Future of team communication

In any projects, our communication links people together as a team. It’s the key factor that effects how well the workflow is going to be. The problem is we still don’t settle on any tools to manage our team communication that gets more and more complex in depth and breadth.

We communicate with our team, clients, project managers, contractors and sub-contractors everyday. Searching for the best project management is the crucial task every company need to do. We have tried Confluence, Asana, Slack and Trello. We are currently using Basecamp and Bitbucket which the best option for our on-going tasks, digital product development so far.

Basecamp is good as the base for team management. It’s simple and can be used as the file storage for the team. The user-friendly design suit for both design and development team.

Bitbucket is for code repositories. Perfect for coders to work together.

The thing is … We are not completely satisfied with these tools

My co-founders and I want to find out what could be the best product for our team communication. We conduct a short research using role play method on this issue. Here is the list of possible elements that occurs during the project communication;

By Format: text, link, image, file, audio, video, physical document

By Function: approval, timeline, calendar, reminder, category, search, payment, notification, event, to-do, requirement

By Channel: email, Instant messaging, phone call, face to face meeting, video conference

We only use Basecamp for passive communication such as comment and sharing. We interact on what we already put some thought in it. We use IM for the more active communication to start a conversation and discussion. In my opinion, team communication tool in the market should target three different area of communication.

Active : Face to Face

Less Active : Phone call

Less Passive : Messenger

Passive : email and Project management tools

We found out that Instant Messaging became a big part of our team communication. It is a place that we can instantly share ideas, comments and updates. Especially, for some issues that need spontaneous response such as discussion for the best format for images in android app. Lately, our clients and outside team are using Whatsapp, Line and Facebook messenger to communicate more and more.

The first thing they ask us is “Let’s create a chat room for this project”

The disadvantage of the IM is the privacy and security. The chat got mix between work and personal life. Also, there is no clear security policy to prevent the information leakage in those tools which is crucial for any commercial project. Although it’s very easy to communicate anywhere, anytime, there is no search, history and archive function. Any communication elements easily got lose. It’s because they are just not what they were made for.

Luckily, there are some interesting tools trying to solve this issue.

Hall is group chat, IM and video chat for companies and teams. Available free for the web, desktop and mobile. FREE anytime, anywhere. They are AngelPad alumni from 2013.

Qisqus is a secure (AES 256-bit encryption) lightweight messaging system designed to mimic working environments by allowing users to structure their teams or … Basically messaging for work.

Band is a private space for groups. Keep everyone updated effortlessly through intimate, frequent communications. Perfect for family, club, classmates, community, neighbors, hobbyists, support groups, colleagues, team, organization, and non-profit.

Hall and Qisqus are trying to deal with 3 categories of team communication elements mentioned above. They are freemium service focusing on team communication while Band is a free service focusing on general group communication function. After I tried using those tools, here is my small thought about What will make it works?

Right question : The ideas of IM for work are not breakthrough. Probably hundreds of companies are developing the same thing right now. It’s not going to need best in class technology to implement. It is also not about how many features? or how smart it is? It should be something like “How can we design the better team communication?”

MOM : MOM stands for Master Of Minimalism or mother. Make this app so easy to start with. Make it so light that downloading and learning the app is just a piece of cake. Think about how difficult asking clients (your mom) to use something new.

Start here! : Focus on the feature that help people set up the project and take care of them until the finish line. Not just make a track for the runner, you have to coach them too.

Mobile oriented experience : Start designing from mobile. If possible, make only one small feature that they will definitely use on the go. That will frame out how the full feature on the desktop should be.

Updated : Make sure that everyone in the team is updated. They get the message and understand it all. If they don’t understand, what can they do? If they don’t read the message, what the app will help? If they want to discuss, why on this app? In my opinion, this is the most important feature. Anything else is by-product.

Organizing files : Every communication elements must be searchable. The service automatically categorizes the communication by format. Also, users can manually tag to distinguish them by topics, type of work or tasks. Make sure that nothing will be lost.

Sync with other tools : People uses many tool to achieve their goals. The service should sync with others services they already familiar with such as Dropbox, Bitbucket, email, Basecamp, calendar. Also it should be super easy to invite their colleague to opt in from Kakao, Line, Whatsapp, facebook and email.

I wish existing apps will create more and more seamless interaction between human and computer. User will use the tool that make their life easier by smart features and user-friendly design.

In sum, The future of team communication will cover from active to passive level of interaction but the Less Passive is the new trend. Because it is a very beginning of this type of communication for work. What will make it works? that I mention above is the points that will make this type of tool shines.

In 1,000 years, people will still work and communicate. Any tools focusing on the technology, “the answer”, will be vanished. The tools focus on human, “the right question”, will win.

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Stay tuned for the next article from the workshop “Better or Worse” Communication in Digital age.