Case Study: Add a Feature to WhatsApp
This week I’m adding a cool feature to one of our most beloved apps: Whatsapp. Have you heard of it? 😂
My colleague Ida Sandes gave me this amazing idea for this 4-day project.
👩💻 Empathize
🎤 Interview with Ida
Well… It should not be an interview. It should be a conversation with your user.
I tried to understand why does she feel like this feature is missing. What could be her main pain points so I can try and help her out.
🧐 Insights
- Her main purpose was to schedule birthday messages. She feels like she may hurt her family’s/friends’ feelings for forgetting their birthdays;
- She also feels like she’s being rude if she sends a message at the wrong time (different timezone — from Portugal to Brazil);
- She mentioned also that it could be used at a professional level (schedule meetings, selling products, etc). Whatsapp is a very strong app in Brazil;
- It could also be another pain point here as she refers that if she sends an automatic birthday message and doesn’t respond right away, her friend may notice and be upset.
🔍 Surveys
I tried to understand if people really schedule messages frequently and if not if they would like to on Whatsapp.
Wow factor: 40 responses in 7h. Thank you guys ❤
Insights:
- 78% don’t schedule messages;
- 62% would like to but wouldn’t use it a lot (so it won’t be one of the main features).
Main reasons for using this:
- Birthday messages;
- Personal reminders (for myself or for sending other people a message).
Since I can’t send messages to myself on Whatsapp, I thought that a general message scheduler would be a cool feature. Most of them didn’t refer business so I’m not adding this filter. Some mentioned timezone as an important feature.
🔍 JTBD (Jobs-To-Be-Done)
“When we buy a product, we essentially ‘hire’ it to help us do a job.”
Clayton M. Christensen
Meaning: What does the customer want when they buy/download something? What is his/her true goal?
I used Ida as my main user to create Jobs-to-be-done and understand. Let’s put ourselves in her shoes.
- When: It’s one of my Brazilian friend’s birthday;
- I want to: send them a personalized message;
- So that: I can feel part of their lives even though I’m away.
🔍 Value Proposition Canvas
I created this canvas to better empathize with my user since we have just 4h for research.
💡Ideate
✍🏻 Lo-fi
Oh my gosh. What a nightmare. I got stuck here.
I already knew what I needed to create as you can see on my first User Flow.
Next in line: I needed to understand Whatsapp flow and how I could use their icons/screens to create something new. My feature should feel natural on the app and consistent with the design they already have. And how do I do this?
You can check the nightmare on the next sketches.
So I asked my TA and TL for help and💡
So my process of ideation was based on the pages that I knew I had to create:
- Sending a message;
- Scheduling that message;
- Choosing date/time;
- Be able to know which messages I already scheduled and delete them;
- Create templates for those messages;
- Erase/edit those templates.
Next thing I was prototyping.
I decided to prototype on paper for 2 main reasons:
- It’s easier/faster for me than to do a mid-fidelity;
- I think the interaction with our users is different. I’m able to change screens and add pop-ups (if necessary) in that exact moment. I had some doubts so I thought this was the best way to prove my theories. And I can’t tell you how much this helped me…
- Well, another one: improving my drawing skills is also a plus 🙆♀️
I was sooo wrong. Thank god for testing!
Wrong assumptions:
- People would directly go to write a message to a specific friend. Instead, ALL OF THEM were going to the menu;
- They would go to the menu to delete an already scheduled message. Instead, they ALL tried to delete it immediately on the same screen.
Those insights were MAJOR to hi-fi development. Since I had tested and knew all the screens that I needed I started with my newest passion: UI. Never draw a hi-fi like this so it’s a huge challenge for me.
✍🏻 Hi-fi
I had to dive into hi-fi and skip mid-fi since I didn’t have much time and all the users I tested with followed the same flow.
I’m designing in Android because its easier for me to test on my phone while I’m creating the high fidelity prototype (using Crystal).
🛑 Blocker 🛑
WhatsApp seems to dislike designers. The screens available on their brand resources page are not up-to-date. Had to use my own screens to design.
Another one: what about icons people? I had to create almost all of them since they don’t have any library available for me to export. This was good to practice but I having only 4 days to work on this project it took me a long time to create that (#pickygirl).
Besides that, I loved the hi-fi process (#teamSketch).
So WhatsApp… are you ready? Before trying my prototype out be aware of your flow:
- 1: Schedule a birthday message to Alex;
- 2: Check all the messages you already scheduled to him;
- 3: Delete 1 message.
Ready. Set. Go 👇
Here are my screens for your appreciation ❤️
I have to mention some things that I’m proud of:
- Improving my Sketch skills;
- My attention to detail. I really wanted users to feel like they were inside WhatsApp;
- Designing most of the icons you see on the prototype. It’s funny to see how now I can understand how I should build them like legos. I just join the pieces and adapt.
“Steal like an artist” — Austin Kleon
This was a really strange thought to me. I came from content management. “Stealing” is something very serious and that I never did. It pissed me off when I saw my article used without people even crediting me.
Because of this, I was a bit scared of UI. “How am I going to get creative enough to create something powerful?”. Now I understand that in order to create your own design you must get inspiration from other people. And that’s exactly what I did.
Here is my presentation for you to check 👇
👩💻 What did I learn?
- To manage my time a bit better. I’m very picky and sometimes you have to choose between having a good night sleep or a prototype close to pixel perfect. Not having a good night sleep influenced my pitch. So a bit of a warning for you guys;
- I should test with people that are not biased. On my next project, I’ll try and do a guerilla test so I can understand the different kinds of feedback;
- That organizing my Sketch while I’m working is crucial. I took a long time creating my Atomic Library but it was easier for me since I already had at least my icons organized;
- Everyone has their own pace. I trusted more the process this time and I’m very proud of what I came up with.
So WhatsApp… when should we start?
Credits:
- All icons that I didn’t design myself @ Font Awesome and Noun Project;
- All images @ Pexels;
- Android device outlines mockup, keyboard, and date time picker @ Sketch App Sources;
- Inspiration to create my slides @ Behance.
