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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Which UX problem do you think it fixed? If I had to rate by the ability to successfully start a call and not have technical issues interrupt it, I'd rank Zoom, Teams, Slack, and Google Meet roughly equivalent — the quality isn't as good or robust as Facetime but that's also not designed for meetings or cross-platform.

I'd accept Google self-selecting out of the market with their incoherent messaging strategy but that has nothing do with UX other than not needing to tell people to uninstall the old apps and install the current one.

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When Zoom first came onto the scene, the other technologies you've listed had more friction than coarse grained sandpaper. Zoom was the very first to let people join meetings without a) signing up; and b) downloading anything. I don't know about all the solutions you've listed, but Google Meet for example still requires an account whereas Zoom still does not.

As more and more people use Zoom, the friction of using it decreases as well, since you can more safely assume that people have used it before and are familiar with it - if not, they can still use it without making an account, and without downloading anything (though this has become a bit harder now).

Furthermore, Zoom was also one of the first solutions to let you simply call in with your phone (and put that option front and center), which also does not require accounts or any downloads.

There are probably many other things I'm glossing over here - UX is a holistic phenomenon after all, and requires many small things to feel right. I'm not sure whether you're arguing that Zoom did not have 10x better UX than anything out there when it launched, but if you are, I can't help but think you're being willfully ignorant.

> Zoom was the very first to let people join meetings without a) signing up; and b) downloading anything

I find your second part interesting because for years Zoom has tried to force you to download their client — you have to learn how to construct the web URL to generate links to use it in a browser since they removed the option from their web UI.

> I'm not sure whether you're arguing that Zoom did not have 10x better UX than anything out there when it launched, but if you are, I can't help but think you're being willfully ignorant.

I'm not sure why you're inclined to take such an uncharitable view but I'm coming at it from the perspective of someone who was relatively late to using Zoom (2020) and found it pretty similar to the competition. I used Skype, WebEx, Teams, Hangouts/Meet, and Chime professionally first and Facetime / Hangouts personally prior to that and the only one I'd say is 10x worse is Skype.

Re: join via web, in my experience if you reject the download a few times it'll pop up the link. Clearly a dark pattern attempting to force you to install their insecure and frankly kind of crappy software, but apparently one they're aware of problems with. They just don't care.

I used Zoom yesterday after months and I had to download the client. I was in hurry because a customer sent me a link so I didn't investigate much. They usually make calls on Slack which works well and already has all of their conversations.

WebEx used to be a nightmare with a Java client. Maybe it's better now but I didn't use it for years on a computer. I had an Android tablet with the WebEx app and I used that. Luckily no customer of mine is using WebEx anymore.

I never used Chime and never heard about it until now.

Skype doesn't have URLs AFAIK. I used it with a small group of friends during lockdowns because it was the intersection of what all of them had. We rejoined the same call every time. It works well once started. Cumbersome to start.

Meet has the least friction: create a call, send a URL, click/tap to join. I don't remember if a Google account is required but everybody has one in this part of the world because of Android. It works well.

Teams has a mandatory download AFAIK, I got a customer that uses it. It works well once started. I have no idea if I can start a call without an Office 365 account. I remember that it asks me to login to that customer's Office.

FaceTime, never used because it's an Apple only thing. I don't have the hardware.

Duo, I think it improved since its launch but despite being in the phones everybody uses here, everybody makes call with WhatsApp. I think Google lost the network effect battle.

WhatsApp is the easiest to start a call with but no URLs, no calls on the desktop. The quality is not very good, maybe because people can have poor connections on their phones (mobile data or crowded WiFi channels.)

Telegram added group calls recently but I never used them. Network effects again and at least 10 times less market penetration. One to one calls where on par with WhatsApp.

> Teams has a mandatory download AFAIK, I got a customer that uses it. It works well once started. I have no idea if I can start a call without an Office 365 account. I remember that it asks me to login to that customer's Office.

