A week on Clubhouse
The UX of Silicon Valley’s new drop-in chat darling
When I read about Elon Musk’s Clubhouse invite to Kanye West, I thought Clubhouse was solely for wealthy LA/SF socialites, where they’d wax lyrical about private jets and rooftop parties.
A week later, after an hour of chatting with fellow designer Aaron Veale, did the subject of the fascinating tech phenom come up.
Almost a year after it began, I finally got an invite without expecting one.
With my previous bias swiftly thrown out the window, I dropped into the wild, surreal world of this new app. Although I agree that much of its elitist streak rings true, it’s also so much more than that.
In the past week, I’ve “rubbed shoulders” with celebrities I’d least expect, got insight into industries I knew nothing of or wasn’t interested in, and got a peek into why the app’s so divisive.
In all my child-like fascination, I want to shed some light on how Clubhouse’s design draws the user in.
Since others have been more articulate about its social and security aspects, I recommend you read:
Zen Chan’s take on its privacy and security risks
Vox’s detailed explanation of its inner workings
Note: I’m not affiliated with any of the clubs or users shown in the following examples. This is my take as a curious designer.
What is Clubhouse?
Launched in April 2020 by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth of Alpha Exploration Co, Clubhouse provides “a space for casual, drop-in audio conversations.”
On Jan 21st this year, after its initial Series A investment by Andreessen Horowitz (yes, that a16z), it reached a valuation of $1 billion. Currently, it has more than 8 million global downloads.
Impressive. So, what’s all the hype about?
Simply put, it’s an app whose main function is for people to listen in or to join into voice-only chats anywhere in the world, at any time. Right now, it’s invite and iOS only. The invites, otherwise known as Nominations, are sent to an invitee’s phone number. From there, they create their account by adding a name, display pic, choosing interests and following others based on app recommendations.
Then, anyone can join a chat and choose to do the following:
- Listen to it like an ongoing podcast
- “Raise their hand” if they want to speak
- Leave
That’s it.
Sounds too simple right?
That’s what’s so ingenious.
The Chat Experience
Before I analyze more of the app, let’s dive into this concept.
Unlike Discord, Slack, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Viber and all the other voice and messaging apps available today, Clubhouse separates itself from the pack by making voice mandatory.
By removing all the extra functionalities that other competitors already do well (enough), everyone that joins Clubhouse knows what to expect. The added privacy of not having to show one’s face besides a display picture also encourages video-shy people.
Furthermore, what makes it even more unique is the famous names that often pop up in these chats, or are moderators themselves. The average person is now given the ability to listen to conversations they’d normally never get a chance to.
By curating an environment that feels like a house party, it feels exclusive to join, without any rules or demands on its members. Stay however long you want, leave it in the background like a podcast, or speak up. It’s your choice.
These house parties can be as small as a few people or max out to 8000. That happened when Bill Gates joined the other day!
Unsaid (Club)House rules
The app maintains a casual tone of voice, almost disarmingly so.
Users nominate other users for everything — creating an account, joining a group, being a moderator and so on. There is a sense of being empowered or trusted to join, then extending that trust to others.
Likewise, when someone follows you, you can choose to follow back, or politely turn them down with “Not yet, thx!” as if you’re talking directly to them. With club invites, the app follows a more familiar pattern by choosing the word “Ignore.”
Also, the app uses a ton of emoji 😄. So much emoji that all newbies, like me, have a party hat 🎉 badge for their first week.
A few days in, I started noticing a trend, a trend that most social media platforms are bereft of these days; that I failed to notice on my first time until it kept happening.
Aretha Franklin would be proud.
That something was R-e-s-p-e-c-t!
Clubhouse is an app that invites everyone from around the world, from numerous backgrounds, experiences, cultures and so on. Conflict is bound to happen.
However, unlike Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, where people sling insults at each other out of personal passion or memes, my expectations have been subverted. Every chat has somehow found its way back into respectful discussion.
Okay, all this is good and well, but what if you’re not feeling the vibe?
There’s the option to “Leave Quietly”. Although the list of members visibly animates when you or someone else leaves, it gives the illusion of not being noticed.
The world’s at your fingertips…
Suffice to say, there’s a lot going on.
I’ve both joined and seen chats in Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, Thai, French; catering to everyone from the African diaspora to tiny countries such as Singapore.
You can be in a group community but you will still miss out on chats every single day. Encouraged by its addictive design patterns, I check the app regularly. The FOMO is real.
And it’s easy to get lost.
Since we’re on the subject of FOMO, it’s time to remove my rose-coloured glasses.
Clubhouse comes with as much bad as it does good.
First, I started noticing the length of its chats.
Remember I mentioned podcast? For the uninitiated, think podcast with no, or a very loose agenda. Now, add a group of panelists and several moderators fielding questions.
Finally, add the ability for anyone to chime in at any time.
You now have a recipe where conversations can meander and cover completely unrelated subjects for hours. Some chats are 24/7 open rooms, where mods and guests can chat at any hour of the day, anywhere.
