Lost in messages
During the coronavirus lockdown, I started taking online vocal classes. We used WhatsApp audio messages to send each other tunes and over weeks we have gathered a great number of records. Often, finding a certain message took some time, especially if it was an old one! This was due to the fact that there were no titles or other ways to distinguish audio messages. After trying and giving up several inconvenient hacks, I came up with the solution - personal hashtags. I have designed this new hashtagging feature for WhatsApp messages and present it below.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Meta Platforms in any capacity.
Since my design was unsolicited, I didn't have access to internal data and research. My conclusions and solutions are based on my experience, the experience of my respondents, and public information.
There were two phases in my design process:
Defining pain points
Design of the new hashtagging feature.
Prototypes were done for the Whatsapp iOS App version 22.2.76.
Defining Pain Points
I reached out to 26 active WhatsApp users and talked to them about their experiences. These were not official interviews or surveys. It turned out that 7 people (nearly 27%) had some difficulties with finding messages too.
Pain Point 1: It is difficult to distinguish audio messages and find a certain one.
The only information an audio message has is the date, time, duration, and possibly a star. Such characteristics don't help to understand what these records are about and how to find a certain one.
So… which one?
I will use a User Persona to show the user's experience on their way to achieving their goal. Meet Linda. Linda is a representative of people who regularly use audio messages and have to get back to the old ones.
Opportunities
User Experience could be improved with:
Knowledge of what is inside each record without the need to listen to it.
Different ways of highlighting audios in addition to identical stars.
Pain points 2: Information is not structured and it takes a lot of effort to find something.
This is an issue when information is being actively reported and discussed across several chats. People need to put together messages from different channels and resources. Such situations occur in work and study chats. My respondents shared their experiences.
Marta, a product manager in a travel agency:
“I'm responsible for aligning logistics in organising group travels to kids’ camps during the High Season. Do I need to continue?”
Olga, due to pandemic studies psychology online:
“My photo library is full of screenshots of messages.”
Opportunities
User Experience could be improved with:
Possibility to group messages together even from different chats. That way people will be able to find them easier.
Pain points 3: In a chat with a lot of messages and members, it is difficult to search through messages especially if they are in different formats.
Scrolling through many messages in order to find the right one is possible but it takes time.
Group chat with sightseeing suggestions for the upcoming trip.
Opportunities
User Experience could be improved with:
Possibility to group messages together by topics. That way people will be able to find them easier.
The personal hashtagging feature.
Principles
When coming up with an idea I followed four principles:
Ability to solve pain points
Do not disturb or slow down the existing flows
Use familiar and recognisable by everyone elements and actions, i.e. familiarity
Consistency: visual, functional, internal, and external.
Explanation
Personal hashtagging allows users to add tags to any messages.
The tags are private so only owners can see them and use them for organising messages.
The feature is placed near the Star feature and can be reached in the same way: tap and hold a message.
Users can search messages by tags.
Flow 1: Adding hashtags to a message.
The flow is composed of the actions from the existing flows: “assigning a star” and “writing a reply”. A person can type anything to create a tag that makes sense to them. It is possible to attach several tags to the message. This can help with understanding what is inside an audio message without listening to it.
Flow 2: Changing hashtags.
Hashtags can be changed at any time.
Flow 3: Search messages by hashtags in the Tags section.
In the Contact Info screen, I've added a Tags button that leads to the list of tags used in this chat. There is also a possibility to search across them. This flow is familiar to using a Chat Search.
Flow 4: Search messages by hashtags in the Chat Search section.
Since a hashtag is a text, it can be included in a Chat search. When typing a word that is used in text messages and in hashtags, all mentions are returned.
Flow 5: Search messages by hashtags across all chats.
I've added a Tags button to a search screen as an additional option. This is helpful for searching information with the same tags across all chats.
Hashtagging can help with the pain points mentioned earlier. An audio message is not a black box any more, and information can be organised and searched for by tags. Feel free to play around with the prototype and see everything in action.