Messenger Redesign
Simplicity in Interaction.
The Challenge
Although Messenger is a leading communication app, it is often described as heavy and overflowing for general users. How might Messenger be improved in terms of user experience?
The Solution
The goal of this project was to enhance feature updates that display an efficiently logical and lightweight application that utilized a more intuitive interface for users to grasp.
Messenger is a highly functioning tool that people all over the world rely on for modern communication. The current interface offers a range of features, but limits and overcomplicates any user's capacity to be able to intuitively personalize these interactions.
Background
Who are the users?
What is their primary purpose for using Messenger?
What are their concerns?
User Research
Giuseppe
Giuseppe is an undergrad at UC San Diego studying Neurobiology. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and exploring movies. He prefers to use iMessage (Apple's messaging system) in order to communicate. He uses Messenger only for purposes in which other people do not necessarily use iMessage. Giuseppe strongly believe that the app's features are too claustrophobic to be the best application for consistent usage.
Zoe
Zoe is an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz studying Cognitive Science and Computer Science. She enjoys digital art and watching YouTube as hobbies. She primarily uses Facebook Messenger to talk to people who do not use iMessage and to discuss school-related topics. Zoe finds the application to be bulky in terms of information condensation and also repetitive in story placement.
Cienna
Cienna is an undergraduate student at University of Washington in Seattle studying political science. Her hobbies include reading and being a plant mom. She generally uses Messenger to talk to people from school to discuss homework, projects, etc. Cienna finds it to be a convenient platform to create group chats for group projects, classes, or just for fun. She also uses Messenger for their family group chat. Cienna is not a fan of the quality of the application because of how it is not as intuitive as other messaging apps.
Product Research
Pain Points
Insights & Redefinition
Brainstorming
Pain Points
Interviewing the users allowed the research process to unfold into finding points that were most noteworthy when it came to the possibility of improvement.
Spotlight paint points:
"Bar for messages is small because of other icons"
"Can't easily save things from a message to your phone"
"No one is going to scroll through the whole thing to find the person they want to speak to"
In order to break down the path to designing viable solutions, I reorganized all of the pain points into groups with comprehensive insights. This way solutions were not limited to a specific design, but helped users become more in touch with the application through an overarching concept. The formation of insights allowed for a more direct redefinition of the pain point.
Spotlight Insights & Redefinition
Before
Messenger offers alternate options for texts, such as emojis, stickers, and gifs, however is it inefficient because:
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This makes the bar for typing texts small and congested.
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Hard for users to visualize a whole text without distractions.
Before
Messenger allows people to use FB Stories to express their activities publicly, but it is inefficient because:
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The stories repeat on both pages of the app.
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It can be annoying for people to receive notifications and highlighted circles to view stories that they do not want to constantly see.
After
The congestion created by the alternative icons can be readjusted to make more space for the actual text.
After
The repetitive nature of the stories showing up on both pages should be changed to be more friendly to the user's eyes and found in one spot.
Feature Spotlight: Brainstorming
The process of narrowing down which pain points needed the most improvement was only possible with a thorough breakdown of how the pain points affect user experience and could be bettered. Brainstorming potential improvements of the emphasized features explores how the application can be reimagined to be a more intuitive and less cluttered platform.
Sketches
To put together basic frames, I created sketches for the features of the application that I planned to reinvent. The basic concept of the following sketches are divided into pages: chat and home, which are subsequently the two main portions of the application that I redesigned.
Keeping this redesign true to the original brand is one of the most important aspects of making sure users were able to experience the same application with enhanced features. This design kit consists of the components I used to keep the application true to its original nature.
Design System
The finalized wireframes depict the changes in features that I successfully implemented. The main components that are featured in this redesign are: spatial adjustment, feature relocation, and intuitive placement.
Wireframes
Reflection
Visualizing redesigns of the key features of Messenger made me realize that the design process comes with more planning and brainstorming steps rather than actual designing steps.
Conducting user interviews and brainstorming concepts helped me gain more experience with the Figma design tool and UX process.
This project also helped me better understand the importance of maintaining the face of a given brand when it is being reconstructed. I found myself struggling with this concept when I began to notice many different aspects that I wanted to redesign, but the secret to redesigning is that transformations should not taint the originality of the application itself.
In the future, I would like to interview users based on the newly applied features.
I would also like to explore new redesign projects alongside completely new applications that I can implement with the new tactics and knowledge I have gained from this case study.