1-Click Communication: The Ultimate Challenge in Product Simplicity

We live in an era of the single click.  

We can order food, a ride, or diapers with 1-click.  We can pay our bills with 1-click.  We can book a restaurant, check the weather and find real-time traffic, all with 1-click.

But communicating with another human has always required multiple clicks, a text, an email or a phone call, that can often take hours to compose. Recently I’ve began to wonder if we can encapsulate the complexities of communication behind a single click, much like we’ve encapsulated the complexities of logistics or payments.  I should point out that this is a different challenge from creating bots, which recently have dominated the messaging headlines; bots are created to eliminate humans in conversations (ex: book a hotel); 1-click communication is created for humans to converse faster (ex: express gratitude).   

It’s worth taking a second to marvel at how hard the problem actually is. Growing up with a speech impediment, I became aware of many of the subtleties of communication early on that most people never pay attention to.   A thanks can be delivered with sarcasm, contempt, obligation or authenticity.  A authentic greeting requires a kiss in some cultures, a bow in another and a handshake in yet another.   Language is complicated, and encapsulating emotions, etiquette, context, gestures and tone into a button the user is confident enough to click is a tough road.

It’s because of these complexities that many past attempts at 1-click communication, while hugely popular, never could fully verbalize thoughts.

Generation 1: Shoulder Taps  

The first attempts at 1-click communication let you tap someone on the shoulder and let you know they were there, a broad gesture that you could tune to many things.  They were popular, but communicated little thoughts or emotions. Some of the most popular examples are below:

• Missed Calls:  In India & Bangladesh, it’s common to use missed calls to communicate.  Behind 1-click, a missed call encapsulated everything from “call me back.” to “I’m outside your apartment".   With people not wanting to spend money on a call, all sorts of scheduling was simplified to a missed call.   Studies show that ~70% of Bangladesh's cellular traffic is made up of missed calls, and ~95% of Indian pre-paid customers used missed calls to convey prearranged messages
• Likes:  Facebook members have liked something over 1 trillion times. Behind 1-click, they signified that you acknowledge someone’s statement - sometimes meaning support, sympathy, gratitude, or interest.  

Generation 2:  Emotions  

The second phase of 1-click communication let you share emotions, through emoticons, stickers, reactions and images.  So much of what we communicate is emotional and non-verbal that these technologies allowed us to be more expressive than ever before.  And the world was never the same.

• Emoticons:  Emoticons encapsulated emotions behind 1-click, first with a simple :) all the way to the hundreds of thousands of stickers shared today. In a 2013 survey, 74% of the US and 82% of China respondents answered yes to the question “Do you use stickers or emoji in message apps?”
• Pictures:  The ability to tap and share photos on mobile phone + social networks encapsulated the ability share a 1000 words behind 1-click.  More recently, SnapChat made it even easier by ensuring that what you shared did not live forever, just like real life.
• Reactions:   Facebook famously rebuilt likes by looking at what other one word items were being used.  In reactions, behind 1-click, they’ve wrapped up the ability to capture an emotion, share an empathic response and deliver a public vow of support.

Generation 3:  Say Hello.  

I believe we’re entering the third generation of 1-click communication - finally allowing you to not only tap someone on the shoulder and smile, but say the right thing.  Getting this right required knowledge of four parts of a conversation:  context of the scene (the social network), actors (identity), habits (learning algorithms), and a medium to deliver the thought (messaging)

How are products bringing these platforms together with 1-click?  

• Planning:  Down to Lunch has made it easy to tell friends when you’re free to hang out.  Behind 1-click, they’ve wrapped up scheduling a time, place, who to call and how to ask for an invite.
• Conversation Starters:  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all experimenting with ways to start a conversation. Behind 1-click, they’ve wrapped up current events, network relevancy and how to start a conversation.  I'm particularly excited about the ability to personalize these conversation starters between a two people.
• Etiquette:  LinkedIn recently added the ability to send compliments, such Say Thanks message after an endorsement and Say Congrats message after a job change.  Behind 1-click, they’ve wrapped up etiquette, professional tone, timing and messaging.   
• Replies:  At WWDC last week, Apple showed off how Siri can share suggestions.  If you get a message saying, “Where are you?” Siri suggests sharing your location. Behind 1-click, they’ve encapsulated language processing, location and messaging.  

It’s a hard road to build 1-click communication (I'm not sure any of these will work), but the payoff for whoever cracks it will be huge. First, the pain point of communicating is massive; I worry how to craft the perfect email because the humiliation of saying something wrong is real and gut wrenching.  Second, the benefit of simplifying anything into into a 1-click is often overlooked.  We could always have called a taxi cab or scheduled a delivery, but we didn’t.  Finally, every single person on the planet communicates hundreds of times a day.   The ‘TAM’ for this market is off the charts.  

I’m excited to see where this goes.  Take it from someone who worked hard to speak clearly:  the world is lot better when communication is effortless.

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Thanks to Salman and Victor for their contributions to this post