I've had to use Teams in an educational environment for around two years, and thankfully it's never forced me into downloading their (frankly dodgy[0]) desktop client.

It's always required a login to O365 for me. They try and manipulate you into using the app with their constant "Get the app" splash screens, though.

Google Meet does not require an account to join a meeting.

https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9303069

Um, it does...?

Under "Personal account users":

"Anyone who isn’t signed into a Google account can’t join your meetings."

This is a feature, not a bug: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2020/07/anonymous-us...

Although: "Note, this does not prevent users from dialing in by phone."

That’s specific to the education SKU and is to prevent zoom-bombing… and an admin can disable it.

> Zoom was the very first to let people join meetings without a) signing up; and b) downloading anything

E.g. BigBlueButton and Jitsi were doing it for much longer.

Which is irrelevant because those who knew about those are not the significant majority which is responsible for the success of zoom

So the point is not that zoom was better UX wise, but simply had better marketing, or not?

Both.

Honestly - there's huge, massive room for better UX that would really revolutionize online communication:

- Presence indicator/avatar in your toolbar of close contacts or team

- Push-to-talk to send audio to anyone from toolbar with non-disruptive indicator

- Instant screen/mouse share from there with audio and floating video optional

- Just so many fluidity improvements if you do a more minimal video window that can add/remove people without friction

I really wish someone would build it.

"Hey Bot, find out from Alice when I need to have those slides finished. Kind of urgent."

It immediately sends an email and a slack message. An hour later, it asks if you want to send an SMS or call to Alice.

Jitsi was awful. So it’s a combo. Zoom wouldn’t be where it is if it was Jitsi. I used Jitsi from 2018-2020. So many problems with it. You won’t find anywhere close to the polarizing views of the actual usability or Jitsi compared to Zoom or any other better app in any niche.

Zoom certainly invested millions in marketing before and during the pandemic. Airports were plastered with zoom advertisement. I truly believe marketing and a simple ordering process account for a huge part of zoom's success, not features or UX.

Both of those do not consistently work across a large organisation (1k+ users) without perfectly homogenous hardware. That means they're effectively unusable.

For an overwhelming majority of Zoom users, scaling over 1k users is not a concern.

Pre-pandemic, I used both Bluejeans and (Blackboard.com's) Collaborate Ultra. Bluejeans already let you use your phone years before. Neither required an account for anyone but meeting organiser. Collaborate Ultra doesn't even have a native app (as far as I know), it only has a web app.

I have no idea why so many folks like Zoom; I find it to be less useful than either. E.g. using external monitor with different resolution is handled very poorly.

It’s tight integration with calendar systems and Slack definitely help. Their browser extension makes Google Calendar event creation have a Zoom Meeting link that is seamless, and /zoom is irresistible. For a time they had the best free tier on the market, and people appreciated the 45 minute time limit that came along with it.

FWIW the competition was terrible for a time. I’ve never been on a BlueJeans call that wasn’t painful, Google Meet/Hangouts had terrible quality, GoToMeeting was neglected post-acquisition, slack killed their meeting product for a while, and WebEx was bloated. Join.me was my goto for a while, but now I use Jitsi when I get to choose, but usually end up on Zoom calls.

I think a lot of it is that everyone has heard of Zoom, and Zoom works pretty well for calls with a lot of people, so it became the default for group video calls.

The “UX” in this case was “fixed” by being less crashy than the competition for long enough to earn a reputation.

As someone with a security background myself, I really hope organizations use it less and less, because the competition by now works just fine. But as a human living in the world, I don’t refuse to use Zoom, I just use it on my iPad and assume the conversation is intercepted somewhere.

> Which UX problem do you think it fixed?

You can join a call without signing up

The reason Zoom won is their meeting URLs which open their app, combined with no registration requirement. It's just a very viral product.

Probably the camera and microphone on by default.

I remember people pleasantly surprised that they just clicked a link and everything worked, instead of minutes of “click that button to enable video”.

I find Zoom’s interface terrible, but I’m not a good reference for average user.

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