W27 - Next-Generation Collaboration Tools

Last week I finally experienced Xuecheng 2.0, a new version that supports real-time collaboration. Real-time comments make meeting formats like silent-reading sessions more effective. Document follow-along frees participants from the awkwardness of viewing a projected document while also looking at the original file. In the new version, documents are editable as soon as they open, with no manual saving required, and you no longer need to worry about conflicts from multiple editors.

A shift in mindset brings dramatic changes in functionality. We have completed the journey of moving documents online; now we are catching up with the wave of next-generation collaborative tools in the digital era.

I believe the next-generation collaborative tools will have two characteristics.

The first characteristic is human-centered design and integrated systems and tools. For example, when commonly used systems like Evernote, Xuecheng, Zoom, Ones, and OKR platforms interconnect, we can see efforts to stitch them together. But the better experience would feel like a single unified toolset that fully satisfies needs for goal management, communication, scheduling, and execution collaboration. I reada product manager from Feishu's perspective on how tools shape organizations—it was, I have to admit, a persuasive sales pitch.

The second characteristic is content structuring. In the digital age, content already goes beyond plain text: interactive media can be voice, video, or system-specific data structures. Structuring means turning content into machine-understandable, analyzable, and searchable data. If you watched this year’s Google I/O, you’d feel this trend even more strongly. For example, when a new requirement arrives, the system should understand its relation to OKRs, where the requirement document lives, who the upstream and downstream collaborators are, scheduling, swimlanes, accounts, and other granular details, and the post-launch results—everything related to delivery should be fully understood by the system and surfaced where appropriate, allowing information to move from proprietary silos into the public domain.