be caught by surprise. But more importantly, _I can back off myself_ just by letting go. In Teams, you'd have to "rescind" the raised hand explicitly (not even sure if this is possible).
Now combine this with a shared virtual space: everyone sees the same order of faces, and when someone pushes-to-talk, they move up. Everyone sees this at the same time, so it's much more natural for that person to start speaking!
I think a "request the floor" button still has its place in much larger group events (imagine a seminar), but for small to medium meetings it's pretty overkill. The goal should be to lower the bar for fluid conversation, rather than to formalize it into a turn-taking process.