Own messages being grey is confusing

[jancborchardt]

The coloring of your own messages in grey makes it seem like they are still pending to be sent. Even when you know it, it’s still confusing, as many other systems use 50% opacity as indication of a message being pending.

Maybe a different actual color would be better suited for this?

[knubie]

This threw me off as well the first few times I saw it.

[Henni]

An idea would be to fade your own messages out: The message is initially in the same color as all other messages (black), but immediately starts fading to the gray tone it currently has. This helps the user to understand what is happening.

(BTW: I like that own messages are deemphasized)

[astorije]

I also believe it's a good thing that your own messages are deemphasized. I believe however than having messages fade out might be unexpected in terms of UX.

@jancborchardt, do you have any specific suggestions here?

I'd like someone involved in UX activities to bring their opinion here, and/or discuss improvements over screenshots before reaching to a decision, and then we can call for PRs :-)

What do you think?

[jgillich]

+1. A special color for the user's own messages is a good idea, but don't let it be grey..

[jancborchardt]

Did some experiments with this.

Current state:

Color highlight, using the same #84ce88 green as for the sign in button and network name. A bit hard to read maybe?

Bold. Not sure about this either, but it almost seems like the best choice:

Bold and colored – this is definitely too much:

Am really not sure between the green and bold. Let me know what you think @knubie @Henni @astorije @jgillich and I will prepare a pull request.

[knubie]

@jancborchardt thanks for the samples. I think it might be better to bold the username instead of the text. What do you think?

[xPaw]

We discussed this a little bit on IRC yesterday, and I came up with this suggestion:

Implement IRCv3's echo-message capability, and then the message can be grey until the server reflects the message back to you.

[Henni]

@xPaw this way there would be no way to differentiate between own and other messages other than the nick. I actually do like that shout has a visual differentiation for this.

BTW I favor @jancborchardt's bold example.

[xPaw]

Boldness is weird for this. Personally I'm using HexChat, and there is no differentiation, and it's fine.

[jancborchardt]

While I wouldn’t use HexChat as the best example for design, Slack and IRCCloud also don’t differentiate own messages. So it seems fine to not highlight it at all?

[astorije]

So my opinionated opinion as well :-)

• Bold emphasizes stuff, I wouldn't do that. As a user, I'd like to see bold/emphasized stuff that are specifically targeted at me, like a mention/highlight, or something unusual, like setting up a topic.
• Green, I don't like. From a user's point of view, green (or any other color) may convey meaning. "Why green, does it mean something?"
• In the end... Gray looks fine to me actually, I'm not sure why it's an issue (apart from wrong indication that message is pending, maybe). I'd be OK with a darker gray, say 60% or 75%.
• I like @xPaw's suggestion of differentiating a pending message from an acknowledged message (although this goes down to a complete feature rather than a simple UI change). Playing with color, it can be a lighter gray (30-40 % maybe) or a loading indication next to the message.
• I think it's smart to differentiate oneself's messages from others, plus there is little room for misunderstanding I believe. Modern communication tools do not differentiate on colors but on positioning (like this) but it is best suited for non-public channels as IRC channels gets very chatty and very crowded... Also, it's big shift from what we have right now! (Would be fun as a theme though!)

Of course, I'd like you guys to get my points and agree but we are in UI world and there is no notion of consensus there :D The only thing I'm asking is that opinions should tried to come with arguments as it's simply easier to reason/debate about, and UX notions should come before personal preferences. Also, keep posting images or links to good and bad examples of what's out there, it's sometimes necessary to see that a good idea was bad and the other way around. In any case, thanks for participating guys, I really appreciate it :-)