Designing a New Categorization Feature for WhatsApp

As most folks who use virtual messaging platforms know, WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app, with over 2 billion users worldwide. For zero cost, the app allows users to make voice and video calls and send instant written or voice messages to individuals and groups. Whether via wifi or cellular data streaming, a person can make calls across the globe, for no extra fee.

People use WhatsApp for a vast array of purposes — for staying in touch with friends and family, for social or political organizing, trip planning, various study and school networks, and often even for work. Currently, all messages a person receives land within the same screen, ordered solely by the time and date they were received.

my client & her complaint.

This brings me to my client, a fellow student who is quite a busy person both professionally and socially. She is in her mid-20s and relies on WhatsApp almost exclusively for messaging with friends and family, who are in various parts of the world, and for sending and receiving messages at her full-time job. When interviewing her and others, I was actually surprised to learn that many workplaces use WhatsApp as their primary messaging platform!

My client’s complaint about WhatsApp was that she receives so many “useless” messages during the day while at work. By “useless”, she meant both messages that had been forwarded many times, and also long threads of social messages that she felt she did not have time to sift through. She was feeling stressed about losing important messages in the mix of all the useless messages. She hated having to scroll though numerous messages to figure out which ones were worth reading, or listening to.

my client’s request.

My client’s initial request was for me to add some kind of trash bin or spam filter to WhatsApp, so that “messages forwarded more than 10 times, and certain other kinds of messages, even just long side conversations from family and friends, would go directly to the bin,” and she could look through them later if she had time.

user research.

I wrote up a list of questions for other WhatsApp users in order to understand: 1) how often they used WhatsApp; 2) for what purposes; 3) if they experienced any similar struggles to my client; and 4) how they felt about the idea, specifically, of a trash bin or spam filter, and also if they felt they received a lot of messages that they would want to go to a bin of that nature.

I spoke with 8 people ranging in age from 22 to 48, and spanning several nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. I learned that 7 of them used WhatsApp regularly throughout the day for social and family messaging, while 1 used the app throughout the day only while traveling. And, I was again surprised to learn that the 7 folks who used it regularly for social purposes, also used it regularly for work, either at their current jobs or in a very recent one. Without my specifically asking, several interviewees mentioned that they did not at all like receiving work messages at times when they were not at work — for example, at 9pm when out with friends or resting at home. They also mentioned that it was distracting while at work to be checking for work messages and see a bunch of social messages, too. Some of the comments I heard about this are depicted below:

When I discussed the trash bin or spam filter idea, each interviewee kind of frowned and said they did not feel that particular feature was needed for them, but that a feature to separate work from social messaging was. After speaking with these 8 people, I came up with a user story —

“As a WhatsApp user, I want a feature that allows me separate my social messaging from my work messaging, so that I can see only the messages I want to see, when I want to see them.”

the general solution (specifics later).

After some thinking and sketching, I landed upon a way to solve the complaints of my client and other users I interviewed, which was — to add a new feature to WhatsApp that allows the user to create broad message categories, such as: Family & Friends, Work, School, Trip Organizing, etc.

low-fi prototypes.

First, I sketched out a few general ideas for how the category feature could work. Idea #1 was my initial attempt at keeping the appearance similar to WhatsApp’s current appearance, but it did not solve the problem of not seeing at least a preview of several work or social messages when accessing the Chats screen. Idea #2 was modeled after the Slack app, which allows users to switch between accounts by pressing a button on the side. Idea #3 involved an even bolder approach, in which a user would open WhatsApp and immediately choose whether to be in home mode or work mode.

When testing ideas #2 and #3, I received the feedback that neither looked enough like WhatsApp, and that I needed to think more within the framework that WhatsApp already uses. Also, since WhatsApp does not allow separate accounts under one phone number, I realized I would still need a place for all messages yet uncategorized to land.

mid-fi prototype.

eventually, I created a clickable mid-fi prototype incorporating the feedback from my low-fi testing. I created a user flow, and then tested this flow with 6 users.

From the testing, I was relieved to receive very positive feedback about its intuitiveness, and the fact that its appearance and functionality fit well into WhatsApp’s existing framework 😃.

high-fi prototype.

I turned my mid-fi into a high-fi prototype and did a third round of user testing, for which I also received positive feedback. Below, you can see a video of how it works, or you can click through it yourself here. Imagine you are starting to plan a trip to Vietnam, and you want to create a category for all the messages about the trip. You will start on the All Chats screen, click New Category, select the messages you want to be in that new category, name it “Vietnam Trip”, and then create the category.

Next, you see on the All Chats screen that you have an unread message in All Messages. When you click All Messages, you realize it’s a work request, and since it is 9pm and you’re out with friends, you simply swipe left and move it to your Work folder so you’ll see it first thing tomorrow!

One last detail — when messages come from individuals or contacts that you’ve already placed in a category, they go directly to that category and not to All Messages. (There is still one snafu, which is how to categorize messages from one friend or group that are sometimes work, and sometimes social… I think this could only be handled by WhatsApp starting to allow separate accounts under the same number.)

next steps.

My next step in this process would be to add some user-controlled filter options that can be set for each category. Since my client specifically was annoyed with how many forwarded messages she received, I would like for her to be able to create a category for those, and then set a filter that automatically sends messages forwarded more than a few times directly to that category. She could set it to show notifications, or not, depending on her preferences.

I would also add a feature that allowed for threads within certain chats or groups, so that so many messages did not crowd the larger stream in a group chat. That way, there would not be so much to scroll through if my client had limited time.

After adding at least the filters feature, I would do a much larger round of user testing, make changes according to my findings. I would create a tutorial for the new feature, and then, by golly, I’d launch it! 🚀😁