WhatsApp 'edit' button
Overview
As a team, we wanted to understand if other users expressed frustration when writing errors occurred during messaging. From having group conversations to business meetings, it was essential to explore this problem.
Users would benefit from an Edit button to prevent sending too many messages and deleting messages with errors.
My contribution
Design Research
The team
2 × product designers Heyam & Uriah
Year
2022
Process
Research
WhatsApp competitors
Facebook Telegram Discord Slack Signal
Based on Statista there are 2.25 billion WhatsApp users in the globe. The users have an average age of 15-56, which is a wide range. WhatsApp has 5 B downloads in google play. According to App Figures most WhatsApp downloads come from Google Play (with 29 million installs), and 10 million downloads come from the App Store.
Problems
Primary problem
How can we prevent users from sending too many messages and correcting their writing errors?
Secondary problem
How do we know when someone is online without going in their profile?
Interviewing Users
We conducted around seven user interviews, and it depends on the types of conversations at the time determined how many times they used WhatsApp daily. Sometimes it could be a slow day with only business messages, or it can be a constant usage if there is event planning or people send funny images or videos. WhatsApp connects people worldwide and is expanding into a primary communication channel for people and businesses.
Results
- Users spend so much time to write down a new message
- Only 2 out of 6 users delete wrong messages because they found it not useful when the recipient already saw the message
- They use WhatsApp when there is no signal
- They use WhatsApp to connect mostly with family members and friends
- 4 out of 6 users users check to see if the person they are trying to reach is online
Interview highlights
A user said they would send an extra message to note that they’ve misspelled a word. If there is more than one error, they will delete the message for everyone and rewrite it correctly.
Three out of the six users we interviewed regularly use WhatsApp for their business. Knowing when their colleague is online would benefit their work.
How we used this results
Just like other competitor apps and based on what we heard from our users we decided to add a green eclipse on the recipient picture.
We chose green because it's a common color for showing online status in many apps.
User flow
We outline the original user flow to access the features and added the proposed user flow after discussing the possible methods to access the editing feature.
Outcome
The implementation of an 'Edit' button will greatly benefit users by allowing them to easily correct mistakes and prevent the sending of incorrect messages. This feature will bring WhatsApp in line with its competitors and provide users with a more seamless and efficient communication experience.