Too Many Contacts: Reducing Information Overload in WeChat
CXZB: hey I’m back for the summer, want to meet up sometime?
Every now and then I would receive messages from unidentifiable WeChat contacts with no name, tags, or moments posts. Yet, after scrolling relentlessly to reach the top of the chat, I find out that I had accepted CXZB’s friend request and in 2015, had exchanged a long conversation on math assignments.
This is a common struggle among long-term WeChat users: As a user who depends on WeChat as their main form of communication, I want to categorize and maintain only the necessary friends so I can be more productive when finding specific contacts. But I can’t do that well because:
- Users find it difficult to identify all their contacts
- Contacts with different backgrounds are difficult to manage/organize
The Current State
Due to its popularity, WeChat has taken over China’s social media industry and gained near monopoly. This extends so far as to WeChat also dominating in payment methods, live streaming, online shopping, and more. Such high levels of reliance on 1 cluttered app has resulted in struggles regarding the organization and management of information.
User research
To gain more insight on other regular users of different backgrounds, I interviewed 18–60-year-olds located in both China and the US where 3 main personas emerged:
The study abroad:
“yes, I think tags would be a very useful feature... Oh, we already have them [tags]?”
> only uses to keep in contact with friends and family in China
The local:
“Tags have become very annoying recently. I can’t figure out how to add or remove my hundreds of contacts!”
> uses WeChat on a daily basis to communicate, shop, and document
- Has many contacts and different groupchats from different 公众号, businesses
- Messy home page
- Uses sticky on top and tags
- Contacts have personal names
The businessman:
“I don’t know anymore. There are thousands of contacts, I very often use the sticky on top function but now I have almost 100 stickies on top.”
> uses WeChat contact during networking events and professionally
- Has thousands of contacts, many of which have notifications turned off or blocked
- Contacts have repeated names
- Only small percentage of contacts they frequently interact with
Spotted Problems: Many users emphasized their struggle to find specific contacts, especially due to unrelated or identical usernames. These contacts come from a variety of contexts, making them difficult to keep track and despite the agreement on the importance of the tags feature, users find it overwhelming to navigate due to its lack of more in depth features.
Market research
Though not entirely popularized, Instagram and QQ give users the option
- to publish both real and customized names
- to view “following” and “tagging” history, level of activity/engagement, and friends’ past usernames
Messenger and Discord both have the option to pin certain messages; Discord has access to view both mutual friends and “groupchats”
Choosing a Design Direction
Brainstorm Session
To get a variety of persepctives, I (high WeChat awareness), along with two recruited friends, Claire (medium WeChat awareness) and Lucia (low WeChat awareness), came together to brainstorm design directions that target my devised people problem.
After hours of exploration and contemplation, we settled on 3 possible solution features:
1. Workplace Hierarchy and Contextual Grouping
- Medium Feasibility- difficult for user to draw a line between different levels of hierarchy in terms of both workplace or relationship
- High Impact- most users have contacts of very different backgrounds (professional vs. casual)
2. Schedule Availability
- High Feasibility- Similar systems to schedule availability already exist so it is feasible to both design and create by using them as templates
- Medium Impact- this is will create significant impact for those with busy schedules, especially if they have higher positions at workplaces. However, it will be less impactful for those who use WeChat for leisure and only amongst friends
3. Greetings Customization
- High Feasibility- This is feasible to design as only an extra feature of adding a greeting with a tag will be required
- High Impact- this feature will affect nearly all WeChat users and will save lots of time in terms of identifying users later on (a problem that most interviewees mentioned)
Final Decision: Automated Greeting Based on Tag
It is important to note that greetings are already subtly ingrained in WeChat’s culture but not directly integrated into the system. Based on user feedback, it’s evident that a greeting feature would benefit a wide audience by helping users identify and categorize contacts, solving issues like not being able to recognize people, and managing different contact categories (work, academic, leisure). Importantly, this feature wouldn’t introduce a completely new element to WeChat; it would seamlessly integrate with the current design, making it intuitive for users who are already familiar with sending out greetings as the first text. To enhance user experience, the feature would be embedded in contact profiles as part of the “details” section, eliminating the need for users to scroll all the way up to the first message to identify each contact.
Entry Points
1. Tags page
- tag button: cleans tag page
- tag setting: can have more details in describing and categorizing tags to make each group of people more personal to the user
2. Contact profile information
- personal name: by having the name/nickname that user refers to this person as, it is easier for each person to identify contacts
- tags: allows users to clearly link each contact to their relationship with them
- greetings: convenient access to background information of contacts, especially those who frequently text such that their original relationship can be found without scrolling
- tag hierarchy: still able to manage contacts with multiple backgrounds and ties
3. Greeting
- pre-existing greeting templates: the most basic greeting is already installed in WeChat systems; common greetings used can also be compiled and made into templates as users are already familiar with them
- customizable greeting templates: users have diverse and unique connections with their contacts and the ability to create their own new templates allows users to express their personality, etc.
User Feedback
To ensure an intuitive and user-friendly design, I conducted think-alouds with three friends on their experience with interacting with each of the three medium-fidelity prototypes. From this, I received feedback on the applicability of prototype 1, the repetitiveness of prototype 2, and the clarity of prototype 3. Using these responses, I created my final product.
High-Fidelity
Decisions and Tradeoffs
- Exploring Keyboard Popup Timing→ Thought that original option would include more steps, but once modeled out, it is actually more concise. Another advantage of this model is that users can reference past tags when creating the new one: having some view of pre-existing tags is more useful that having partial view of a blank “Tag Details” frame.
- Exploring Tag Details Transition→ After more consideration and feedback, I have edited this flow and decide to stick to it to reduce the number of left and right swipes which might become confusing. the automated tag details page action also makes everything more straight forward.
Final interaction recommendation:
- Combined prototypes 1 and 3 for an overall coverage and clear demonstration of the greetings function
- Used more symbols rather than text to reduce clutter
- Better replicates what users will be encountering in reality when adding new contacts
- The new flow includes the full process from how to assign greeting to a new tag to how the greeting will be sent and how it will appear in the contact details
- A variety of places of where greetings will show up are included; such repetition makes sure users are able to identify these contacts conveniently
Take-Away
This was my first case study and my first experience in User-Interface design. Throughout the design process, I gained so much knowledge and understanding on how to create design that is catered towards specific user groups. The “exclusiveness” of the WeChat really enhanced this learning experience; while it was difficult to conduct research on it, the user group and their usage goals. As I reiterated my flows again and again, I realized that there is no such thing as a perfect design within the infinite possibilities. There were so many different places where I could integrate the greetings function into, but, with the help of user studies, I was able to narrow it down to a few that were the most intuitive and direct.
WeChat is an ambitious app that has been able to combine so many different features in aspiration to provide upmost functionality to its users. What made this case study so difficult was its ‘near-perfection’ and wholistic design. However, with a little more attention to detail, it can level up to be an app that is more productive in helping specific users locate all of its elements to better achieve their individual goals.
“WeChat is perfect, I can’t think of anything that I want it to improve on…”
~all of my interviewees