Doris Ngaju

As of 2021, WhatsApp became the most popular global messenger app worldwide with over two billion monthly active users in 180 countries, 65 billion messages sent per day, two billion minutes spent making voice calls and 55 million WhatsApp video calls made per day. In Nigeria, 93% of the population uses WhatsApp. Not only can one use it to chat but WhatsApp can also be used to make voice calls and video calls with its best feature as instant messaging.

The goal of this case study is to add a few new features to WhatsApp based on problems that users face and provide a better user experience.

This design was done using WhatsApp for IOS

The Problem(s)

While WhatsApp is a great app to use for instant messaging, voice, and video calls, there are still some UX issues that could be fixed and also some new features that could be added. Therefore in this case study, I will try to improve upon some of these problems and features.

The user Personas

Pain Points

What are the problems?

1. Users Should be able to Edit status

Have you ever posted a status on WhatsApp and then you check a few minutes later only for you to see that you made some spelling errors and then you looked around the interface and can't find any means of editing that status? The only option is to delete that status and repost it. How did you feel? (just imagine you keep making typographical mistakes in each status you send, you'll have to keep deleting and resending. I know right😪)

1. Users should be able to save a status directly from WhatsApp

I'm sure while going through your contacts status, you must have come across one or two status that interests you and that you would like to save. But sadly there's no option to save a status. You can only get it by sending a message to the owner to send it to you(If you're lucky, the person sees it immediately and sends it to you but if not, you're on your own 🥲) Others have even resulted to downloading external applications, just for the sole purpose of being able to save a status. Users are not pleased with this experience

Essential features needed on WhatsApp

• A Polling feature

Arriving at a common conclusion in WhatsApp group chats can be a challenge most time. This is the case of Favor as he narrates how conducting a poll on WhatsApp groups can be stressful. He says “when I need group members to indicate their interest in a particular thing. I either have to manually take down notes as people are responding (which is sometimes not accurate) or wait till everyone responds then I scroll back up to get the info one by one. Sometimes I use an external site to get a shareable link then ask group members to respond there of which I’m not able to know who responded or not”.

If a polling feature is introduced on WhatsApp, It would make it easier for favor and every other group Admin out there to make polls.