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Comment by nafizh | Hacker News Reader

Hey, congrats on your launch. The first thing that comes to my mind is I hate recording myself. Even on zoom meetings I try to turn the video off as much as possible. It also seems easier to me to share a thought or suggestion over chat when there is no expectation of instant reply given writing something down forces you to filter your thoughts and specify the concrete details. How do you show the utility of self-recording to such people?

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Out of curiosity, is this true for voice and video or just video? We added voice recordings as a feature for people who don't want to record themselves on camera. We're also adding text as a "type" of message you can send.

One of the interesting things we've noticed is that recording yourself seems to encourage more intentionality in what is being said than a quick chat or SMS (maybe because you're more self-aware while recording?).

As you mentioned, some people are very intentional while writing, but I'm not sure that's the norm.

Many of the chat tools' design decisions encourage stream-of-conscious writing (e.g., press enter to send instead of line-breaking, one-line text boxes).

I think this intentionality comes from the person more than the tool; like, as obvious as it is to you that chat causes people to dump a stream of consciousness while audio forces people to be "intentional" and think about what they are saying, it is frankly just as obvious to me that when people are speaking they tend to "ramble" as they attempt to somehow construct a thought on the fly (and often end up repeating things they have already said) whereas with text people construct and edit well-organized and considered statements.

Very fair point. Being recorded is an interesting added dynamic vs. talking live, but you still could very well be right. It is for sure idiosyncratic.

Sometimes you don't have to share your face... just the notepad and pencil, and you can talk as you write.

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