Background

Role: Intern Product Designer

Timeline: June 20, 2022 - September 9, 2022

Tools: Figma

The Problem

The current admin message experience is spammy making it difficult for people to read their conversations and understand what changes are taking place to the chat.

Design Constraints

Security alert admin messages were NOT allowed to be consolidated, due to privacy restrictions.

Existing Design

As changes take place in threads, admin messages are printed one by one chronologically. This repetitive text offers a spammy, overwhelming experience.

Research

Internal Audit

I audited the existing admin message experience across Android and IOS devices to gain an understanding of:

  1. How many different admin messages are people seeing currently?

  2. When do end-to-end encrypted admin messages get printed?

  3. Where do the Android and iOS experiences differ?

  4. What are the existing pain points in the user experience on both devices?

Internal Audit Findings

Competitive Audit

I audited eight messaging apps to find existing features, patterns, and interactions around admin messages. I also documented whether or not admin messages were grouped or consolidated in any particular way.

Competitive Audit Findings

Competitive Audit Findings

Setting a Driection

Goals

Principles

Guiding Questions:

  1. How might encrypted messages present different priorities for people when reading admin messages?

  2. How might admin messages be grouped in an intuitive and logical way?

  3. What information is important for people to see immediately when they open their threads?

When to Consolidate:

Using my user goals, design goals, and product principles I decided to only collapse member updates due to privacy and security concerns. I used a decision matrix to come to this decision.

Designing

Low-Fi Ideation:

I developed 20+ ideas using the product principles and goals I had set above. Using pen and paper I asked myself how I would achieve these objectives individually, and then I tried to integrate these different ideas into more concrete concepts. The main directions I went in were:

  1. Collapsible accordion-style admin messages:

  2. Consolidating admin message text by type

  3. Having a progressive disclosure/ pop of admin text.

Design Iterations

Feedback:

  • Focus less on edge cases: Earlier explorations are focused on cases with many admin messages piling up. Look at cases with fewer admin messages occurring consecutively.

  • Improve visual + information hierarchy: Explore a more encompassing view of admin message consolidation. Try to consolidate and organize with less of a focus on the urgency to create a more consistent experience for all admin messages.

Final Recommendation

Design

Based on the feedback received from multiple internal presentations and conversations with key stakeholders, I came up with the idea of having an "Admin Message Contextual Shelf". This feature will allow users to easily access admin messages that occurred during different periods of their conversation by simply tapping on it.

To make it user-friendly, admin messages will be sorted by type and will be easily distinguishable for quick reading. Member updates and chat updates can be seen at a glance or read more thoroughly for detailed information.

I also recommended that admin messages should not repeat themselves in case of consecutive changes that are not consequential to the privacy or security of the conversation.

Takeaways

Research: I learned how important research is. I did not have user research to go off of in this project so I primarily used the feedback from my coworkers and stakeholders on adjacent teams to decide on a direction that would be best for users. In the future, I will prioritize finding ways to conduct user testing or user research earlier in my design process.

Trust Yourself: I learned that I have good design instincts and that I should be confident and trust myself when presenting my ideas and rationale behind decisions

Consider the Consequences: Because my project was so privacy-sensitive, there were many instances where I had to take a step back and reassess the problem. I am extremely grateful for this process because it enabled me to think critically about how each decision will impact user safety and security. I learned that convenience and ease are not always suitable guiding principles when designing an experience where users must understand every action they are taking.