“The new interface is faster than before, and lets you see more content in the same amount of screen space.” I haven’t seen it in my client but maybe it’ll show up later. What do you think of this Skype art?
Update: I had to restart Skype to see it. First I was asked to reauthorize the Skype app.
I logged in to Facebook and was asked to for permission.
I allowed Skype to do the usual, but with more of my Facebook personal data and social graph.
I get a glimpse of the new tab, just for a second…
Improved quality of video sent to Skype on mobile devices by rotating video on the sender’s side. [Clever!] CORRECTION: Skype for Windows rotates video sent from mobile Skype, so the mobile user doesn’t have to. [Still clever!]
Skype shows users’ presence icons on collapsed contact profile cards. [Presence without wasting screen space.]
Conversation topic editing button is now always available on the conversation header. Click the small "i" button. [Topics change, so should headers. Better findability.]
If a phone number is added to a profile after a failed call attempt, Skype starts a call automatically.
Automatically switch to SMS entry after user adds mobile phone number to profile after failing to send SMS due to lack of phone number
Those Internet Explorer “Script error” popups and slow script warning message are yet to be defeated.
Millions of people use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files. 80/20 worked with Skype to transform the user experience of its products, starting with the popular Mac client.
OVERVIEW
Skype’s Mac application was beginning to show its age as it packed in an ever-growing number of features. As a result, users were having a difficult time understanding and using the full breadth of its capabilities. Additionally, Skype saw the need to consolidate its product development efforts and drive user experience consistency across platforms. 80/20 worked with Skype on a ground-up redesign of its Mac client, which would set the stage for unification across its product lineup.
So the brief was to fix feature bloat, leaving room for future bloat. Oh, and to save on programming time by having one body of code/design.
SOLUTION
User testing and audits of the Mac client highlighted issues with window management, contact management and revealed that features didn’t have enough real estate to be articulated effectively. The new single-window design improves work flows between calling and messaging while supporting the common behavior of using the “call log” to initiate communication.
The cramped design didn’t offer enough screen space for all those features.
RESULT
The next-generation user experience for Skype Mac increases use of core features while providing a clean slate for growth. The success of the redesign is seen not only in the Mac client itself but in the design’s ability scale to touch-screen devices and beyond.
So:
More pixels per feature.
No features subtracted.
One-window to hold everything.
And a happy client.
Design is hard.
Harder still when you strive to run on every operating system, in every device, with all your features. You want to be true to the nuances that make a Mac app feel like it is native to the Mac. To Android like it was born there.
Yet those many flavors slow Skype’s time-to-market.
How do you hold fast to your core Skypiness, to what made people love you, and support new features for new markets, new use cases, new business models? Your backlogs overflow. The pressure is intense. Heck, I add to my Skype wishlist daily so I can only imagine what your iceboxes look like.
The tension between simple and power is killing you.
I know this. You know this. Everyone at Skype knows this.
The shrieks from Apple users? That’s the anguish of the stricken, losing their love for the Mac-like spare brilliance of their beloved 2.8 client. They forget they’ve been calling for feature and release parity with Windows users for years. Skype gave in to feature creep and bought in to a universal design for desktops, perhaps for tablets and mobiles too.
So here we are.
Seething.
Hoping.
Please see this moment as opportunity.
Take bold risks. Forget our gripes and take us someplace new in a way we hadn’t imagined that makes our hearts swell with pride.
Believe today’s minimalism pays later. You want a diverse developer ecosystem, yes? All those use cases cluttering your inbox? Leave those to third-parties. Let them build upon your ruthless simplicity.
Reconsider fundamental assumptions of what it means to Skype, to be Skype, to belong to Skype, to play Skype, to have Skype. The last seven years are merely prelude.
Why would Skype cap Group Video Calls at 4 hours per call, 10 hours per calendar day (GMT), and 100 hours per month (starting when you buy)?
Skype is balancing several conflicting goals.
The obvious one is risk avoidance. Caps minimize gaming to co-opt the Skype group video service for criminal activity or large scale business use. For example, you wouldn’t subscribe on one account and give the login to a whole customer service department.
A second goal is to cultivate the perception that your product has value. Artificial scarcity is old hat in telephony. Phone companies chose to charge by the minute instead of by the call, by the month, by the number of callees, etc. Caps make you worry about running out.
