Unlocking the Past: Nokia Keypads and the Birth of WhatsApp
Let’s start with the basics. In the late ’90s, a whole new way of text communication started in the palm of our hands. Remember Nokia’s phones and their “telephone keypad”? Some of you might not have been born, but I was there 👴.
The functionality was clunky but straightforward. For example, to type the letter “C,” you had to press the number 2 key three times. Crazy, right? Also, we had a limited number of characters that we could send via SMS ✌️. We had to be creative when talking with friends; many words were shortened, like “lol,” and emojis were pretty basic, such as “:)”.
I was quite fascinated with this world. Later on, the BlackBerry was born (I never had one; I kept it real with my telephone keypad). I believe it was one of the first approaches to an online messaging app with no character limits. You could send images with ease, voice notes, see if the person you sent the message to actually read it (which brought a lot of relationship problems), and, of course, the infamous “ping.”
In November 2009, WhatsApp was released, challenging BlackBerry and Apple Messages. As a hardcore Windows user, I never liked the exclusivity of Apple products, so WhatsApp was there for me to explore and enjoy with an Android smartphone 🤘.
I’ve always enjoyed its simplicity and user interface. That’s the reason why I decided to explore this app with you guys. Having these early-stage screens to compare them with the recent version and also appreciate the ease of having all types of communications in one app while looking at the wireframes. These will showcase the key elements and interactions the user will encounter.
The Highlights
This app offers the user a combination of a social media app with a messaging app. You can:
- Form communities
- Create business accounts for customer support
- Access dedicated chat and call screens to focus on what you are actually looking for.
- Furthermore, you can share stories, just like on Instagram and Snapchat.
It’s a pretty well-rounded application. I’m always looking forward to seeing what their product team will come up with next because so far, it has been a pretty nice evolution.
Oh! Btw
They recently introduced a pretty neat functionality that you may not have seen: Instant video messages — just like voice notes but adding a short video with audio. It’s perfect when just a text or voice note is not enough, and there’s no time for a phone call.
Takeaways
This challenge is the perfect example of how to train your brain to collect visual information, deconstruct it into bits, and store it. Understanding how existing products work is a good way to improve your skills as a designer. This will help you come up with better solutions to your users’ problems, either by implementing an existing interaction or, even better, improving it.
Thanks!
I hope you had fun reading through this article, as I had bringing you this experience.
