Having been a fan of Snapchat since its launch, I’ve enjoyed many a snap and often found myself sending photos tailored to different friend groups. The idea of being able to easily send snaps to particular sets of people began to grow in my mind.
Below you will find the thinking behind a quick evenings design hack with the intention of exploring how Snapchat could implement groups into their product.
The Need
After discovering I could benefit from this feature, I was left wondering if others were thinking the same thing. From a quick scan of Twitter it was confirmed I was not alone in my lust for snapchat groups.
Lucky for us Snapchat support actually offers the ability for its users to vote or submit their most desired features with groups being one of them (so they know there is a need).
Safe to say it got my vote.
Defining the Problem
It is clear there is a huge need in the product for sending a snap to tailored groups. The ‘Story’ feature covers all your contacts and sending a snap to an individual is easy enough. Its only when you have to locate a group of people in your contacts list - be it your teammates, family or work-pals that the product slips up. God forbid you leave out someone from what is meant to be a group snap!
Feature Goals
Having understood the problem and realising there is a real need for ‘groups’, it was time to decide what I wanted this feature to do.
- User must be able to create multiple groups
- User must be able to name groups
- User must be able to add multiple people to a group
- User must be able to send a snapchat to a group/ groups
- Feature must adhere to Snapchats design language
- Create an experience that is intuitive to the user
Inspiration
As Whatsapp is an industry leader in instant messaging I took to it to gain insight into how they cover group creation. Working my way through the flow it was clear and simple yet separated into 2 stages, naming the group/ uploading pic and adding participants. From here I had direction and wanted to combine the naming of the group with the selection of people into one simple screen.
Tools
Being a quick hack screenshots were used to generate the screens. From here Photoshop was used to chop and change elements to create the proposed flow for creating groups. After Effects was used to better explain the flow of the screens and how the user interacts through the flow.
Proposed Creation of Groups
With the addition of create new group the user is able to begin the flow of forming tailored groups. Currently a search feature sits in this position so its been hidden under the title bar. To access the search the user can pull down the screen to reveal it just like Whatsapp.
From tapping create new group the user can then name the group and add people to it. Once more than one person is added the user is able to create the group. The new group appears in their Snapchat list and each member of the group is able to send snaps or messages to other members.
Sending Snaps to Groups
Sitting underneath Stories the user is able to quickly send a snap to Groups. This is how I envisaged the user can see and select Groups after they have taken a snap.
Conclusion
From the initial research into the need, to the problem being defined, I believe the proposed solution suitably meets the feature goals and delivers an experience that is intuitive to the user. Having spent only an evening on this I would hope to do nothing more than to promote the need, ease of implementation and benefit to the user this feature would offer.
Thank you for reading, any feedback or ideas to further develop this concept would be very welcome.
