Steemit Private Messages UI Design Concept - Desktop
A little bird told me that Steemit Private Messages will soon be a real feature! This is great news for the lot of us waiting patiently for this to be available. Since that day has yet to come... I decided to do little design concept on the potential look and feel of the private message feature. I tried to keep within the current design of steemit.com, using elements found thought-out the site and maintaining a continuous flow between messages and the rest of the site. The following is what I came up with for the Desktop side of things, I am still working on the mobile UI and will post that when I have it finished.
Messages Page/Tab
example my messages page
- Current Messages icon on top right of navigation bar
this will give the user a quick glance at his/her current messages
when new messages are un-read they appear in red to notify the user - All Messages
messages aree listed out in chronological order by default
messages counts for new un-read are highlight in red
quick access to reply, delete, and of course Mute
Mute will hide the current and all new messages from the selected user - Show Muted Users
will reveal all muted users and the ability to un-mute them - Search
on hover: will reveal small search box for one word or username searching
on click: will open new page inside with a larger search box - Sort...
will let the user sort the current messages by: username, date, message count, reputation... - New Message
will lead you to a new page (seen below)
Create New Message Page
example my new messages page
- Username Field
which user will the message be sent to - Message Field
message that will be sent to selected user
will allow markdown and all featured that any reply would have
Private Message with User View
example chat with @steemloto
- Delete
will delete the current conversation - Mute
will mute user and go back to All Messages page - You will be indented slightly for visual chat representation (This is the most simplistic way I could see to do it, most more complex ways seemed unnecessary)
- Quick Reply Box
easily reply to last message as you would any comment
markdown and all features of regular reply box available
New Profile Header for other users
example new header for @dantheman
- Message Button
simplistic new button underneath username that leads to the Create New Message Page with the username pre-loaded in the username field - Current Messages Icon
displays current messages in your mailbox
link to All Messages page
That completes my Private Messages UI Design Concept let me know what you think on my design and any thoughts you may on what the real PM UI design will look like. Will I be close? As i said at the beginning of the post I will be completing my Mobile design soon and will post that up when I have it. If I here anything about when the private message system will be released I will let everyone know!
Looking forward to your responses!
Blue
Little Bird :-) btw, good design work, Blue. Can't wait to see mobile UI concept you have in mind for Steem Mobile..
Anyone knows or has any idea if it is already available on Steem core so that one can start implementing or start including in mobile app?
I'll get those concepts up as soon as I have them all finished! And you can see the PM code right on the steem github but implementing it is a different story.
The design suggestions for the PM functionality look good. It should be off the record erm... the blockchain, so the Delete functionality here should be useful addition... finally be able to delete something properly on steemit.
And maybe, just maybe we are also going to get another tab besides Messaged, what about Mentions with a quick list of posts where your username was mentioned :)
** Mentions** very cool idea! I will add this to my *Mobile Design. This would be a very helpful tool to find out where and when you've been talked about. Having it on its own page would be helpful because i;m sure many uses wouldn't want to see this info (Whales Mostly) it would be super cluttered.
Whales probably don't care about getting mentioned on steemit, but regular users do.
Hopefully that functionality is already on the to do list as well as I'm seeing the number of mentions in posts on steemit increasing lately.
Mentions, indeed great idea. Though I think it requires a lot of parsing or computational power to collect that info for individual users... Maybe Steem already has a way?!
I like it, but I'd also like to see a feature which Facebook uses which, by default, hides messages from people you do not follow. This, to me, is important. Sure, I can mute people, but as the platform grows, I'll have to spend all my time muting and that's a waste. I'd like to see followed messages given much more priority over random spam. Also, maybe a way to filter out links, like Twitter did with their DMs early on. If you tried to send a link, it failed.
I think spam is going to be more and more of a problem as the platform grows, so I hope we learn and improve on the lessons the other big social media platforms have already learned.
I agree completely, having messages hidden (unfollowed Users) and put into another section below All Messages like muted Users would be (in my design) would definatly work. I would suggest, like I did in another comment, to add a setting where users can choose to hide or show these messages automatically. As for links.. removing the markdown code for links would solve the link issue with almost no coding.
Implementing this would defiantly increase the amount of spam, however using these techniques or a combination of these with other socials media methods should keep it at bay.
Yaeh, easiest way to spam @dantheman)
until he mutes you ;).
One thing I did forget is to add is Do Not Disturb! So you would have to allow users or message others to start PM.
