Modern multi-modal life

[jducoeur]

It says something about the way I'm connected to the Internet that, when I get a Facebook PM during the workday:

• The phone in my pocket gives a distinctive "bing", which tells me it's Facebook;


• I glance at my watch, and about a second later it vibrates and shows me the beginning of the message, so I can see who it's from and how much I care;


• If it looks interesting and I'm not in the middle of something, I flip over to the open Facebook tab in Chrome, which has just popped open the message for me to read and respond to (with the real keyboard).


• If I'm too distracted at the moment, I'll get an email in a little while, which serves as a reminder to get back to this conversation.

(Facebook is the extreme case, but this multi-way interaction is *very* common for me nowadays.)

Having all these different modes of interaction, each tuned differently but closely tied together, has *seriously* changed the way I deal with online, more than I would have guessed in the pre-Pebble days. And for all that FB is an annoying system in many ways, this workflow suits me quite nicely...

Comments

[andrewducker]

Yeah, my Pebble makes a much bigger difference than I was expecting.

For the last few days it's frequently been in a different room to me (where there's phone signal), so not having to go near t to know if I have messages has been really useful.