Design WhatsApp for the blind.

Hello everyone, this is the 3rd article of the #30daysofproduct series, in this, I would be solving a Product Design question which is also one of my favorite categories as here I have the power to think of solutions that are out of the box, so let’s get started for this one ⚡

Image Source: Unsplash

The approach I would be following here‘s -

1. Clarify the scope of the question.
2. Mission/Vision of the product
3. Define personas (User group)
4. Define user journe­y
5. Identify user problems
6. List solutions & evaluate them
7. Define success metrics
8. Summarising the whole case

This is the same approach I followed many a time for these kinda questions, as going through each step of the journey of the user helps me to think from their perspectives and the problem they face.

Just before asking clarifying questions, I would first describe what WhatsApp is, -Whatsapp is a chatting application used by people around the world to stay in touch and communicate their day-day to life with others, now the questions I would ask from the interviewer are -

1. When you say WhatsApp, do you mean only mobile application or web version too? (You choose — Mobile application).
2. There are various kinds of disabilities among blind people, do you mean completely blind, partially blind, or just temporary blindness. (Interviewer— Completely blind).
3. Also what kind of people would be using it, is it for Children, teenagers or old people? (Interviewer — Teenagers).
4. WhatsApp generally had a lot of features like sharing images, videos, uploading status & many more, any specific feature you want me to consider? (Interviewer — Consider text only).
5. Should I consider, building a separate application for Blind people or make changes in the existing one (You choose — Make changes in the existing application)

Now finally we need to solve the problem for teenagers who are completely blind and mainly use WhatsApp for text messaging. Few user groups under the teenagers I could think of -

1. Aman, a college-going student who uses WhatsApp for work-related communication and also to chat with his friends & family members.
2. Seema, an unemployed girl who lives with her parents and uses WhatsApp to communicate with family members and her friends.

For this problem statement, I would like to focus on the first persona, as the % of this kind of users are more and need a real solution, eventually, the problem got solved for different user groups as well.

After this, I would lay out the journey for the users and list down the pain points :

User Journey -

• User receives a text message from his friend regarding a college assignment related query.
• User wants to open WhatsApp, needs to see that message, and then wants to reply back to him.
• User also wants to see and upload a story.
• User wants to update his profile picture.

Pain Points -

• User founds it difficult to open WhatsApp.
• User founds it difficult to know who send the message & what’s the message.
• User doesn’t know how to reply to that message.
• User don’t know how to start a new conversation.
• User couldn’t able to see what’s in the story feed and was unable to update his profile information.
• Also, it’s difficult to check images and group chats.

Out of these pain points, I’ll try to prioritize the important ones, that are good for MVP and can ship new features later on. For now, I would like to focus on the first 4 pain points & will lay out solutions for them. Although will try to find a solution for the rest of the pain points and will prioritize on the basis of impact vs effort.

Solutions -

1. As I decided to go with building this in the existing application, so WhatsApp could introduce a toggle feature under settings for all the users. That toggle button would be responsible for changing the features for blind vs normal people, generally, people with disabilities have caretakers with them, so the caretaker in the first place could help the blind person in toggling that and explain the further features. (Impact: High, Effort: Low)✅
2. Now to open the application, either we can link WhatsApp with some special commands with Google Assistant or Siri, and that can help the user in opening the WhatsApp, or there could be a specific pattern which user could perform to open the app, we can go with first choice (Impact: Mid, Effort: Mid)✅
3. Now if someone sent the message to the blind person, then there would be a text-speech converter, that would speak up and tell what’s the message and who sent it. The reception of the message would be through audio-only all the time. (For ex- Whenever users receive the message, it would notify verbally “Hey, you’ve received a message from XYZ, do you want to read it now? User can command accordingly if by any chance user is not near the phone & forgot to read the message, then either it would remind after every 1 hour until user made any decision or will notify as soon as user open the app)(Impact: High, Effort: Mid-High)✅
4. If the user needs to start a new conversation, then it could simply ask & speak (For ex- Send a message to XYZ and write this, once the user completed speaking it could repeat the message, and the receiver so that there are no chances of any error). (Impact: High, Effort: Mid-High)✅
5. To check status (Although it’s not under our scope, as we initially clarify from the interviewer what kind of features are we thinking to build, where the response was only “text-message) user can again ask & speak “Check for status on WhatsApp” and if someone had uploaded any then with the help of AI, it would decode that image/video into text, then that text would be played for the user. (Impact: Low, Effort: High)❌
6. Similarly, for images sent to the blind person, there would be an AI decoder, that would help the user. (Impact: Low, Effort: High)❌

Note: Also, to simplify all the above solutions, there could be a simply voice-recorder as well, rather than decoding text to voice or vice-versa this would be easy for both senders & receivers.

The assumption I took in the above scenarios is that the caretaker had already set up WhatsApp for the blind person, as one needs to add contacts & all, which would be very difficult for the blind person to do.

Now, if we need to simply prioritize the solution then we would go for the first 4, as the impact vs effort ratio is justified for those cases.

Metrics -

The metrics that we would be tracking for this would be -

1. # of times that toggle feature is used.
2. # of times the profile is set up for a blind person
3. # of the successful messages received & sent.
4. # of text message sent/received vs #of a voice message sent/received
5. # of avg voice commands over a time of the month
6. # of times user open the application
7. # of DAU’s, MAU’s
8. Avg retention over 15 days period
9. Measure avg NPS

Also, we need to collaborate with Google, Amazon, or Apple for the voice assistant’s commands if needed, to set up a few guidelines for blind users. Thus, now we can summarise the overall case and thank the interviewer.

Oh, finally you reached the end, thanks for being here if you liked the article please do HIT 50 CLAPS. You can always send me a Hi, here at LinkedIn or at my portfolio. Cheers!