The story of 4.0: In the wild

By Peter Parkes on February 2, 2009 in Insight, Life at Skype.

This is the second in a two part exploration of the making of Skype 4.0 for Windows. It offers a bit of an insight into the way things work here at Skype, and gives an idea of what’s to come. If you haven’t already, you might like to start by reading part one.

First steps

The 18th of June 2008 marked the first public airing of Skype 4.0 for Windows, and the start of a very different public beta process for Skype. With previous versions of the software, we’d typically released one beta, fixed bugs, and then released a gold version a month or two later.

This time around, we decided to use the public beta to get feedback not only on bugs, but also on the new user interface. We also set out with the intention of testing the beta with a variety of users, and not just the power users who’d been representative of the vast majority of beta testers until now.

So, as well as talking about the three beta versions of Skype 4.0 for Windows on this blog, we proactively offered them to new and less experienced users, as they make up a large percentage of our total user base.

Don’t forget: to many of these new users, the idea of using their computer to make calls may have been an entirely alien concept, and so by offering them (and other new users) the beta version of 4.0 we had an opportunity to gauge reactions from a far broader sample set than we had previously – and a sample (we hope) much more representative of the Skype user base as a whole.

Opening the doors

The feedback on beta 1 was mixed, though not entirely unanticipated. Many of you were irritated by the changes to the window layout – something we’d wanted to provoke in order to find out why power users liked having what’s now called Compact View.

This was the first time Skype had been quite so open about the way we requested and treated feedback from you guys. And, as Director of Product Strategy Mike Bartlett said in his later blog post,

Different types of users gave us very different feedback. For example, in the Skype forums, where some of our most experienced users hang out, we heard a lot more negativity, in particular around screen size. However, in our surveys we saw quite the opposite. When we collated all of the feedback together, we found that just over 70% of people who tried Beta 1 prefer using it to older versions of Skype.

Since the launch of Beta 1, we’ve received over 50,000 pieces of feedback, direct from surveys, bug reports, and gathered from thousands of blogs, forums, Twitter and elsewhere on the web. Our experience team, which consists of a mixture of designers and researchers, have spent hours poring over all of your comments, and we read absolutely everything.

The experience team also meets users in one-to-one sessions all over the world to discuss how we can make changes or improvements to Skype, and we’ve conducted over 350 sessions for Skype 4.0 so far.

The focus of 4.0

In Skype 4.0 for Windows, we decided to focus on three objectives: great call quality, better video calling and ease of use. With that in mind, we took strategic decisions about how to deal with feedback, deciding to make quantitative assessments about which requests should be prioritised above others.

Work started to prepare the second beta over the summer of 2008, and it was released on the 1st October. The introduction of Compact View satisfied the vast majority of those who’d complained about its absence in the first beta, and the improvements to notifications and alerts made incoming and missed calls and new instant messages easy to recognise – both features requested by users during the testing of Beta 1.

Refinement

Following the release of Beta 2, we turned around Beta 3 much more quickly – this was an opportunity to add a few key missing features, including full History – and the follow-up hotfix offered a sneak peak at the new under-the-hood features which will make their grand debut in the final version.

They’ve been developed in-house over the last two years, and demonstrate once again Skype’s commitment to innovation. When the final version of Skype 4.0 for Windows hits our public servers, it’ll be the most distinctive new release in Skype’s five year history. But that doesn’t mean that development stops, not even for a second. We’re already hard at work on the next version

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Comments

I am still using the old version of skype, but since last week unable to login...whats the problem?

I just tryed that new version,but many things are unavailable here.
Most important for me is that I cant send a message with "Alt+S"
Also I cant start the camera for video conversation if I am in voice chat,I need to close and re-open.
When in separated mode I dont have button for call on user name ...
I hope that to be fixed soon

Just downloaded version 4.0 and must say I am very disappointed in the overall User Experience. It is even worse than the prior version.

Issues:

_History nested 2-3 levels deep..why. Previous version there was a history tab on main view, now i cant even find it

_Keypad Tones don't work. Need this to enter codes/passwords when calling specific accounts

_Hang-up icon disappears when selected keypad. how are you supposed to hang up?

_Double-click on number to initiate a call doesnt work. Previous version allwed double-clicking on a previous call in History to make the call

Technology improvements aside, if you guys can't get the basic touchpoints right everything else becomes a moot point.

Version 4.0 User Experience frustrations = FAIL

I agree with "hsiehl". This is a bad "improvement". Too much screen space wasted. Call history is buried.

In compact mode, clicking "Call Phones" or "Directory" and you get pop-up windows in random places. Surely if I'm "compact" it should be within the main Skype window - like it used to be.

In Dial a Phone the "4" and "7" digits don't line up properly. This is sloppy UI coding/testing.

Funnily my life doesn't revolve around Skype. I don't want it taking over most of my screen.

