For the previous month 2, as part of the Figma to Uyo Bootcamp, we were assigned the challenge of finding a problematic flow in an existing product on a popular app without interfering with its information architecture.
I’d like to bring your attention to the fact that we hadn’t yet covered the information architecture unit in the course. The goal of this problem was to see if we could answer it intuitively using the skills we had learned so far.
I chose WhatsApp and was required to come up with a solution that notifies my contacts that I’m unavailable or busy and disables incoming alerts.
User & Context
We now have two distinct User Personas on our hands. For the sake of this project, we’ll focus on User 1 and place her in the following scenario:
Solution Proposal
Let’s be serious: we can’t prevent the user from checking their phone, but we can assist them to get into a more productive mentality by “not being available,” removing the feeling of owing an instant response to whoever is messaging us.
(1.) Where the feature would be located: With over half a billion heavy users checking the State tab daily, and the essence of the function is to notify you of your current status, I felt this would be a convenient method to access the feature.
(2) To assess if the concept of Chat Status as a feature name resonates with our users, we’ll do a test.
(3) Is there a “default status” and, more significantly, is there a potential of three pre-determined status options? Is it possible that having an explicit “available” status as the default might exacerbate the existing issue?
Usability Test
My concept testing consisted of… It was a bleak day, to be sure. But I enjoyed it so much that I went back and reread everything I’d been working on.
I sat down and reworked it into what I showed in a hi-fi prototype, taking into account the feedback as well as key design concepts that the WhatsApp design team uses as their north star.
Learnings
For the next steps I’d propose:
- Create direct access to enable or disable Busy Mode from the notification centre to capitalize on the powerful insight.
- Add an option to isolate specific contacts from Busy Mode
- Work on User 2