Overview

WhatsApp Circles is a phased interface redesign that will give users the ability to create personalized“circles”, divisions for the organization of personal and professional contacts with group specific privacy settings. This redesign optimizes user experience by offering tools to establish boundaries and claim agency, facilitating a healthier relationship with the platform and improved mental health by alleviating stress related to work-life imbalance.

Background

WhatsApp is an encrypted cross messaging and voice over IP platform with a freeware service model and strong utilitarian design, making it the leading choice for millions globally as both a personal and professional digital communication tool. The purpose of our study was to use ethnographic research methods learned over the course the semester to obtain a holistic understanding of WhatsApp users’ experience and design a new offering that would optimize their experience of the platform.

Problem

Privacy, online agency and work-life balance were the most recurring themes emergent from the data our team collected through interviews, literary reviews, shadowing, netnography and auto-ethnography. We also found that these themes were more often expressed as needs amongst a user group whose school, work and social lives converge on the platform.

Goals

This finding influenced the tailoring of our proposed interface design for young professionals but did not result in the prioritization of their expressed desires over the needs of a much more diverse range of average to avid users. Based on the analysis of our aggregateresearch, privacy, accessibility, affordability and utility became the pillars upon which our proposed solution.

Skills

User Research
Design Development
Prototyping

Tools

Adobe XD
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign

Role

Wireframe , Interviews (Mexico)