Intro
Emotional Engineering is a technique of connecting with users on a personal level. The goal is to evoke positive response from the audience. I will be looking into a social media application with designs that evoke negative responses. I will also be comparing it with the design from other application(s) which perform similar function.
Background info
WhatsApp is a popular social media app which is used primarily for communication and instant messaging via internet. WhatsApp appeal to users is the capability to communicate with their contact quickly without the need of going through multiple screens/ pages.
I started using WhatsApp as it provided a quick and hassle-free solution for me to text my friends and families. WhatsApp also allow me to be able to send text to my groups of friends in which was done on Facebook. I don’t quite remember when I started using WhatsApp, but I do remember that it was recommended to me by my friends during secondary school back in 2012. WhatsApp added features as in progress throughout the years. With their latest features being allowing group call among 8 contacts.
The problem
Despite this, one recurring problem that I still face on my WhatsApp groups is the overwhelming texts. As each message are sent on individual text bubble, having large amount of text being sent at the same time by a lot of group members can cause some text to be ‘flooded’ by newer text. This made it cumbersome to have to read through all the messages.
WhatsApp partially overcome the problem by added the feature to allow user to reply to a specific message by swiping right on the specific text massage that they want to reply to. However having multiple replies to the same message is redundant and further contributed to 'flooding' of texts in group chat.
Facebook group is the first to add ‘thread’ system in their group post. That is users can reply (comment as they called it) under a post. This is useful especially if group members are texting on the same topic. This ultimately made entire group post much tidier to read. Additionally Microsoft team is a newer communication platform which was originally made to make it easier for groups to communicate. A mobile app was later developed which optimized it for mobile screen. Microsoft teams uses a similar threat system like Facebook, however it only shows the last few reply on a post instead of showing the entire replies on the page. User can click on the post bubble to expand the thread and look at all the replies made.
Despite this flaw, WhatsApp remains as the dominant messaging app in my region bating Facebook and Microsoft teams. While it is possible for lengthy group discussion to be done on Facebook or Microsoft teams, many people prefer to have the discussion on WhatsApp as it is more convenient to use.
My idea to solve this
Here is my iteration on how I think WhatsApp can implement similar feature onto their group chat. The basic layout of the group chat remains as it is as making drastic changes
Only changes are that when people reply to a message, it compact together into one big text messages, user can click to view more. Additionally, this help to categorized discussions within the group. This made it easy for other group members to know the topic of discussion by look through on first glance.
Adobe illustrator is used to create the mock ups of the app screens. The screens are based on the latest version of WhatsApp on Android devices.
This is just my ideas on how WhatsApp could make group chat tidier by adding 'thread' system inside groups. The above mock ups are the first iterations of this ideas and as such there are various ways in which it can be further improved.