A third goal is virality. When you run low on GVC minutes, you’ll push your friends, family or colleagues – the other people in group calls – to buy their own subscriptions and shoulder some of the weight of the call costs.
A fourth goal is to test consumer behavior when exposed to different price points and product scopes. 4/10/100 is a baseline. Do people hang up at 3:59 and call again? Do people trade off who anchors a conference call? Do customers start opening up a second Skype account to get around the limits? This is useful data for the next round of pricing/product choices.
A fifth goal is to contrast general consumer and small business pricing with enterprise products. For example, Skype could offer to double the monthly caps and do away with the 4 and 10 hour limits on a $20/month enterprise plan. Or let a list of Skype users (like a team or department) share a pool of minutes, billed centrally.
A sixth goal is to make customers plan before using. These first Premium plans are the same, differing only in duration, a simple choice that asks “how often will I make group video calls in the future?” The psychology of planning assumes a course of action, which is why car sales reps invite you to imagine yourself behind the wheel. You can’t choose among these plans without an answer and putting yourself in the host’s seat.
It is still very early. Skype has some data from the public trials that would lead them to expect that few people will bump into these caps. So they will watch for those edge cases and see what they can do to accommodate them or if these customers are too expensive to serve.
DownloadSkype for Windows 5.2.0.102. A few minor tweaks, a bunch of bug fixes, but it is a Beta version. Beta, in this case, means early exposure to new bugs and new features, although few new features are now visible.
Users appreciate the slimmer screen real estate by about 20 to 1, according to an early look at Scout Labs. Tip: You can reduce Skype’s footprint more by setting View » Compact Sidebar.
On the other hand, designer Gary Turner speaks for many longstanding users. “Skype have attempted a tricky move on Mac and flubbed it. Trying to mimic an address book app and have gone way off the IM reservation. Skype Mac’s avatar contact view is of legendary pointlessness, and no way of sorting contact view without having two columns. Total fail.”
Frederic Lardinois writes “Skype says this new version is small enough to be kept at the side of your screen. I guess that depends on your screen, but just know that at a width of 460 pixels in its slimmest mode, it still 50% wider than the [previous] Skype for Mac app.”
IT grad student Amor Jenhani tweeted “The UI of v5 for mac is a nightmare. I had the feeling I’m working on a Windows. I’m going back to v2.8 and iChat.” You can still download Skype 2.8 from this non-Skype site.
Paying for Premium Plan
Sam Biddie says Skype Mac Video Group Chat Now a Ripoff at $5 Per Day. “The best part of the recent Skype beta was its battle royale video chatting. But the beta label is gone—and now the (free) fun is too. Group chat will now cost $4.99 per day, or $8.99 a month. This sucks, and seems like a terrific way to discourage use of what was hitherto one of the program’s coolest features. The new version includes UI updates and other tweaks, but still—boo. Boo, we say.”
$5 for a day pass, $9 for a month pass. You can get 33% off 3 and 12 month subscriptions if you buy before 28 February 2011. To put the price in perspective, WebEx and GoToMeeting are each $49/month, and Angry Birds is $1.
We were blown away by our Mac community’s designs and customisations of the chat style within Skype for Mac, and we want to help you share your enthusiasm and creativity with the world.
We are about to launch a competition to personalise the Skype for Mac chat style. There will be several prizes up for grabs, and we’re creating a gallery to showcase your work on skype.com. One of the designs will even be included in a future version of Skype for Mac. Enter your details to be the first to know when the competition begins.
Let me end on someone’s sour note: Dregev posted to the Skype Mac forum “First the outages, then a complete devolving interface, then charging an absurd amount for multiple conferences….. Skype, you might want to reconsider your IPO until you can get your s__t together, because right now, you are sucking!”
Video will not start until Skype sees needed bandwidth.
Skype’s SILK voice CODEC (8-40 kbps) will be used when possible.
No Facebook support.
Their “blue wall” firewall restricts users to the UNHCR version of Skype for Windows and to off hours.