From my experience, a typical chat has spanned at least 2 hours. While it gives people the opportunity to jump in and catch up on the current topic thread easily, the chats start to meld together as one long daytime show, always playing in the background (if you choose). Otherwise, chats can get dull until they find their thread again.
Sometimes, it gets lonely.
Let’s address the elephant in the room — the app is incredibly inaccessible.
Each chat needs to reach critical mass to be engaging. Whether it’s 5 or 5000 people, it’s up to the moderators to invite others and build rapport so it doesn’t turn out to be just them in the room waiting for others to join.
At the moment, it’s iOS only. The current global market share for iOS is at 27.47%. If we take into account that Clubhouse has a primarily American user base, then the numbers skew to iOS at 61.47%.
While it makes sense if the original plan was to beta-test with a small user group, the app has reached more than 10 million weekly active users to date. Imagine that on iOS alone.
Now, it needs to reach 38% of Android users in the States, and almost 72% of global users.
Edit: At the time of writing, Clubhouse just hired its first Android developer.
This brings me to another standout issue — the absence of closed captioning. While I can understand how this consideration can be difficult to implement because of its spontaneous nature, it leaves out everyone who is deaf, hard of hearing, or isn’t fluent in the language being spoken.
Here’s an example: while my second language is Mandarin Chinese, I’m far from fluent.
Some chats fly way over my head because of their complexity. Closed captioning would not just help me learn new vocabulary, but learn about topics I have not encountered before.
With all this in mind, how many unique perspectives have been missed since its launch in April 2020? One might think that it’s intentional, but I believe it has to meet this need when it scales.
Moving on to its interface, the main thing that stood out to me was the poor colour contrast between some of the app’s elements. Checking for this is important for those with colour blindness, low-vision, or having to read a phone screen under glare.
According to WCAG 2.1 compliance, there are two “Golden Ratios”.
The standard AA compliance ratio is 4.5:1, which applies to most text, including those below 18 points.
Ideally, the AAA standard recommends a contrast ratio of 7:1.
I decided to do a cursory contrast check on the main screen. Here’s what I found:
At 16.5 to 1, the default text contrasts well against the app’s beige background. Against a darker beige card-style background, The green community icons have the lowest ratio of 2.2 to 1, while the event times for each conversation has a higher ratio of 4.44 to 1.
Quite clearly, to meet the minimum AA compliance, these descriptive elements have room for improvement.
While any user can increase their phone’s display size or use other assistive tech to help them navigate the app, it should not be on them to have to take these extra steps to use it easily.
What was it called again? I swear I typed that in!
Last but not least, Clubhouse shines if you spend time curating your content.
That means following the right people, groups, and adding conversations to your notifications.
When you come across a group or upcoming chat you like, you can “Add to Calendar” or turn on the notification bell for that group. By default, Clubhouse turns on all notifications to reduce FOMO (Fear of missing out).
Doesn’t this sound familiar?
I’m sure it does. Other social media platforms expect that from us daily. So what is the value in managing yet another social media account vying for your attention?
If I could play devil’s advocate, many chat groups I’ve seen are filled with self-promoters, get rich quick schemes and repetitive subject matter. In addition, notifications have to be turned off manually.
Trying to find a specific group club or upcoming event?
May the search engines be on your side.
Search so far allows searching for people and clubs, and Explore does the same with tags. However, in the dizzying sea of emoji-laden names, it can be an endless, frustrating guessing game.
In calendar, “All Upcoming” lists every single chat without ability to search through an endless tumblr-esque list of events.
“Upcoming For You” will list only events I’ve set notifications for, and it keeps my scroll position if I switch from “All Upcoming”.
Unless you’re an Influencer or Insta-holic, most people don’t spend more than a few hours on social media. I’d doubt they’d want to struggle trying to find a particular interest or follow someone else.
Final Thoughts
In today’s distanced times, Clubhouse serves a niche that has been escalated by the COVID pandemic. It encourages sharing perspectives in a relatively safe space, many of which have been historically oppressed.
Being able to listen to these perspectives from all over the world in the comfort of one’s own home is a privilege that technology has made accessible to many. Still, despite the number of global communities making the app their new home, the number of US-centric perspectives are, unsurprisingly, in the majority.
Joining in also remains the realm of seeing and hearing users who have the time, resources and wi-fi to do so. In addition, it falls on speakers to foster thoughtful discussion, which can be difficult for those with limited lived experiences.
When we’re able to meet in person on a regular basis, would such conversations adapt or be replaced by actual face-to-face chats? Would people continue acknowledging these topics when confronted with physical closeness, or shrink back to the veneer of online anonymity?
Furthermore, will governments continue to have hostile reactions towards the social implications of (yet) another rapidly growing app that encourages free speech? Although Clubhouse joins the ranks of disruptors like Telegram/Signal, it’s too early to see the long-term effects of its rapid growth.
In the meantime, I’ll continue listening in.
