UX Review of Skype App
I chose to review Skype app because it was surprising to see that there are so few UX reviews of it, at least on this platform, even though millions of people use it. Before I begin, I’d like to clarify that my review is limited to the Android app, as of August 2019.
I’ve had this app on every single smartphone I owned but used it sparingly because I couldn’t find the will to get past the login stage. I finally managed to get past the login screen this time and nearly half of this review is just about the login and setup process. Based on this UX app critique framework, I reviewed the app’s navigation, interactions, and visual design, while occasionally offering my suggestions for improvement.
What does Skype offer?
It helps people with an internet connection communicate with each other through video, audio, and chat for free. The first quality that comes to mind when I think of Skype is personal connectedness.
How is the value being communicated to a user?
There is a difference in the way it is being communicated on the website’s landing page compared to the app’s first screen. The website communicates the value of ‘personal connections’ while the app focusses on the cost and quality — ‘ free HD video and voice calls’.
When Skype was launched, it was one of the first few services to offer free video calling through internet and it made sense to communicate the cost to the users. But now, there are several other similar services (Whatsapp, Hangouts, Discord) and it makes more sense to highlight the value of collaboration and human connections on the app’s first screen rather than the cost.
Structure and App Navigation
After tapping on ‘Let’s Go’, the next step in the setup ‘Let’s get started’ adds very little value to the user. This is followed by a 2 step sign-in process in which the UI elements (button colours, background, and font) are different (Microsoft design) from what we saw in the first two screens.
Suggestion: ‘Let’s Get Started’ step could have been replaced with a tutorial of the app. In the designs shown below, I show a prototype for the tutorial focussing on Skype’s core values — calls, messages, and personalisation. In the login screen, I used the same design elements as the first few screens. If the username, phone or email entered by the user is valid, the text field is replaced with a username label to indicate that the account exists. The alternative to this would be to replace Skype’s UI elements with Microsoft’s to maintain consistency.
After logging in, users are asked to set up the app’s theme and provide necessary app permissions (contact access, microphone and camera).
Although setting the theme isn’t a necessary step here, it adds a sense of playfulness to the setup process. It’s also nice to see Skype keeping up with user needs by designing for dark. While the instructions are clear and images are intuitive in this step, the next step — ‘Find Contacts Easily’ is less intuitive. Both ‘Continue’ and ‘Skip’ buttons seem similar on the first glance and the image doesn’t hint towards which button provides the necessary access. I tried tapping on ‘Continue’ expecting to skip over importing contacts but it showed the popup asking for permissions. The permissions popup appeared after a button press because app permissions, once denied, cannot be requested again by the app. However, the button label ‘Continue’ isn’t a good signifier because it could mean continue with permissions or continue without it.
Suggestion: ‘Allow’ would have been a better choice for the button label than ‘Continue’ in the last two steps of the setup process.
After the setup process, the main app interface has three tabs: Chats, Calls, and Contacts. The icons and labels across the app are intuitive and accurately represent the features.
Chatting and calling are the two main use cases of Skype and the signifiers for both are clear enough that it takes 2–4 steps to either chat or call a contact. Calling a group, however, is slightly trickier, especially if they are not existing contacts. The user would have to add contacts individually as a contact and then call them.
Suggestion: Skype could take inspiration from the experience provided by Google Hangouts. Group calls take 2 clicks — Starting a call and copying the link to share it. This approach could be used by Skype too.
Sign out: While most other apps use a ‘Remember Me’ checkbox in the Sign In screen, Skype uses a different approach by asking users if they want to be remembered in the Sign out process. This popup also appears every single time the user signs out of Skype, and if they tap on ‘No’ accidentally, they have to go through the entire setup process again the next time, which seems unnecessary.
Suggestion: Add a ‘Don’t ask again’ checkbox in the sign out popup. It might also be worth talking to existing users and asking them if they would prefer setting this preference in the login process instead because if a user doesn’t sign out, they will never learn of this preference.
Interaction Design
Gestures: Almost all the gestures in the app are standard gestures — tap, flick, swipe, long press and drag. It makes sense for Skype to use simple and intuitive gestures so that their users can focus on the utility of the app.
Animations: There are a few interesting animations used sparingly in the app like a circle slowly moving in and out when the user is ringing someone, and the animated emoticons in the chat interface. However, when new screens are loaded, there is either a very basic circle spinning animation or no animation at all, which makes the experience seem slower than it is.
Suggestion: In the loading screen, existing Skype emoticons could be used as animations to engage the user.
Fat finger issue: The app interface, in general, is very clean with plenty of negative space and little clutter. The exception, however, is in the bottom of the Calls tab, where two floating call buttons overlap four other buttons.
Suggestion: The two floating buttons could be placed as normal buttons at the bottom of the screen (easy to reach with the thumb) along with clear labels to indicate the function of the buttons.
Visual Design
Colours: Skype uses white and a shade of light blue in the logo as well as in the app’s UI elements. These colours spark feelings of trust and calmness, which really suit the brand identity.
Visual Hierarchy: Throughout the app, the hierarchy of menu items are intuitive even though the difference in font styles and sizes between headings and menu items could be more distinguishable.
Suggestion: Profile UI has Microsoft’s design elements with menu headings in a grey background to distinguish it clearly from the menu items. This could be adopted in the other screen UIs of Skype as well, and menu items could be changed to regular font, not bold.
Hidden Gems
There are some features in Skype that ought to have been more accessible than they are currently and here are a couple of examples.
In the Chat screen, the + button reveals a feature called ‘Schedule Call’. The other options in this menu include different types of attachments that could be sent between two users. ‘Schedule Call’ doesn’t belong in this menu and if it is placed in the main chat interface, there is a potential that it will be used more frequently. Users already schedule calls with each other through other modes (chats, emails or in person) and Skype could tap the potential of this existing user need.
Suggestion: Move the ‘Schedule Call’ feature to the top menu next to video call and call button so that it is easily discoverable. Additionally, Skype could consider adding a ‘recurring call’ use case to this feature.
The second example is the ‘Choose your theme’ feature which appeared once in the first few steps of the setup process. I started looking for it by tapping on the Profile picture on the app’s first screen but looking inside the Profile screen was like opening a Pandora’s box. There were three similar menu items — Skype Profile, Settings, and My Microsoft Account.
Suggestion: Even if Skype and Microsoft accounts need to remain different, the labels could be uniform (Skype Account and Microsoft Account).
In Settings, there were two similar menu items — General and Account & Profile and inside Account & Profile, there were two similar menu items again — Your Profile and Your Account. While exploring all the options inside Profile, I found three different ways of changing my Skype username which seemed slightly unnecessary. ‘Choose your theme’ was inside Profile > Settings > Appearance.
Suggestion: If customising theme and theme colours were more discoverable, it could make the chat experience more personalised and really playful.
Conclusion
In this review of Skype (Android) app, I highlight what works and what doesn’t, in terms of user experience.
What works? The structure of the three main tabs (Chats, Calls and Contacts), as well as the choice of colours, icons, and gestures are really intuitive in the app. They match the purpose and utility of the app.
What doesn’t? The areas in which the app could be improved are the onboarding experience (login and setup), design consistency (mix of Skype and Microsoft’s UI elements), and lack of creative loading animations in the entire experience.
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