I think it’s a worthy cause but it’s an even worthier investment. Dan York writes
“it definitely occurred to me that there are businesses and organizations out there who could also benefit from a low-bandwidth version of Skype. I think, for instance, of shipping companies with limited Internet connectivity to vehicles or ships. Or to companies with distributed offices with very small branch offices with very small Internet connections.”
The lessons from confronting the engineering problems are transferable to other products and markets. So is Skype’s practice at partnering with a smaller organization.
Here’s Skype’s video of a conversation using the new client, now deployed to sixty locales where the UN helps refugees.
Tom Green pioneered using Skype video to bring viewers into his home television studio. Here’s Tom testing a combination of twitter, Skype and his pet huskies.
I noticed you can’t see Skype’s logo, which is a requirement of their broadcast terms of service. On Skype for Windows 5, Tools > Options > Advanced Settings > “Show Skype watermark during calls” will do the job.
I spent the Thanksgiving holiday with family in the frozen Northwest United States. I’ve been surrounded by people I love who are late adopters of information technology. None use Macs. Two use BlackBerries and SMS. One couple shares one basic mobile phone, for emergencies only. They all Skype, but only by appointment and sometimes with assistance; I was unable to Skype with one family for six months because they had not accepted my please-be-my-contact request.
I think Apple’s FaceTime might be appealing to them.
It is even simpler than Skype.
No namespace, just your existing phone book and phone numbers.
No privacy policies apart from your phone book.
No IM. IM seems to confuse older members of my family.
Did I mention they use iTunes?
I’m pretty sure one day early next year we’ll all see an iTunes update for Windows that invites us to get FaceTime for Windows 1.0. Free. No 3G required. Wi-Fi works fine.
Just like that, nearly all these folks will switch. They use Skype not out of love for Skype but to solve practical everyday problems like "see the grandkids without a two-day drive" and "video call the the son in London."
I want Skype to be better for power communicators, for educators, for collaborators, for coordinators and for teams.
Yet most people are like my family. They value things that work simply, directly, with big type and clearly marked buttons.
Despite Skype’s UX team radically simplifying Skype in the 4.X and 5.X releases, it is still not simple enough for newbies and occasional users.
I can’t believe I’m saying this.
We need a version of Skype that is even more stripped down, with more features hidden, serving fewer use cases with less effort and cognitive burden.
Kvetching on a Monday morning isn’t the way to start the week, but here goes.
No search by country. No search by city or planet, either, by we have to start somewhere.
No search by profile data. My profile description mentions my interest in the DataPortability project. But you can’t find me or other supporters of the project through your people search. Help me be found by people who share my concerns and interests.
Tops out at 200 results. I’d been corresponding with a professor named Sue Jones and looked to see if she had a Skype name. 200 results came back. Too perfect. Too few. Which brings us to…
No narrowing of search. When I have too many results, help me narrow the field. Since I’m looking for people use profile data like location, age, gender, social proximity (friend-of-a-friend, once removed), how long since they’ve logged into the Skype network, and preferred language to cut down from the thousands of people named Singh to the one I seek.
No memory of search. Show me my history of prior searches.
No alien namespace search. I love searching by Skype name. How about letting me search by the username of any of your partner identity services? You’ll want this service anyway in the enterprise, because you’ll want to support a company’s internal, customer, partner, supplier directories.
No memory of previous greetings. A template is fine, but I found it very time saving and a better practice to have my last greeting remembered for me and in the edit box. All I needed to do was customize it for this person. I actually invite most people in clusters because of a triggering event, like a meeting or a conference or a party. So “Hi, Bob. Great seeing at Mary’s last night. Gooo Giants! – Phil” can be repeated until I’m done with a set. 5 makes me work much to hard to do this.
No search result tooltips. Give me a clue when hovering over someone’s name where clicking on that name sends me. I keep forgetting and it feels risky to click on a name in a product where that can result in giving away my privacy or wind up intruding on a stranger.
Ghostly avatars. Gray shoulders with a question mark head, or a head in silhouette. Facebook works because you can confirm (usually) the person you want to speak with from their face. Privacy, you say? User choice, I say. btw, What’s the difference between the silhouette and the question mark avatar?
I know it’s 9 gripes, but I only detest five of them.
