We send 247 billion emails a day (http://digbig.com/5bawak) - but the basics of email haven't evolved much since the first one was sent in 1971 (http://digbig.com/5bawam). By the time people in an email exchange have replied to each other a few times, the message usually degenerates into a mess. Earlier emails get indented more and more, warnings that ‘this email is for the intended users only' proliferate, anyone copied in later can't work out who said what when (especially if the email exchange branches into several separate conversations), and questions tend to go unanswered as they get buried by later replies.
What's a Wave? Google's answer to this problem is Google Wave - billed as 'what email would look like if it were invented today'. Summing it up in words is not easy - there's a handy video at http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html#video which is the best way to get to grips with it.
But, in essence, it tries to marry the best bits of email, instant messaging, word processing, the video recorder (or Sky+ box if you're feeling a bit more modern), and standing over a colleague's shoulder watching them type.
Someone sets up a Wave and invites other people (at the start or later). Members of the Wave are then free to start adding messages. New messages are added underneath existing ones - or you can reply ‘inline', in which case the content become threaded to make it easy for others to see what you're replying to (unlike with email where people often add their replies to several points in one chunk). Your messages become visible to others as you type, literally letter by letter. So it's definitely instant. And you can also embed videos or maps to make your point. If you don't like the look of something someone said, you can edit it directly (but it's made obvious that you've done so). And if you join a Wave midway, or just want to review it, you can play back the Wave and recreate the threads of conversation, watching each new chunk of content get added.
If it sounds complex, it's because it is. The interface isn't intuitive, and many people's initial reactions aren't positive - partly because it's very hard to work out how to invite people, and just what you're supposed to do to use any of the features. And partly because setting up a Wave without a point is, well, pointless. So participants quickly get bored and stop taking part.
I've still yet to work out why, when I click on a chunk of content, clicking the edit option doesn't work. It's quite easy for Waves to die, too. Although Google has talked about Wave robots who would alert you to changes, for now you have to remember to go and check for any updates.
Still, Wave is only in a beta or preview state at the moment. And the principle sounds promising. You can imagine using it to collaborate on a article (we nearly wrote this one that way) - someone could write a section, others could comment or edit sentence-by-sentence, and there would be a permanent record of who made what changes and, most importantly, why. Or a project team could use it to keep a record of issues and their resolutions. It's so powerful that you can run mini programs inside the Wave - an opinion poll, for instance, or a calendar.
The Google Wave interface In many ways Google Wave is atypical of a Google product. It looks like a Google product, with the familiar palette of colours, but the way it has been launched has been very different. When Gmail was launched in April 2004, after a few rumours it existed, it just appeared overnight as a ‘beta'. In contrast, both Google Wave and the Chrome OS (http://digbig.com/5bawan) have been announced as ‘product launches' long before they have been available to the public. This makes the unfinished state of Google Wave even more perplexing. Google have explained that they are trying to build a protocol and a platform, and that the user interface they provide will be only one of many such interfaces that can be built - in the same way that the email protocol enables lots of different online and offline clients. Nevertheless the existing Google Wave interface can be slow and ‘buggy'.
User experience consultant and previous FUMSI article author Matthew Solle (http://solle.me/) outlined some of the perceived problems with the interface: ‘Today's maxim is "do one thing well, don't try to do everything". Everyone has an opinion about Google Wave, and of course that is just what Google wants. Whether Google is completely happy with the fact that nobody is quite sure about Wave's destiny is another question. It seems here to stay and folk still clamber for invites, but I'm left feeling cold. My first major gripe is if you haven't got Google Wave open and are logged in, then you miss any activity. Even when you are supposedly involved in a "Wave", Google at no point messages you. Adding people - the most basic and popular function - is obscure and the interface feels busy even when you are connected to only six or eight connections'.
What is Google Wave for? Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Wave is that the initial experience of the service doesn't really answer 'What is it for?'. Even if people struggle to initially grasp what they can do with Twitter, the opening instruction on the homepage - 'See what people are saying about...' is clear.
A couple of types of use are already emerging. One is to use Google Wave to collaboratively take notes during a lecture, talk or conference. In early November the Fresh Networks blog posted an article (http://digbig.com/5bawap) about the adoption of Wave at the Emerging Communications Conference (http://europe.ecomm.ec/)
‘Here's what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.'
Samuel Boland has suggested a way of making Waves into an educational tool, with students assigned different roles in a Wave like note-taker, questioner, and ‘Grammar Master'. (http://edume.me/?p=127)
One of the authors of this article, Martin Belam, used the tool at a recent London IA evening event, to make public notes. (http://london-ia.ning.com/). Unlike live-tweeting short staccato bursts, or writing notes to blog at a later date, Wave seemed better at allowing those not in the room to ask inline questions seeking clarification on specific points, or asking for references to websites or books to be expanded upon. There was, however, one aspect of this that Belam found disconcerting:
‘It was only as other people started contributing to the Wave that it truly dawned on me that people could see me typing in real-time. For a while this made me quite self-conscious about my note taking abilities. With Twitter, or even ‘instant' messaging, nobody sees what you are typing until you hit enter. With Google Wave, however, people can view your thoughts as they are forming on the screen. In a live note-taking situation, that means lots of spelling mistakes, typing errors, and liberal use of the backspace as I changed my mind about how to phrase a particular note. It is an interface where you can literally finish someone else's sentence for them'.
Collaborative use within the workplace also seems to be a major future role. Tim Panton from Phonefromhere.com has spotted the potential for using Wave with remote workers. For him it solves the problem that remote workers are not always ‘online' for instant messaging, but that email isn't instant enough if they are around:
‘Google Wave is good for co-ordinating a project across time zones where the working day only partially overlaps. It handles the switch from synchronous to async communications better than any other medium I've tried. There is currently insufficient structure to most waves - but that will come with discipline and better tools - it is a preview after all'.
James Kelway (http://userpathways.com/) has been ‘using it to collaboratively change copy on a website that requires a lot of changes and references', suggesting that so far it may be ‘the perfect tool' for that purpose. It is certainly something that could be achieved with a wiki, but as criticised as it is, the Google Wave click-and-type approach may be less intimidating to business users than the text entry mark-up of a wiki site.
Conclusion Some answers to problems explode on the scene and you wonder how you ever worked the old way. Wireless networks, mobile phones, PVRs and HDTV - once you've tried them, you don't want to go back.
Others are slow burners with the buzz building slowly. More people have read about eBooks and tablet PCs than are likely to see one, even in 2010.
And the rest turned out not to be the answer - or maybe there wasn't a mainstream problem to start with. Internet-only currencies, fridges that calculate when you've run out of milk, voice recognition software, and new Coke.
Which is Wave? That's going to be up to the likes of you...
Malcolm Coles is an internet consultant specialising in web content. He used to be editor of which.co.uk, the UK's most successful paid-content website. Before that, he was editor of Which? magazine. These days, he is mostly interested in projects that involve high-quality content - particularly those that involve ensuring design, functionality, information architecture and content work together to maximize the user experience. He likes big subheadings, web tools that are easy to use and labels that make sense.
Martin Belam is The Guardian newspaper's Information Architect, and Contributing Editor for the 'Share' section of FUMSI magazine. Martin specialises in the design of information for media websites, having worked at the BBC, Sony and spent several years as a consultant. He blogs at currybet.net and for The Guardian.
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