Android Messaging : A case study
Understanding pain points of the default Android Messaging experience and simplifying it
It wasn’t long ago that we were dependent on SMS for quick and cheap communication. Before the age of ubiquitous smartphones, fast internet and cheap data plans, there was the time when the young and agile ones would tap away throughout the day. Gradually, we’ve moved to Whatsapp, Telegram and other feature-rich messaging platforms, but we still haven’t reached the point where we can do away with sms completely. Sadly, though, while we’ve progressed to stories, groups and even calls through these apps, there has been little change in how the default messaging experience has progressed over the years. This is a small exercise in understanding the pain points for an average user and what could be done about it.
Objective of the exercise
- To understand how people are using sms on Android phones
- To identify pain points and propose solutions for them
Understanding the users
I used my friends, family and peers as target group since their demographics vary in age, profession and technical aptitude. I sent quick surveys to some and tried to understand why and how they still use sms for, despite relying heavily on other platforms for everyday communication. I eliminated people who use third party apps or are iOS users, since they were a minority.
Observing users
I asked another set of users to perform some simple tasks on their sms app —
- Block users who send unwanted sms — mostly brands whose services are no longer required.
- Turn off notifications from everyone except banks.
- Find out how much they spent at a restaurant on a certain day.
1. Blocking users who send unwanted sms
In countries like India, large databases of phone numbers are sold for pennies and it’s common to receive 5–10 sms from solicitors that you haven’t subscribed to. This is a common use case and I expected most people to know how to handle this.
When I asked them to block multiple contacts at once, they were unable to do it because the stock Android doesn’t have this feature.
2. Turn off notifications from everyone except banks
The second task was around notifications which is a continuation of stopping unwanted messages. One major use case of SMS is to get One Time Passwords from banks to complete online transactions. I asked users to turn off notifications from everyone except their banks. I only asked this question to some users who are comfortable with technology.
The first step is to turn off notifications for all users. The users had no difficulty with this.
The next step is to figure out the numbers that banks use. Banks usually use many numbers to send SMS and like you can see here. The easiest way to get all the numbers is by searching for your bank name. The user tried to turn on notifications for all the numbers in result set, but the overflow menu did not account for the result set and showed the generic options. When they accessed the notification settings, they found that setting was applicable for all contacts and not the result set.
Then they decided to take the long way and tried to turn the notifications on for all contacts individually. This worked and finally they were able to turn on notifications for all numbers that their bank used for communication. The results were surprising —
- There is no way to change notification settings for multiple contacts at the same time.
- The process is long and tiresome and probably not worth it.
3. Finding out how much they spent at a restaurant on a certain day
I selected this task to test the search capabilities of the app. The user knew the date and the name of the restaurant but doesn’t know how much they spent.
- There’s no way to search for an exact date if you don’t know the format used in the sms.
- There is no way to view sms by a particular date or range.
Addressing the pain points
With this quick study of how users perceive actions, I decided on a list of features/improvements that the app can benefit from. I’ve done hi-fidelity wireframes to visualize the features correctly.
Know who’s sending you messages
By grouping contacts together, it’s easier to filter them and perform bulk actions. For example, you only need to add new senders to a group and they would be treated the same way as other members of the group. This is important for groups like banks who always need to be prioritised, as opposed to spammers who should never have equal importance as bank messages.
Disclaimer — To keep it simple, I am calling a collection of contacts as Groups. This is different than the chat groups that are already featured in a lot of apps. The terminology is the same, but the behaviour is entirely different.
Find what you need
This includes improvements in search, filtering them by dates and pinning important messages to the top. Another important thing missing is the “Copy OTP” button that most other operating systems have today. Having the button at both notification level and message level will improve the turnaround time a user takes for performing important actions like making payments online.
Protection from spam
By having a faster and easier way to block contacts/groups, users can spend more time in things that they like and lesser in handling unwanted messages. Also, changing notification settings for a group means they wouldn’t have to look at their phones when unsolicited messages arrive.
Putting it all together
In Closing
The improvements I propose are not ground-breaking, but are based on one of the most basic principles of design — people don’t want to spend time on things they don’t like doing. I’ve tried to decrease the time a user needs to interact with the messaging app. This is the takeaway I’ve got from this project — the users don’t necessarily like to use your app, but it’s our job as product owners to make sure that they get the least amount of friction from the app when they have to use it.
