Chat apps miss these functions
Which new handy functions in chat apps could make our lives easier?
Recently I chatted with a friend of mine and realised that chat apps are all generally the same, and have the same features. After researching it further and looking a bit into the history of how the whole shebang of instant messaging started… There still was not much change and innovation to an instant messenger interface. Main reason is, we assume, is just because it works.
Back in the day there were several funky concepts which did not become mainstream:
- displaying typing character by character;
- chatting in a group where every participant has his own box, for example in Talkomatic and in Unix Talk.
We came up with our own ideas of which extra functions in modern chatting apps could make the life of their users easier. Here’s my take on those ideas.
Respond to a specific message
UPD 10 Jan 2017: I wrote about this specific improvement while being in a blissful ignorance that WhatsApp (and maybe other apps too) already were implementing/implemented this. Needless to say, I’m abusing this feature a lot nowadays :)
Text communication does not exactly represent how the real conversations go (this has both pros and cons). Chatting is asynchronous, that is, I can respond to an incoming message three hours later. Or, when my friend asks me two questions in a row, I cannot answer just with ‘okay’ as it is unclear which question I am answering.
These are certainly not dealbreakers. But what if whenever necessary you could directly refer to the specific message?
In this mockup I refer to the familiar concept of responding and email, where you have a copy of the original underneath. For this design, though, it was more logical to place the original message above, and not below the response. That is because in a chat reading goes top to bottom, and reading original message can provide a useful context for understanding the response. But, in email, the context is already provided by the subject line and other emails from the conversation displayed next to the email.
Message to the future
What if you could send reminders in a chat to yourself and others? Remember it’s Nancy’s birthday, please get milk in the supermarket, Jenny asked to get back to her on Monday about this issue etc.
There are many applications to sending messages ‘to the future’. To avoid potential misunderstandings these messages should be marked. They should show that they are delayed messages. This is useful in case when person A said something and a moment later the same message from B arrives.
Switching between chats
When chatting with several people at the same time, it can be mildly annoying to have to go back to the list, select a different chat, open it and chat with someone else. What if you could shortcut to a specific chat?
Set up a specific touchscreen gesture — and you can instantly switch to a specific chat. It would be cool to have this shortcut work ‘outside’ the app as well. But, but it seems to easily accidentally perform some action or function the user does not want to.
This is it, a quick exploration about possible functions for chat apps. Let me know if you have any suggestions or ideas!
