Design Goal
To find out if WhatsApp could improve users' experience by adding a poll option
My Goals
To improve my abilities to go deeper into my thought process
Approach
1Empathising with users
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2Defining the problem
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3Testing prototypes & Iteration
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1. Empathising with users
My main focus:
- To find out whether users use WhatsApp more than other apps in Spain.
- To find out if WhatsApp could improve users' experience by adding a poll option.
How did I do it?
I researched for information that would show me if users use WhatsApp more than other apps in Spain and why.
I did a competitor analysis.
I interviewed 5 people from Spain in order to see how they organize events in WhatsApp and whether they use polls instruments to do so or not.
I did a competitor analysis.
I interviewed 5 people from Spain in order to see how they organize events in WhatsApp and whether they use polls instruments to do so or not.
Findings
From my research:
From the competitor analysis:
From the interviews:
This data shows that 86% of users in Spain would benefit from having a poll option since WhatsApp os their main communication app. This could also attract users from apps like Facebook Messenger, Line and Telegram.
- 29 million of Spanish use social media to communicate.
- In Spain 86% of the population use WhatsApp as main instrument of communication (a study done by epdata.es in 2019). Users find this app very user friendly and simple, it is free, it has end to end encryption and it provides the user with tools that improve the communication.
From the competitor analysis:
- Instagram (54% of users in Spain), Telegram (18% of users in Spain) and Facebook Messenger (87% of users) have a poll option that improves the user experience.
From the interviews:
- Users use Facebook, Instagram and other webpages like google forms and Survio (it allows to share the information on social media) to do polls which is a pain point for them. The main reason is that they have to keep switching between apps. This creates a higher amount of memory load and it can lead to unpleasant situations.
- It is difficult for people to vote because it forces them to go to the other app to do so (sometimes it even makes them create an account which is even more tedious).
This data shows that 86% of users in Spain would benefit from having a poll option since WhatsApp os their main communication app. This could also attract users from apps like Facebook Messenger, Line and Telegram.
3. Testing prototypes & Iteration
I did some low-fidelity prototypes to see how I could get rid of the step 2 by adding a poll option on WhatsApp. This would mean avoiding step 3 so Anna would not feel worry. This would also speed up the process of creating an event with friends and the way of finding out dates for that event.
This was the first draft:
This was the first draft:
The usability method I decided to use to validate this low-fidelity prototype was videocall interviews. I chose this one since it allowed me to collect feedback faster from home without having to spend money that other methods require.
The improvements after testing: more explicit steps in order to make it easier fo users to understand the whole process. Steps added are creation, voting and alert page.
Enter in
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Go to options
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Create poll
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Alert to vote
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Voting
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Results
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After this second round of interviews, I decided to design the following High-fidelity prototype that shows all the steps needed to create, to vote and to have a look at a poll
Conclusion
With this project I have been able to:
What I learned:
- get rid of having to switch between two apps in order to create a poll and see the results. It is done in WhatsApp.
- have a better user experience. In this way, there is more flow between actions and the user memory load will be lower.
What I learned:
- I was able to improve my research skills.
- I was able to corroborate my assumption that adding a poll option to WhatsApp would improve the overall user experience