That's better)
I think there should be three different categories of PMs: ones from those a user follows (perhaps optionally a different type of follow that allows receiving PMs but doesn't clutter up your feed with their posts), ones from those they have muted, and ones from everyone else. The interface could have different tabs for those different categories of PMs, each with their own unread message count. Default settings would be to show notifications and a message count for PMs from those the user has not muted within other views of the website outside of the private messaging interface. However, those settings could be changed by the user so that the notifications and message count outside the private messaging interface would be only for PMs from those the user has followed. If later there were to be push notifications to a mobile device for new PMs, the user could decide whether to allow all PMs that are not from muted accounts to push notify them, or only PMs from those they follow (which would be the default setting).
Do you consider the mute functionality described in your post the same as the existing mute function? Meaning it also (eventually) hides that account's posts from the user's view of the website by default, and also broadcasts that blocking intent onto the blockchain? I can see scenarios where I would want to mute users (ideally privately as an option) so that I don't normally see their private messages (unless I go out of my way to do so), but would still normally see their posts and comments in public discussion threads. The blockchain follow feature allows for specifying the type of follow (which is how mute is currently implemented as well, by the way), so perhaps that can be used to distinguish between a public mute that hides all communication by the blocked account from the user's view of the website and a public mute that only categorizes private messages sent from that muted account differently so that it doesn't show up in their typical messages views (and doesn't create notifications). There would ideally still need to be a third type of mute that isn't broadcast onto the blockchain (in order to privately mute unwanted PMs), which would all be done client-side.
Regarding indentation of your messages to distinguish them from the other user, I would like to see something a little more distinct. For example, different background colored boxes containing the message from you and from the other user, and placing your avatar on the right side.
The delete functionality concerns me. The current implementation of the end-to-end encryption used for private messaging does not support perfect forward secrecy. This means that if someone later gets access to the memo key that was active during the time the messages were sent, they can decrypt the encrypted messages stored on the blockchain. On one hand this is good, because with just a very small amount of data backed up (basically just the current memo key, and also old memo keys can be stored encrypted in the history of account JSON metadata changes on the blockchain), the user can retrieve the entire history of their private conversations that they wish to keep. On the other hand, it means a user can't really delete a specific private conversation unless they somehow truly destroy the appropriate memo keys, and even then it comes at the cost of losing access to all the other old conversations that they actually want to keep.
In my opinion, Steem's private messaging system should prioritize the ease of backup over perfect forward secrecy. There are already other chat applications like Signal that design their cryptography to provide privacy-centric features like perfect forward secrecy and also plausible deniability. (Side note: Steem's private messaging also doesn't provide plausible deniability because the ciphertext is included in a transaction that needs to be signed by the author's posting key. This means someone can expose a PM they received to the public in a way that can be cryptographically verified to be legitimate.) Of course this means that a "delete" function would likely provide users with a false sense of security, which is something I am very much against. So at most I would like to see an archive function (to avoid clutter of old conversations in the default messages view) rather than a "delete" function.
First Off Great Comment! Pretty much a full post in response to my post which is awesome. I can clearly see that you have put some serious thought into Private Messages. You have some great points here, I'll try to get to all of them, thanks for opening up the discussion. I was planning on going into more discussion and theory on this post but ended up just focusing on design.
This is a solid idea, I think by having these 3 types are a simple dropdown to tab based system would work well. This way, like you do with most spam and junk , be able to switch users between the categories easily. Notifications as you put it would work fine, and user settings n the client side would do the trick. For mobile this would extend to push notifications and alerts.
I was considering this mute button to be separate from the one on the block chain , which would be for you to see and not anyone else to know you have blocked that user. I do think that this may be something more on the lines of Public Messages like that of comments but on the blockchain for everyone to see... though this is a different discussion ;) A distinguishable mute for each would be appropriate I think.
Thanks for the suggestions, I actually looked at all sorts of Social Media to gain inspiration on this but ended up with the simple design you see above. I ended with this because I wasn't feeling any of the Normal type designs in regards to steemits design. Now that you point it out a single color difference between the messages maybe all we need. I just wanted to illustrate that we don't need over design here.
In regards to true deletion of messages its a toss up. We want everything to be on the blockchain but like you said messages would eventually be decrypted and you have all great points in that 3rd and closing paragraph. The false sense of security I am also very much against and this really opens up the conversation on if PMs could really be pulled off correctly.
This will be a great way to spam more ...sweet!! can't wait :)
I'll say this here as well!
One thing I did forget is to add is Do Not Disturb! So you would have to allow users or message others to start PM.
It's happening!!!
This is a much needed feature! we want this now..LOL
I agree! Like I said I heard its on its way, I just don't know much more detail then that. They have been quite busy lately , as have I ;)
Poor @blueorgy, always losing the lottery...
Well I don't play... so I never lose ;)
I was try to suggest something the same, but with worse graphics illustration :)
And my post don't have high attention.
I hope you will be more lucky