The Whatsapp Trap

TL;DR

Why am I building this?

  • People often feel compelled to respond to messages on Whatsapp due to its design
  • But this can get overwhelming and cause feelings of anxiety if there are a lot of messages to respond to
  • People can feel stuck in the app if all their messages get responses whilst they are in the app
  • They get stuck because they are "online"

Who am I building it for?

  • General users of the Whatsapp app

What (idea)?

  • Whatsapp has introduced features to disable "last seen" and "read" but I posit users feel inundated with "online".
  • When in the app, the only person that should see you are online is the person you are conversing with at the time.
  • This would eliminate the feeling of "ignoring my message even though you're online"

How could I measure it?

  • Time spent in the app
  • A survey of how people feel before and after the feature is implemented

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Essay Begins

Ever been in a situation where you feel like you're stuck in the WhatsApp mobile App?


Image showing the progression of a user responding to all their messages in a chronological manner. Replied 3. 4 left.


This is what I call the Groundhog day of chats. It often begins like this: 

You have unread messages from about 7 people/groups that you need to respond to. So you begin by responding to the first chat, then the second chat, then the third… etc.

By the time you are ready to respond to the 4th chat, the person from the first chat has responded. By the time you are ready to respond to the 5th chat, the person from the 2nd chat has responded and this continues that by the time you respond to the 7th chat, you have 5 or more unread chats again. 


Image shows that by the time the user has responded to the 4th chat, a response to the first chat is now back on top



This can be extremely frustrating and overwhelming and can make you feel like you’re stuck in the app. 

So why is this happening? Why do users feel overwhelmed by messages and inundated with replying?






The Problem

Normally, this would not be an issue, except Whatsapp has a feature called “online”. This means as soon as you open the app, you appear as “online” to everyone. Being online to everyone who is expecting an answer from you can be overwhelming. The overwhelming part comes from not wanting to be rude to people because you are online. So you continue to respond as quickly as possible because people can see you are online. The alternative of-course is leave the app and respond at a time convenient for you. But this leaves a “rude” stain that users of the app are now getting used to.


Image showing a user online even though there is no previous interaction with the user



History of Online

The origins of “online” come from email and Instant Messages (IMs). In the past, for colleagues to contact you using a computer, they can either use email or IMs. In order to receive messages from your colleagues via IM, you need to be logged in. Software makers indicated a user is logged in with a badge such as “online” or a green dot for online. Grey for offline and red for busy.


This solution is very effective for 1 to 1 messages. But once you scale this up, even to just two people, problems start to arise very quickly and the real world is long forgotten. E.g. Two people could be chatting to you at once and you constantly have to make the mental switch between the two conversations. Due to the fast-paced nature of IMs a user may even send a message and quickly delete it because it was sent to the wrong person.


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How To Fix

Whatsapp carried along the online feature and has yet to revamp it.

A way to fix the issue is to only show a user's online status to the person they are in the chat with. If the person they are responding to sees they are online, then the two participants can have a continuous conversation and not feel overwhelmed that they have to respond to the other messages in the app.

This fixes a lot of issues mentioned above:

  • Reduces the pressure to respond 
  • Does not become inundated with messages
  • Mimics real life, you cannot have two different conversations at once

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Possible Guesses For Why Whatsapp Has Yet To Revamp Online

  • Code architecture. This means a lot of features may be built for (or on top) of the online feature. E.g. voice calls. Changing this may break a few things.
  • It may be in the backlog but not important or urgent
  • They may not be aware of the issue as it's hard to quantify the problem

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