Still Deal Driven. Facebook? Skype still works on "It’s who you know" for doing business. Skype partnered with News Corp’s MySpace when it was hot, federating user names. Now Skype partners with Facebook. I’m happy for Skype’s bizdev and engineering teams but this is lazy strategy. Message sent: innovators and entrepreneurs and creatives need not apply. Make it as easy for anyone to make their own "Home" tab as it is for them to add or make make a Firefox extension, an RSS feed in Google Reader, or an iPhone app. Ecosystem-free Ecosystem.
Import, not sync. Batch importing guarantees your Skype contact list is stale five minutes later. You can import your facebook contact into Skype but Skype won’t keep your data fresh. So when your contacts update their names, photos, locations, phone numbers or emails, those critical changes won’t show up in your Skype contact list. I’m behind before I get started. Lame.
No group video pricing. Don’t try Skype group video. Like offering free crack, Skype rolled out ten-way video calling in a "28 day free trial." Skype won’t tell you now what happens at the end of the trial. Free three-way calling? $100/minute ten-way calling? Free with a business account? Included with a monthly global subscription? You’ll find out the real cost once you and your friends are hooked. Bait, Switch.
Not for Mac, Mobile, Linux. Skype’s ugly step-child Mac users seethe with frustration and anger as Windows users get the cool stuff months or years before they do. Companies with products connecting to Skype through Skype’s Linux client are also left behind. Mobile users? Still waiting for their first group chats, video calls, and file transfers. Tired of Windows Hand Me Downs.
Half an API. Skype’s Public API hasn’t been updated to use any of Skype 5′s new features. No video conferencing, no facebook, no contact import. Why is Skype punishing its developer community? Why is Skype still crippling its only publicly available API? See "Still Deal Driven." Developers should try Ribbit, Tokbox, Twilio, and Voxeo.
Fraud inducing identity model. Skype is asking you to lie about who you are. Skype 5 says you have to keep separate Skype names for each place you work and for your life. It might be feasible if Skype software let me log into and use several Skype identities at the same time. They don’t. That’s not how people work and live. More than fifteen percent of the US workforce are free agents, with dozens employers each year. Nobody will use a communication tool that must be shut off just because you’re at work. Or just because you go home. Ask a cultural anthropologist. Ask an industrial psychologist. Ask any volunteer at a not-for-profit. Ask anybody who works and has kids. This deviation from reality is for the convenience of Skype’s lawyers, engineers, financial analysts, and marketers. It sure isn’t for Skype users. Put the experience designers back in charge.
Plaintext IM and mood. This is a small thing with a big message. Skype is the only large IM network using plain text characters in IM. No rich text, HTML, inline images, or inline videos. This is a steep barrier to IM interop. It means messages from other networks must be dumbed down to show them to Skype users. Your chats will lose meaning. Skype participants will see and understand less than non-Skype participants. This is a reason business users will abandon Skype. #ClosedWebFoo.
I’m not picking at the small stuff. These failures signal flawed design thinking, poor product leadership, weak organization design, and insular corporate values.
Skype is full of people around the world working hard on the underlying problems. The new management team should find them and give them room to confront Skype’s culture, leadership and identity problems. Call me if you’d like to talk about it. #designskype
By now you’ve seen Skype for Windows 5 lets you sign in to Facebook and see your timeline. A change to Skype‘s privacy practice is a side effect. If you’re signed in to Facebook from the tab, you’ll see text, avatars and photos from Facebook. Those materials are pulled from Facebook servers.
A few examples. An HTML container for the timeline is served off of facebook.com’s OnlineFriendsPagelet. The Facebook logo is served from static.ak.fbcdn.net, Facebook’s content distribution network. Skype pulls Javascript files from a family of servers called channel.facebook.com. Timeline updates come from api-read.facebook.com. Your Skype client is pulling data directly from Facebook instead of Skype relaying your requests and Facebook’s answers.
With each call to a Facebook server, Skype gives your IP address to Facebook. From your IP address Facebook can locate you, approximately. They can follow your IP address through time and space.
![opentabs560[4]](http://skypejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/opentabs5604.jpg "opentabs560[4]"){kind=small}
If you’re signed in to Facebook from the tab, you’ll see text, avatars and photos from Facebook. Those materials are pulled from Facebook servers. 
Join the Skype 6.X Text Chat Room