Built for Mars

For the last few years I have always rooted (or rather I hoped) for Matrix/Riot->Element. So much that for my recreational and token FOSS IM usage (because for mainstream conversation in my country it all has moved to WhatsApp) with select friends I made it a point to request/convince them to use Matrix.

But when this WhatsApp T&C thingie happened I had to make a choice and ask all my friends and important IM contacts to move to Signal because let's face it Matrix is simply not usable for the average user as of now and I guess they will take forever to figure out Signal/WhatsApp and Slack/IRC/Zoom are not two different types of animals but are aliens to each other, especially from an end user's UX expectation point of view. So yeah it had to be Signal because no one was going to move to Wire or Threema.

Telegram is perfect for casual groups like the ones which form off places like subreddits — e.g. my country's book/lit subreddit. Besides their apps are a couple of hundred kilometres ahead of others including WhatsApp.

So as of now I am going to use Signal. Come 6-7 Feb, and I am deleting my WhatsApp account. Because I am pissed and as someone who deleted Fb, Instagram 6-7 years ago, I just don't want to accept that T&C even though I know Fb may get my data or would track me by using other means anyway. It'd be my personal tiny F.Y. to Zuck.

Having said that Signal does and have always made me very uncomfortable:

— It's headed literally by a benevolent dictator, and boy…

Some other recommendations:

Don’t Make me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug

https://builtformars.com/ UX case studies

https://www.nngroup.com/ UX analyses and articles

Coursera has some UX courses you can audit for free