redesign whatsapp case study

Overview

To gain more experience on the UX design process, I decided to take up a new project. We all use Whatsapp on a daily basis specially in India, overall it's a great app but there are some problems i have encountered which could use some improvement. In this project, i will be suggesting some improvements to the already existing features of Whatsapp.

My Role
UX/UI Designer

Tools Used
Figma, Adobe XD, Photoshop, Illustrator

Scope
2 weeks

Team
Individual

Getting Started

I've been using this app since I first got my own phone. WhatsApp is an app that you must have on your phone. Why did I select it? Because it is the social media platform I use the most. It is delightfully simple to use and extremely useful for people's communication. WhatsApp avoids any unnecessary features, which is what makes it so simple to use; however, as sophisticated as an application is, there is always room for improvement. As a long-time user of WhatsApp, I've encountered a few pain points, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it better.

About Whatsapp

WhatsApp is an online social media platform founded by Brian Acton in 2009. Currently, WhatsApp has over 2.5 billion users from all over the world. Not only can use it to chat, but WhatsApp can also be used to make calls, video calls, and even update status. Its best feature has to be instant messaging.

The Problem

Problem 1: Unknown Groups

Privacy is the top most priority for everyone. Whatsapp is an excellent platform for connecting with others through groups.

But what if you are added to an unknown group or one that you do not want to be a part of despite having all of your privacy settings turned on? The current group privacy settings has some flaws and needs improvement

Problem 2: Missing out on important messages in large groups

Almost everyone on Whatsapp has large groups consisting of 100-200 people. People were quite often annoyed with the groups because the large chats made it difficult to follow the conversations and find the important messages among the others. This a major issue amongst a lot of people, hence a solution was needed to create an easy navigation between relevant and unnecessary messages.

Secondary Research

To find out more about the problem, I decided to dig in deep to find what people think about these issues. I found some interesting tweets on Twitter. Also found some reviews stating they want a solution on how to manage large number of messages in groups

Having these pointers, i ran user interviews to validate my secondary research findings

User Interviews

I conducted individual video & telephonic interviews with 5 users in the age group of 20-25. The interviews were focused on gaining information about the users thoughts on the issues with Whatsapp.

What is your experience when you get added to unknown groups without any prior notice?
What was your initial reaction when you were added to the group?
What do you think about Whatsapp's current group privacy settings?
Do you have large groups consisting of more than 100 people?
If yes, how many messages do you receive from these groups on a daily basis?
Do you mute these large groups?
If yes, don't you feel like you are being missed out on any new info being passed on the group?
If no, do you actually open and read each and every message sent in the groups?

" Before adding anyone to a group, I believe people should get their permission."

It's very annoying to get added to random groups, it's a question of privacy, who are these people and how did they get my number."

" It’s hard to know if some messages concern you or not. It also takes time to read all the messages if there’s lot of new."

" I prefer to just mute groups which sends irrelevant messages and only check them occasionally. "

The statements above are some of the participants' responses to the questions asked during the interview. Now that I had collected everyone's responses, it was time to make sense of the data.

Main Pain Points

Some of the major issues I gained from my research is as follow,

People felt often frustrated with the groups because the large chats made it difficult to follow the conversations and find the important messages among the others.

People do not have the time to scan through 100s of messages and the group gets clogged with unwanted messages.

People did not wanted to be added to random groups without permission as it was a matter of privacy

The "skim & scan" method, in which people try to scroll the text quickly and find important keywords among the messages, was the most common way of dealing with the volume of messages.

Most of the people just mute the unwanted groups, but 5/6 would turn on the notifications if they could customise them better.

The Solution

when the name is mentioned in the chat
according to the keywords the user wants to add
when a specific person writes in the group

User Flows

I created a user flow to understand the user journey and to identify any issues if there. My goal was to give users control over which groups they were accepted into while keeping the steps as simple as possible.

Problem Statement 1: How Might We help users by not getting added to unknown groups to avoid uncomfortable situations

Solution: It would be so much more convenient to the user if the a group invite request is sent where in the user can choose to either "Accept" or 'Decline" according to his/her choice.

Solution: Create Custom group notifications, the following features should be added

Problem Statement 2: How Might We help people to manage the information better from their large WhatsApp groups and keep up with relevant messages?

Problem 2: Missing out on important messages in large groups

The following custom notifications will be added,

when the name is mentioned in the chat
according to the keywords the user wants to add
when a specific person writes in the group

If custom notifications are enabled, the user will see two different indicators in group chats: the number of new customised mentions and the total number of messages.

When the user opens the app, it will automatically display the messages that the user wants to see based on the notification settings.

BEFORE

Final Designs

Problem 1: Unknown Groups

I decided to create a "Accept" and "Decline" Request Invite before the user is automatically added to any random group. This way, the user has the option to choose whether he/she wants to be a part of the group or not. When a user recieves a group request, the second image shows how it looks to the user, here the user can click on the group name to see who all are part of the group.

AFTER

User Testing

Conducted a 10 min long usability test with 6 participants who match my target audience. 5/6 participants were satisfied with the new features

Learnings & Takeaway

While working on this project, I realised how important it is to empathize with the user before and understand their pains points before designing a solution. Discovering that most of the people had the same issue plus it was a matter of privacy, i decided to take it up as an challenge and develop a solution.