Curious case study of WhatsApp status
Mar 1, 2020
I am a daily user of WhatsApp, and I often do not use WhatsApp status. This means, I don’t post stories and I don’t view other’s stories.
I was curious to know if my friends use these features or not.
Below are the two questions I asked.
- Do you update status in WhatsApp?
If,
YES — Why?
NO — Why? - Do you watch the stories updated by others?
If,
YES — Why?
NO — Why?
I shared this with a friends group of 36 members (age 20 to 40, 22 Male & 14 Female)
After going through each of the answers, here is the insight:
Challenges:
WhatsApp is the most widely used product for chat, with around 1.5 billion users worldwide. It’s not easy to do changes due to acceptance of the app for its simplicity and making it limited to chat only.
As a product with 1.5 billion users, the biggest challenge is adding/removing features. Now if we look at the present condition, users are using the app for chat mostly.
How can we design UI/UX to enhance the experience and help resolve privacy concerns?
TWO known issues with the collected data:
1. Increase user engagement to view WhatsApp status of others.
2. Promote users to post at WhatsApp’s story.
1. Increase user engagement to view WhatsApp status.
A/B testing for status:
A/B test 2, not only solves user engagement problems with WhatsApp Status but also solves the story priority. The most chatted users will be in the top 10 to 20 chat lists.
As a user, If I view WhatsApp’s story of a 3rd person from my chat list. The next story will be of the 4th person from my chat list, then 5th,6th….till WhatsApp Story ends.
2. Promote users to post WhatsApp story.
User frustration points from the survey:
1. Privacy issues
2. Less editing features
3. I share it directly with the group
We have a total of FOUR ways to post the story in WhatsApp.
How does Improvised status share section WORK?
Conclusion:
Challenges with possible solutions.
- Engage users to view WhatsApp status.
By showing story updates (blue circle around the DP) on the chat screen. 85% of users use only chat screens in WhatsApp. We can use story circles around the DP to encourage users to check for an update from the user chat list. Further A/B testing will help to better the experience for the users. - Promote users to post WhatsApp story.
Privacy issue:
By introducing improvised story share groups, we can be helping users to share their stories with users they are comfortable with.
And different users view your story differently based on which group you have shared the story with.