Hello,
we tested the TS 6.0.0-beta2 and here are some thoughts.
- It’s working. All of the functionality we tested did work out of the box. Kudos to that.
- Screen Sharing: You should be able to hide your own stream. I already know what I’m streaming, I don’t need a mirror of my own stream in the same window where the other people in the channel are streaming. It reduces the space that other peoples streams have. Don’t get me wrong. I think being able to manually hide it is enough. To see your own stream can be helpful, it is only about being optionally able to hide your own stream from yourself. Except from that, the streaming quality is amazing with P2P and 10000 kbits upload. Thanks a lot.
- UI/UX: To mildly put it. I find the UI unintuitive and speaking several different design languages combined. It’s not clear how to get back from settings to where I was before. Of course I can click on the server again but it feels really weird to use TS6 at all. If you you use the small menu on the left then suddenly the gear to get into settings is hidden on top left. If you have the wider left menu then suddenly it is on the bottom. Also I’m unable to compress everything down like I was able to do with TS3. Now 10 channels/users do take the same space as 25 before. I know that you want to make it look like a modern app but I think you overdid it on that part a lot. In the end you can get used to TS6, but if you really want to get people into TS6 then I think the UI/UX right now is a big problem. You really need to emphasize more on usability and being able to instantly see things. You tried to make everything look integrated and neat. But thing is that sometimes because of that core functionality is hidden through design. Making something stand out in the UI is a good thing sometimes. I’m very vague here because I think the entire UI/UX is still very much beta and has so much room to improve that a list of all specific examples would be to long. In the end, it works, but it is like playing a 20 year old game again. UI/UX is usually better nowadays but the gameplay back then is still awesome today.
- I really like the general concept. Having my own server and installing a TS server + license, having the data in my own hands and being able to stream privately with high quality is really really nice and I’m all for it.
I hope it provides some end user insight. Have a nice day.
P.S.:
As example for the problems of the UI. If you make a group chat and then want to invite someone to that. How do you do that? Yes of course you go to the specific view on that group chat where it says you can invite people. But why is it hidden like that? The answer shouldn’t be. “It’s on another page”. The answer should be :“It’s in plain sight and on an intuitive position”. If I have to search for basic and core functionality, it already lost the purpose of being a good UI/UX. It has to be as obvious as possible without explaination. Usually I would have it on the top right as a symbol to invite people to that group chat, and not hidden on another view entirely. It’s the small things that matter.
