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Finding Communcation Through Discord

By: Maxwell Kuse

03/10/23

Many of those interested in video games have been using Discord to communicate with their friends and peers. Discord is an instant messaging application that allows users to communicate with each other through voice calls, instant messaging, and video calls. This can be done in private chats, or as a part of a community which is referred to as a server.

There have been other applications that try to have tried to implement a similar set of features, but it seems widely believed that none are as memorable as Discord. In terms of user experience, something is memorable if it is easily navigable, which discord does particularly well. Discord, unlike other voice chat applications such as Team Speak, allows you to join a community, which they call servers, at the click of a link.

Screenshot of the promt that allows you to join an existing Discord server

These servers each have their own subsections which are usually grouped by category with many “channels” that one can join to talk with other users through voice or text and images. Discord has a simple and efficient interface that makes it easily learnable.

Screenshot of the Discord application interface, specifically the Chico State computer science server

The Discord app is learnable due to its simple layout with the user’s servers, or communities, in the first column on the far left of the screen. When a server is selected you can join any of the text or voice channels, as well as see which members of the server are online or in each voice channel. The screenshot above shows the Chico State Computer Science discord server with a text channel that you can join for each respective course in the Chico State course catalog.

Although Discord is more learnable and efficient than the package that team speak provides, it isn’t without its flaws. Unlike Discord, Teamspeak allows a user to host their own servers anonymously. Teamspeak also has a higher level of encryption than Discord uses. Overall, Discord is a more user-friendly experience compared to similar services, offering an application so easily learnable and feature-abundant that other applications cannot possibly compete