Hate it. Sorry.

I agree with all the above.. I have used Skype for business and pleasure now since its inception. I HATE VERSION 4.... It is unreliable. Calls do not go through.. and when they do.. they are garbled and noisy... Ver 3.8 was and is reliable to use for business.. Ver 4 is NOT... I also hate the new layout and look.. It is cheep and nasty looking.. How do I get back to Ver 3.8 At least all the features worked. Ver3.8 was plain, simple and useful and easy to navigate around.. WHY REINVENT THE WHEEL... I have turned 10,000 plus people on to Skype over the years.. and always had a good service and a good report with them. VER 4 is a FAILURE!!!

VERSION 4 IS A HOPELESS FAILURE.. That is the best I can say about it..

Send me a link to download last version 3.8 ... PLEASE!!!! Urgently, so I can get back to using it for business calls again.. and so also my colleagues as well. The ones I have talked with hate the Ver 4 upgrade too.. I am advising people to not upgrade at this time until you stop trying to reinvent the wheel..

Green (various shades) State-icons always meant: that person is online.
Now a green icon has also been assigned to landline- and mobile numbers one may have stored in the contact list; so there goes the who-is-online-in-one-glance-feature. Also there is no distinction between the off-line and invisible icon: weird and annoying.
I have reverted to the previous version.
Cheers,
Edwin Grosmann

My boss installed 4, and when he called me Skype to Skype, his voice was breaking up for me, something that had never happened in Skype before, for me. I thought maybe there was an issue of a mismatch between the versions, as I was on 3.8. I installed 4. Subsequently, the speaker sound for outgoing calls broke up consistently, even for Skype's Test Call, and Skype's management of my mic input was almost non-functional, although Skype's Sound Wizard showed wonderful mic input. I made all the changes suggested in the Support area for sound quality, but nothing helped. Now going to try a reversion to 3.8. I've been using Skype for years, for personal and business use.

I have reverted to 3.8, everyone I know wants to, but it has now been taken of the Skype Website.

Skype version 4 has made identical mistakes to Microsoft with Vista. 3.8 does what I want, version 4 doesn't do anything AFAIK better and many things worse. I will therefore continue to use version 3.8

I've been using Skype for quite some time and just recently updated my version to 4.0.0.215. I run XP and use a Logitech 9000 webcam. Now, when my video kicks in on a skype call, I get a blue screen. It has happened every time I've tried to make a call with the new version. Any advice? I am ready to go back and run an older version.

Thank you for all your comments. We live out of the country and this is our only communication with home other than email. I was very interested in the better sound quality and video but it seems that I won't like the rest of the upgrades either. Will wait awhile to upgrade.
Thanks everyone
Janice

Version 4 is terrible. I plan to revert back as well. I use this for my main phone with two numbers (1 in the US and 1 in Australia).

v4 Pros:
none so far

v4 Cons:
Green icons for landlines and online users. Too hard to differentiate.
Single click a user and nothing happens. You used to get the chat option. Now you must right click to chat.
Call Phones tab has been moved to the bottom of the screen and replaced as a pop up. Pop ups = bad idea.
Same with directory.
Call/chat history is now buried and is a pain to use.
You can no longer enter dial tones with the key pad. This is handy is anyone has to use a phone conference number. Now you HAVE to use the giant keypad pop up. Bad.
Alerts of missed chats and calls does not seem to work correctly. I have to click the little window in the corner 5 or 6 times for it to come up. Bad.
I have had two instances where I had to hang up and reconnect. Might not be v4, but it has never once happened before.

I'm reverting back now.

So far, no felt improvement to call quality on V4, and SO MANY GOOD FEATURES GONE! WHY?!

- One click on a contact previously gave you the option of calling or chatting to them. Now in compact mode to chat is so laborious, or need to right-click. WHY?! (and who would use the huge standard view?)

- When on webcam call, the video screen diminishes if you send an IM - WHY?! (it's fun to send emoticons during calls!)

- The hangup buttom used to be big and easy to click quickly. Now it's so small I find I'm fiddling to find it - WHY?!

- Chats no longer give exact time IMs were sent/received - WHY?! (it's nice to occasionally re-read old chats with loved ones and see what was said when)

- An IM failing to get through used to give you a message. Now there is none, so we do not know if the IM has been received or not - WHY?!

- Icons are all green now, which makes it hard to distinguish online contacts from skype-out contacts at a glance - WHY?!

- There is no longer any distinction between invisible and offline status - WHY?!

- Online contacts are white-tick-on-green-background on top of the contacts list. But I find some contacts down among the offline ones with green-tick-on-white-background. What does this mean? Are they invisible? If so, they are NOT invisible, which defeats the whole purpose of invisibility.

- Call history used to be easy to find and enable calls with one click. No longer so - WHY?!

Sorry guys, V4 is just so much more complicated to use - WHY?????!!!!!