Collaboration is a spectrum from asynchronous to fully synchronous
From fully asynchronous work to fully synchronous work, there is actually a spectrum of possible working styles.
- full async - no collaboration ever - has to be completely disconnected
- async branching - git flow, working in parallel universes temporarily, then merging back together
- peripheral awareness - working in the same space while working separately (parallel play)
- fully sync - pair programming
When we're collaborating with others, there's a natural human tendency to desire some privacy while working through something, the freedom to take a piece of the creative work and play out different ideas, move things around, edit and refactor, without fear of judgement or the burden of having to explain or communicate our thinking or concern for overhauling sections where another is actively reading or working.
For example, when people are working on a shared Notion or Google Doc they frequently create a copy of the doc in a private / offline space and make larger changes, overhaul specific sections, flesh out their wild ideas. This semi-private exploration is vital to the creative process.
And yet, in "fully synchronous" docs where every change is instantly shared, this kind of private exploration isn't possible. This makes editors more conservative and creates friction in the creative process.
Potential ways of enabling this flow:
- A lightweight "fork" or "branch" that enables a single editor to create their own version and make extensive changes, potentially completely privately, until they're ready to show off their changes. (this is effectively what git does)
- What if we made this more lightweight such that any change immediately created a "branch"?