What if you can post a voice-note on your Whatsapp status
A UX-CASE STUDY ON WHATSAPP STATUS
Introduction
We live in susceptible times where so much is happening, and everyone really wants (needs) to be able to express themselves. But as much as we want to speak, we also always want some form of anonymity. It's this want to talk without being seen that would make people choose to post a voice-note than post a video talking about the same thing, why you’d rather have a radio interview than a tv interview, the same reason some of us would rather turn off our cameras during remote meetings than have our faces all out on the screens, And why Clubhouse is going to be huge! Do you get the idea? Using Whatsapp as a case study, we’re gonna try to create a great solution.
So, how do we go about this?
Started with Research
Would Whatsapp endorse such a feature?
The first reasonable thing to do with such an idea is to figure out if it conforms to the guidelines and core values of WhatsApp. So I did some desk research; reading articles, and watching videos to get a better sense of the basis that drive WhatsApp
It says here that recording and sending voice messages is a core feature, it is just a matter of scale. Yes, it conforms to Whatsapp’s core values.
Explore current solutions
Exploring other platforms that provide the same or a similar feature helps me understand the thought process and pinpoint the flaws, what you may call learning from other’s mistakes.
I carried out a competitive analysis of other existing voice-note solutions to see how other people had been able to approach the same problems, and what they have accomplished with similar ideas.
Trying out firsthand experiences with these applications enabled me to note down the things they had done right and connected with my current understanding of why they had done it, or how they had gone about it.
Proposed Solution
Creating a new Voice status
Create a new voice status in these easy steps
- Tap on the plus button to open up a dialogue, then select an action; Camera, Text, Voice.
- Select “Voice” to open up the new voice status screen.
- Tap on Record to start recording.
- Tap on stop recording when you’re done talking.
- Add a caption if necessary
- Hit the send icon to post it
It was essential to create something new that is visually appealing and still feels familiar. This led to including the feature of changing the background colour like that of text status
The viewer’s end is not left out.
As much as the design and flow are excellent and seamless, it is very important to create good sync on the user end. A couple of questions had to be asked.
- Are we going to display the voice status with the sound-bars?
- If yes, what exactly is the point of having them?
- Would users be able to rewind/fast-forward to certain parts of the status?
After doing some more research on how stories (Especially video stories) are represented, I almost concluded that having sound-bars is pointless. But then it hit me. It is essential to remember that voice-notes take up way less space as compared to videos. Which means it would be possible for voice statuses to be longer than the standard 30 seconds. It would be important to skip to certain parts of the status, why not have the sound-bars to guide you?
So, yea. we would be having the bar. Good-luck to the developers to implement this though 😏 .
Major screens
Outcome
This was a really fun project for me to work on as it involved a lot of brainwork, good research and iterations.
I learnt the following essential takeaways from this project concerning products
- Follow the guidelines. Including new features to world-class products can be tricky, you have to always follow the guidelines to ensure consistency on all fronts.
- Prioritise experience over everything else.
- Consider all ends. In other to maintain consistency, creator and viewer ends have to be in perfect sync. Must look and feel alike
What’s next?
There’s a lot of opportunities and improvements that could be made to this. Designers in WhatsApp are amazing, these are just some of my personal ideas for the app that can be iterated to perfection.
Hi, I’m Smute and I ask questions nobody else is asking to create amazing experiences that align your business strategy with your customers’ needs. If you’d like to reach out, follow me on Twitter to continue the conversation. You can also check out a few of my work on my portfolio.
