Six cool features to WhatsApp without compromising it’s “Simplicity”
There are several chat-application across the globe, and we love using all of that for one or another ‘Feature’.
For e.g. Snapchat for it’s self-destructive message nature, Telegram for it’s wide range of features like Telegram channel and limitless media transfer, Kik for it’s unique “Bot Systems” but on top of all, WhatsApp is one crucial messaging service that one has to use, no matter where he/she is in world, what age-group he/she belongs. We all love WhatsApp for it’s “Simplicity”.
Simplicity is soul of WhatsApp. So, as an enthusiastic UX designer and learner I sketched out some features to add on without compromising it’s simplicity at all.
Here’s have a look.
1. Announcement section in Group Chat
We all love discussing venue for our next party and gathering, but there’s always some late comer who asks for party details after those 1178 messages. This feature is for people like this. Here you can add announcement, reminder, discussion topic, quote of day and what not! For limited period of time ranging from One hour to 365 days, you can tag this announcement.
In this feature, there could be one static banner at the top of group chat with details like Announcement, Name(or number) of person who made that, Time of making announcement, read more(for long writers!) and Edit option. Take a note that, all the admin control settings (like only admins can change group info, etc.) could be apply to this feature, too. There could be a strong possibility to make this dynamic where person can remove it whenever he wants.
Now, it’s more easy to plan our trip to Vegas, isn’t it?
2. Birthdays
I know some people would tell me that it’s not new or we don’t want another “Facebook”. But hey, guess what! birthdays are important, too and we would like that our closest app-friend reminds us about it in a simpler and decent manner unlike facebook.
You can add your birthday with all the existing privacy settings. Using this feature, it would be just a small birthday icon on the person’s profile in the chat list and it will disappear once you open the chat.
Isn’t it cool, when some app will remind you your loved one’s birthday without irritating you.
3. Home Address
Yes, I know I’m making WhatsApp a more of phone-book than chat application. But it’s a requirement of everyday and everybody.
It’s repetitive process to send a location to your friends every time and many people like me are sick of it already.
You can add your home address or whatever address you want to add with all the existing privacy settings and when your friend opens your profile, you can see the address section. When you click on that, it’ll directly take you to the map app(s) installed on your device.
4. Stand alone Group Panel
This might be the feature which some people desperately wants and some absolutely not. I tried to add an entire stand-alone group panel which will differentiate group chats with individual chats.
It would exactly show the details, what WhatsApp shows right now, like, Group name, display picture, last message, Muted or not, etc. Also, the unread groups would be bordered by Green line (like they do for status-stories right now) and once you read the message it will remove that line.
5. Status Dot
I know it’s nothing new in this, almost every other chat application provides this but WhatsApp still doesn’t! So I added it in the list. Using this, the dot near profile image will greened out whenever user gets online!
6. Cellular Voice Calling
I know WhatsApp already had that feature in it’s earlier version, and now they removed it to promote their in-app voice and video call feature. But hey man! there’s still a ling way to go for fastest data connection and there’s still a need to perform cellular voice calls, especially in developed countries like India and Africa. So I think giving a user the best experience has always been the highest priority of WhatsApp.
That’s why I made a dedicated place for cellular voice call CTA. We can also make one ‘Call button’ and whenever user long press on it it’ll give you 3 choices Voice, Video and Cellular Voice!
That’s it! As a learner I might’ve made some minor and major mistakes. Please do provide me your valuable feedbacks. Also about the motion, I made this project entirely in Adobe XD, and for me it was hard and time consuming to animate SVG files. So I just made the prototype in XD and screen recorded it.
So, Adobe team can think about adding animation features to XD or permit them to export in .ai file.
Thank you: Adobe XD, Adobe After Effect,Adobe illustrator, iconscout.com, ezgif.com .
