Princess Karen Cummings' Portfolio

Rethinking WhatsApp Status Feature

WhatsApp is a common day to day messaging app everyone uses to communicate to their friends, family, colleagues, customers ,community and groups. The WhatsApp Status feature is one important feature they introduced in early 2017, this feature has been a game changer in the experience of it’s users, business and personal wise, they get to post business related contents, entertaining contents and it has been a source of revenue also to some users in terms influencing. It creates great connection amongst users.

Overtime, i have seen some complaints about the WhatsApp status and some downsides which is explained in the Challenge section bellow. I picked the ones personal to me to work on and called it Status “Comments feature” and “Mentioning Feature”

Example of a user having a messy screenshot while trying to post a status, and hiding her contacts info

User Persona

Based on our research data, i created two user personas to represent the user’s needs. This way, i can better understand them and design a solution that matches their needs.

Introduction - Context

Problem 1

Challenge

As a WhatsApp user like everyone else. when I make a post on my whatsApp status and i get to hear other peoples opinions through replies to my DM and i also want to share them. i have to take multiple screenshots of different chats and crop the screenshot image in order to hide my contact info and then post. This will mostly leave my status chain looking so long like a waist bead, and also takes up storage in my phone due to the multiple screenshots.

Problem 2

Sometimes people are not aware when other contacts says something about them on their status and they might not get to see it till the status time elapses. for example, when we wish some people happy birthday, most people don’t get to know when their friends wishes them on their status.

i was very passionate about this problem because i myself have had our fair share of it. i also knew at the start that i shouldn’t tamper with the existing UI so as not to make users start re-learning or getting to adjust to use the app.

So it was important i try as much as possible to make my new design implementation very familiar with the users.

Scope and Constraints

Creating a seamless experience for whatsApp users to easily show a particular status reply on their status reply section, where other contacts can view them. Also not exposing private info about my contacts like their names or pictures.

Allowing users to Mention contacts on their status so as to notify them when they are being mentioned. I also limited the tag option to maximum of 3 contacts on each post because i know don’t want people to abuse this feature.

Solution

The main goal is to create a unique experience for users trying to share their status replies to their status and allow users to mention contacts.

Giving the option to “send to status replies”
And also Remove reply option for replies seen on status if a user decides not to display a reply anymore
Other contacts easily seeing all status replies in one post instead of going through so much status post
In achieving this it will eliminate other problems like filling up their storage space by having so many screenshots
Allowing users to Mention maximum of 3 contacts on each post to avoid abuse of the mentioning feature
Allow user get notified when a contacts mentions them.

Product Goals

Design Process

User Research

User Interviews

Couple of WhatsApp users were interviewed to gather some insights on their pain points and their needs to better empathise with their problems. Getting information from them firsthand helped to understand what they need and hear from their point of view.

User Stories

I came up with several user stories for users

As a user i want to get notified to know when my contacts post about me
As a user i want to be able to mention people
As a user i want to share other peoples replies to my story without having to screenshot and repost long chained status.
As a user i don’t want expose private info about my contacts like their names

Task Flows

Based on my findings above, i created a user flow to better illustrate the process a user would take to complete this tasks.

Design Inspiration

I looked through the flow app and i saw this section called secret chats. here you can see annonymous comments and the UX for this gave a great insight to solve the problem of not exposing private info like name and photo.

Low-Fi Sketch wireframe

I created low-Fi designs as a means to communicate my ideas. This visual design illustrates the layout of the mobile app

Flow 1

Flow 2

Flow 3

High Fidelity Designs & Prototype

This screens are showing the view of when a user just uploads a status and hasn’t shared or sent any reply to the status. This is the main whatsApp UI

Starting screen Flow 1

The next screens here is showing when the user gets a reply to his status from one of his contacts.

And then the user clicks and opens the message.

Here the user can long press and the option will come showing to “Send to Status replies”.

After the user clicks this it tells the user the reply has been sent.

Now the user has sent replies to his status, now when he opens his status he can now see “Views” and Replies” count.

Sliding up shows the pop up drawer of view count and to the right is a “comment” icon button to tap and switch view to see the replies

Status Screens

Here the user can edit the replies, and they see the option to remove comment.

clicking the Red icon a pop up shows telling the user that “ the reply will no longer appear on your status reply list”.

Flow 1 Prototype

I created a short prototype demonstrating and explaining this flows entire process.

Flow 2 - Viewing other contacts replies to Status

Here when you want to reply to another contacts status. its still the same flow but i only incorporated the view for their status replies.

When you slide up to send a reply you still see the banner of what status you are replying to and then see all other replies the contact shared to his/her status.

There is a type field at the bottom and you can type and send reply to the person status.

Here the reply does not automatically send to his status, No! but to his DM as the conventional way. It is only the person who you sent a reply to can decide to share it to his/her status

Flow 2 Prototype

Flow 3 - Mentioning a contact on status

This flow is very simple. If the user wants to post an image/video status or just send a normal text status and mention a contact they can easily see and click on the “@” icon

Here i used an instance where this user is posting a someone on his birthday and wants to mention him

Clicking on the “@” will bring up a pop up allowing to user to mention at least 3 contacts max to that particular status

in the next screen the user has mentioned ‘Vincent contact’ to his status and there is an alert showing “1” on the “@” icon, showing that 1 contact has been mentioned