Google Wave is still in Preview, and as such is continuously being developed. Here, I will list some improvements that I would like to see in the platform, and that I think will hugely improve its usefulness to me and to other people.
So, without further ado, I present…
Things I would like to see in Wave
- Better control over permissions - As things stand at the moment, any participant can do whatever they want within a wave. Although at the moment, most people do not abuse the privilege, I would like to have some way of saying who can do what within a wave, so that I can give people the right to edit the wave, but not invite other participants, or possible give somebody ‘observer’ status: They can view the wave, but not change it. Apparently Google is working on this, so I eagerly await it.
- Locking a Wave - I would like to be able to declare a wave “finished”, so that nobody can change it any way. We know that Google already has this ability, since a lot of waves from Google are marked as read only. I guess that the reason why they are not releasing the functionality to the public yet is that, without proper permission and right handling, this can cause no end of problems for wave users.
- Linking to Individual Blips - Waves get big… Very big, sometimes. i would like to be able to link to an individual blip within a wave, so that I can directly send a person to a relevant portion of the wave
- Tagging Individual Blips - A variation on the above. I would like to be able to tag individual blips, for very much the same reason as I give above.
- Removing People - Related to permission control. I would like to be able to remove a person from a wave, if they are being annoying, or just if the wave is not relevant for them. At the moment, even removing myself from the wave is a tricky proposition, although I can trash a wave, so that I no longer can see it.
- Splitting Waves - I would like to be able to split off a blip into another wave. It would be very useful for discussions that drift off topic, so that we can continue without corrupting the main wave. The current setup can copy the single blip, but not any blips derived from that.
- Draft - Yes, there is a tick for it in the interface, but the functionality still needs to be implemented. It would be nice to be able to draft a reply without anyone seeing what I am typing. While realtime is cool sometimes, at other times, I actually need to calmly think about what I want to type.
- Email Integration - It would be nice if I could receive emails in my Google Wave Account, so that an email that arrives to my Google Wave email address gets converted into a wave automatically.
- The Ability to Move Windows around - While I like the current interface, it would be a good idea for me to be able to reposition and resize the wave windows as I wanted to. It would make certain uses of the wave a lot simpler. For Example, have a large wave window for a video player, and a smaller one for the discussion about it.
- The Ability to Access Wave Tags - For some reason the current Google Wave API does not give developers access to the wave tags. I really think that enabling this would allow developers to write even more impressive extensions and bots than they already are.
- The Ability to Have Personal Tags - Sometimes I would like to add tags to a wave for my own personal use, which I would not want the other participants in a wave to see. At the moment the only way to do anything like that is putting the wave in a folder, but the wave can only be in one folder at a time.
- The Ability to Tag Contacts - This is something that I have always wanted in a social platform (and wave is a social platform, among other things)… I would like to be able to see at a glance which of my contacts are web designers, and which ones are my roleplaying pals.
- Displaying Hidden Buttons - This is actually a bug in the current setup… When a wave panel is too small, some functionality is simply inaccessible… It would be nice to have some way of seeing the buttons hidden due to the small size of the panel
- Saving My Setup - At the moment, every time I log into Wave, it displays the default screen setup… It would be nice if it remembered the setup I had the previous time, and return me to that.
Of course, there is a whole wave devoted to discussing possible fixes and improvements, and I do know that the Google engineers are working very hard on improving the user experience with wave. It is possible that there are ways to get what I want by using bots or extensions, and if my readers could point me to any, I would be very grateful.
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Permissions: I can see someone wanting more permissions. But really, the Wave is for multi-party editors, and each wave can be effortlessly copied/exported so readers can have it. That said even if someone did go in and majorly screw stuff up, you can always go back to the prior edit. Permissions for me would be a somewhat nice feature that I genuinely fear would be heavily misused and abused. Wave is liquid, flowing, and permissions are therefore less important. I suggest if you’re working with people you don’t trust that you take refuge in the fact that nothing you do will really be lost in the wave, and you can always set ground rules for everybody editing the wave.
Locking as finished: Not all that significant. If it’s done, it’s done. Good thing about it – if someone catches an unfinished piece they can go in and fix it. You can even use copies of the wave for really anal-retentive version control. Although version control can be done just as easily in a single wave by typing the version number at the top with each new version. In fact, I don’t even bother. Google has a number corresponding to each revision of the wave.
Linking/Tagging blips – that’s actually a neat little idea that would be interesting to see. Not sure I’d use it, but I can see its advantage. I’d say so far one of the coolest part about blips is that wherever you click “reply” in the wavelet, that’s where the reply appears.
Removing People: I”m a bit surprised this isn’t a feature. To me this has got to be rather high priority. It may mean permissions would have to be done first. I can see it becoming sticky though. Number one if you’re working on something (some of it maybe being your own creative work) you wouldn’t want someone stealing it and leaving you without a way to access the information. So a static copy would have to be provided for such a kicked member – the last version they were on as editor. Maybe up front, at the beginning, each member of the wave could agree to the permission-set of the wave. That is, you can set it so that people can be muted/kicked freely…or no special permissions as it is now.
Splitting/Branching waves: You can copy a wave, which is similar.
Draft – sorry, I see this as being email-only.
Email Integration: Every user is given an @googlewave.com email address. I haven’t played with that yet.
Reposition Windows: I think it works great the way it is.
Tagging/Grouping Contacts: Sounds good to me.
Saving Setup: I think this should be an opt-in feature (at first you probably just want to get used to how the wave suggests you work, and decide later whether you want to keep it that way or not).
Thanks for a well thought out and extensive comment. I am glad to have somebody else’s point of view on this, now I no longer feel like I am talking to myself.
Very nice post Nenad. I’ve added a few more such suggestions on my Google Wave blog. Do take a look : http://techmein.com/google-wave-wish-list/300128
I would add the better playback funcionality while playing back a long wave every now and then you need to scroll down (or up) to see the text added. So playback function should put each blip that has been added or edited to the center of the screen and possibly mark the relevant blip or edited text by a color (or to make it visible some other way for reader).
Excellent post Nenad.
Ferdinand