This project was done as a personal challenge.
WhatsApp is a cross-platform centralized instant messaging and voice-over service owned by Meta. By 2016 it had become the primary means of Internet communication in multiple regions of the world. It has also now become the main form of event planning between family and friends - from birthdays to bachelorette parties. WhatsApp has identified this opportunity and is looking to add an event planning feature, to provide users with a smoother and centralized experience, while keeping messaging at its core.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Year
2022
THE PROBLEM
WhatsApp has now become the main form of organizing casual events between family and friends. Planning birthdays and dinner parties, bank holiday celebrations, friends’ holidays, and others have all transitioned to WhatsApp. However, the social messaging platform lacks functionalities to optimize and centralize the process.
MY ROLE
Even though this project was a personal challenge, I treated it as a client’s project. I considered the product strategy and user interviews to decide what feature to develop. Through research, I outlined the users’ needs and audited the app to define where the new feature would bring the most value to the ecosystem. As validated through Usability Testing, I successfully turned a chaotic process into a simple, well-crafted solution.
IDENTIFYING THE PAIN POINTS
To create a meaningful solution, I started by interviewing users and identifying their frustrations and pain points when using the social messaging platform to plan events.
RESEARCH GOALS
To understand how users plan and get invited to private events, I interviewed five participants, 20 to 35, that currently use the application with that intuit. Some of the goals were to evaluate what type of events participants plan and attend the most, the mental process behind planning an event, how planners keep track of the event logistics, how they communicate with the guests, and what concerns and struggles people find during and at the end of the process.
“It has become increasingly hard to find a time that fits everyone's schedules.”
- Participant 3, 29
TAKEAWAYS
Through the research, it was confirmed that all participants use WhatsApp as the primary source of communication between hosts and guests. However, even though this medium of communication was rated positively, participants shared the difficulty of keeping track of essential information as it starts to get lost in the chat, keeping count of who is attending, having to use repost the invite multiple times as guests are added, and having to use multiple platforms to keep track of event’s logistics.
Hosts shared their planning process and reasoning behind using the tools they do pre and post-even.
DEFINITION & IDEATION
The interviews helped me map out the host persona using the added feature, which allowed me to make clear and cohesive decisions throughout the process.
For the scope of work, I focused on providing solutions to expedite the host’s event planning and logistics tracking process - from creating a draft guests list, adding date polls to the event, following RSVPs, and adding expenses to share with guests.
One of the project's challenges was harmoniously offering event planning features while staying true to the business’s core functionality - social messaging. Therefore, I carefully audited the application to understand how it would exist in the current ecosystem.
Following that, I created user flows of the main tasks to identify various paths a user could take through the journey.
WIREFRAMES
Once the new feature's location and the main workflow were defined, I roughly sketched out the flow to ensure all process steps were considered. As the feature was to be added to an existing app, it was necessary to remember the mental process WhatsApp's users are accustomed to and the design patterns already implemented.
CREATING AN EVENT
The initial prototype focused on designing the Event Creation flow, which would create an “Event Info” page to centralize important details of the event and mitigate the issue of losing it in the chats, one of the main frustrations raised by hosts and guests during the empathy interviews.
During this time, I considered several editing flows a host would have to complete, such as adding a guest, creating a poll, adding a shopping list, expenses, and payment details.
EVENT STATUS
As I wanted the new feature to accompany the host through the various moments of the event process - draft, planning, and post-event - it was essential to identify what functionalities would be available at different stages.
CREATE A POLL
Hosts and guests mentioned it has become increasingly hard to find a time that works for everyone. Therefore, I wanted to allow hosts to create polls without third-party links. Adding this to the feature enables hosts and guests to centralize all aspects of the event planning.
The poll can be added when the event is created or at a later stage. Guests will be prompted to choose one or several dates from when the invite is sent out or when a poll is added.
TRACKING RSVPs
The tracking of RSVPs also proved to be a pain point through the empathy interviews. To overcome this issue, I created a system where guests can change their attendance status at multiple moments of the process, always keeping the host informed of who is attending or not.
VALIDATION
Users tested the new feature in an unmoderated remote usability test through a public link, gathering data from five participants. Six tasks - creating an event, adding a guest, creating a poll, creating a shopping list, and adding payment details and expenses - were performed to measure the success rate, evaluate the feature’s navigation, and diagnose UX/UI strengths and weaknesses.
The study had an elevated drop-out rate in task #1 due to technical difficulties accessing the form from mobile devices.
MAIN TAKEAWAYS
The prototype tested positively, with 4/6 tasks scoring a success rate above 85%.
All participants that created an event followed the desired user flow.
Participants were clear about the difference between Sending the invite and Saving it as a Draft.
All participants successfully Added Guests to the event info - this design pattern follows the Add Participant to Group on WhatsApp chats.
Creating a poll and adding Expenses were the most popular features.
Adding a Shopping List functionality scored 5 out of 5 on a Useless to Very Useful scale by 67%(4) of respondents, while 34% (2) scored it a 4.
2/6 participants wrongly entered Shopping List when prompted to add the Venmo details.
