These are 6 product ideas I wish Whatsapp had on their platform:
In general, I believe one of the main reasons why some of these ideas have not been implemented yet is due to the complexity of shipping products to 2 billion+ people using a wide range of operating systems and devices.
The problem: One of my major gripes with whatsapp and most social IM apps is the “online” feature which I have written about here. I believe the status “Online” detracts from the user experience as it does not enable two people to have a free flowing conversation without being inundated with other incoming messages. More importantly, the feeling of ignoring messages from other contacts lingers in the user’s mind, the longer they stay in the app without responding. It splits a user’s focus from the present conversation.
The solution: I believe the only person who should be able to see your online status at any present moment is the person you are conversing with at the time. This allows people to truly have one on one conversations and brings focus to the conversation at hand.
Assumptions: The online feature may have other use cases which I may not have thought about.
The problem: A voice note often presents the double edged sword of: Easy to send but hard to respond to. The difficulty is proportional to the voice note length as it often means the receiver has to keep in mind what has been said so they can respond precisely. It is difficult, as a human’s short term memory affects the user’s ability to respond precisely as they would via text.
The solution: There are 3 suggestions I believe can work: A more precise playback scrubbing feature, putting a limit on the voice note recording time (e.g. 1 minute), or transcribe the audio to text. Of these 3, I believe a transcription works best and can be designed in a way that it is only activated if the receiver of the voice note uses the feature.
The accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the transcription may seem like it would be a hindrance but if the feature is designed in a way to help the receiver respond and not simply as a transcription tool in itself then this can be seen as a way to improve the user experience.
The problem: One of the major frustrations participants in group chats have is the inability to get a quick consensus on a question or topic. Currently, people rely on external tools like doodle to get a consensus on a topic and this workaround often feels clunky as it requires extra effort from the user to facilitate and participate.
The solution: Create a poll feature in the group chat. A polling feature moves the conversation faster and enables people to make decisions on situations in a precise manner.
The problem: From a UX perspective, I have noticed the tag “this message was deleted” often brings anxiety to the recipient of the message. It produces anxiety as it often makes the recipient wonder what the sender deleted which often leads to enquiries and other undesired conversations.
Interestingly, an unintended but common use case of the delete function in whatsapp is typos. I have watched and witnessed users send a message with a typo, copy it after it has been sent, delete the message, paste it into the type box, edit the typo and resend. In this case, editing the typographical error is the job to be done and the tool required is an edit button but instead a workaround is used to mitigate the issue.
The solution: I believe the edit button will solve a lot of problems that the delete button cannot address.
Assumptions: User research will be required to test my assumptions. This feature may not have been implemented yet due to OS limitations. E.g. it may be hard to introduce an edit button on a feature phone.
The problem: On whatsapp, a user has the ability to turn off read receipts which effectively means no blue ticks will be shown in the chat. But there is a slight “bug” with the feature— A user can get around the disable blue tick messages by sending a voice note. If the recipient has listened to the voice note, the sender can know the message has been heard, as whatsapp indicates this with a blue tick.
The solution: disable blue ticks for voice notes in the same way for text messages.
Side point: Generally, it is my view that users should not have the ability to disable the Read Receipts feature. I view the Read Receipt feature as a signifier. I presume the main reason this feature can be disabled is because recipients do not want senders to know they have read their message but it is my belief that reading a message and not responding is a response.
The problem: This is not a problem per se, but adding better authenticity to the reactions of a message could improve the user experience. Users usually react with emojis to convey their feelings but what if there was a more authentic way to do it?
The solution: Add voice emoji stickers as a feature. E.g. If you want to laugh at a message, choose from a list of pre-recorded laughs or create your own. This can also be extended to other types of reactions.
In part 2, I will produce designs based on the ideas above.