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Speak — Push-to-talk audio w/ your team for Mac w/ Slack integration
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hey @rrhoover. Sqwiggle is still running along. we're in the lucky position to have a little bit of time and resource to experiment. Ultimately we want to enhance the way distributed or co located teams work and maintain a sense of connectedness and presence.
We've also built it to be very flexible. There's a lot of Sqwiggle we *could* plug right in here! I'm looking forward to seeing what people ask for and also what they don't seem to miss!
I don't think there is a set plan at the moment with regard to pivots/mergers other then to be on the exact crossover of social utility, practical utility and privacy. Im sure @ericbieller and @tommoor have more plans then they are letting on right now though
Believe it or not we've been working on Sqwiggle for well over two years!
You're right about the aspects of Sqwiggle that were tough for folks to get past, we found that everyone liked the *concept* of visual connection a lot - but getting people to use it day-to-day was another matter altogether. It turns out people that work remotely take their ability to not wear pants quite seriously!
With Speak we have a new technical architecture with all that we've learned over the last couple of years (blog post later in the week on that) and are bringing the 'best' parts of Sqwiggle across.
We have true (very granular) presence without the video camera being on and instant audio communication that falls back to a call when you step away from the computer or choose it because you're busy. We're also planning on integrating into the places your team already lives to make communication super quick and frictionless...
@tommoor How does the "Away from Desk" detection work? Should I be afraid of my co-workers eavesdropping on every conversation I'm having in my living room if I forget to set it to offline? ;-)
@tommoor @pveugen we use a bunch of os event detection to determine activity (mouse/keyboard e.t.c).
FYI There is an option that puts you into *call me* mode when you go idle, click yourself and then settings to find it. It will automatically go back into instant once the app detects that you are at your desk and working again.
@adamslieb fantastic to hear! We've started working on the Windows version, you can track our progress here if you like...
https://github.com/speak/issues/...
@tommoor @adamslieb awesome! I'll look forward to it being complete so we can get our Windows friends on board !
Greetings Product Hunt! Really excited to show you what we’ve been building :)
The hard truth is that, without good communication, your team is destined for certain doom. This is why Speak exists: to provide seamless communication between you and your team mates.
Just like you have a dock for applications, we like to think of Speak as a dock for people. When a team member is available and at their computer, they are just a click away.
Anxious to see what you all think, happy to answer any questions about the product.
@ericbieller Would love to try out the Windows version , can you give me a ETA.? :D
@h_halvi I'm happy to announce that Windows is now in beta! We're only letting in a few companies at the moment but expect to release it to everyone very soon. You can sign up for it at http://speak.io/?platform=win :)
We've been using an early preview of Speak at Blossom (https://www.blossom.co) as distributed team and it is super useful and the interactions feel well thought through. Great UX design.
Give it a try!
Wow. This is radical. Just installed it and invited some remote colleagues. I love the sense of presence it creates and how it totally changes the experience around 'having a call'.
Looking forward to run this in the background the coming days.
I have been a fan of Sqwiggle but as the founders explained I am one of those who found it hard to get the entire team to adopt it. Speak is a natural and - dare I say - radical better experience. Looking forward to seeing how it develops.
@jasondainter We're still working on our Windows / Linux apps, which will be ready very soon. Once we have those out in the wild we'll definitely start taking a serious look into mobile. Any particular way you'd see yourself or your team using a Speak iPhone app?
@jasondainter @ericbieller Personally if I could somehow just be on my slack app and start a voice chat from there like a phone call that would be awesome. I would deal with a separate app that did something similar but the more integratable the better.
The @workfromco team has been using Speak for a while now and it's hands down the easiest way to communicate via voice from afar.
It's quite literally instant audio if a teammate is NOT set to "call me". This means if you're not paying attention, someone can connect with you and hear what's happening on your end without you knowing it. Setting yourself to "call me" changes that.
We're using it daily now. Hardest part was getting everyone to try something new. Last week while on a failing skype call with three other teammates, one person said "next time let's just use Speak" and we all agreed.
Frankly, I've tried nearly every damn service out there with multiple teams and Speak easily holds the most promise. Why? Because it's easy to connect.
Hurdles will be:
1) remote teams often need screen sharing and using another app for that will hurt the overall experience.
2) being tethered to you machine for audio is not optimal.
Can't stress enough, this experience has the opportunity to be the winner.
@darrenbuckner Really appreciate the vote of confidence! We're definitely in the same mindset and already have a solution in the works for at least one of your hurdles :)
I love this! Great idea and wonderful design. One important (for me) nit: I wish it was walkie-talkie-style push to talk. Like, I wish I'd just hold my mouse button over someone's face to send audio and the connection ended when I released the mouse. No concept of a "call." The fact that it's a call makes it feel heavy weight. Like we have to say "hi" and "bye" and stuff.
@andrewmason hey, that means a lot - thanks! We did have some earlier iterations that were more walkie talkie-ish but in the end we felt this was the better balance for v1. A couple of Speak tips:
- Once you're in an audio call with someone or a group you can hit CMD+ALT+/ to get push to talk. So you could start a call as a group and then go into this mode.
- You can ALT+click on a users head to skip the menu and go straight to audio
Thanks!
First 2 days of Speak experiments in team @teleportinc have been very promising (9+ people, 6 countries, 10h max timezone diff). a little sad our full staff call on Monday will have to fall back to Hangouts until Win/Linux clients... keep up the good work, @tommoor & team!
@ryanpaugh Awesome! Let us know if there's anything the team can do to help out!
@willbarrettdev Do I have to manually invite people from my team? I authorized with my work account and didn't see anyone. Cool product!
@jmj It might just mean that none of your coworkers have signed up. You'll need to ask them to join!
Hey Gang, one of the engineers here, the founders will be online when the west coast wake up but if you have any questions during european or east coast working hours I'll be around! We'd love your feedback!
Been testing Speak for @tommoor over the past couple of months; loved how the design process progressed through multiple stages; all based on observing user behaviour.
The thing that stands out is the conversation grouping; and the instant information it gives you. You couldn't easily get that from Skype or general purpose audio chat apps. This is "team specific".
You can definitely tell that the guys have studied what on-site communication looks like; and drew parallels online.
Love the Slack integration, and would go as far as to say maybe it's best to keep it "Slack only" for now and focus on it being seamless with Slack (as far as the constraints of the API go).
The guys have some awesome tech in there for observing user behaviour, shaping the product accordingly.
@mattarevalo awesome. feel free to hit us up with feedback! (The good, the bad and the ugly!)
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