Our team has re-designed the Message Application to make features such as filtering, searching, and pinning more discoverable and efficient.
Overview
Title: Re-Designing Apple’s Messaging Application
Team: Elizabeth Morgan, Angelina Vo, Karina Kirsch, Siddharth Parsons, Lauren Pak, and Khang Quach
Role: UX/UI Designer and Researcher
Timeline: October 2022 – December 2022
Deliverable: High Fidelity Prototype
Background
Do you ever get frustrated whenever you can’t find a specific text message someone sent you. You remember what they said and when they said it during your chat, yet you can’t find the exact text. You are endlessly scrolling through old and new messages, using the search bar, and tapping everywhere to find that singular message you need. Then, you realize it’s been ten minutes and you still can not find that message! iPhone users experience this more than you think. Whether it is trying to find the text message of the address to a friend’s house they sent 2 weeks ago or trying to relive the funny joke your friend sent you last month. However, the messaging applications on iPhones do not make these tasks as effortless and discoverable as they need to be.
Our team has re-designed the Message Application to make features such as filtering, searching, and pinning more discoverable and efficient. After researching throughly our team found that these features will give iPhone users a more structured way of organizing and locating messages.
The Problem
How might we help iPhone users more efficiently find new and old messages in order to maximize their time?
People’s time is precious and should be respected. The Messaging application was created to maximize the time it takes to send and find messages. Yet when using the application users spend a more than necessary amount of time in order to find specific messages they need (addresses, phone numbers, jokes, information, etc.) Their precious time is taken away where it could be used more efficiently.
Research
Our team interviewed 18 iPhone users for various ages. We asked the interviewees 3 pre-task questions, gave them 6 tasks to do, and 5 post-task questions based on:
- Experience rating of the messaging application
- Using the filtering, search and pinning features
- Most used features and messaging applications
Key Insights:
Frequent Problems:
- Lack of word search bar in specific text conversations
- Out-of-app functionality to turn on filters within the Messages app
- Lack of sort by date and time
Trends:
- 14 out of 18 interviewees’ initial ratings of the Messages application decreased by 1-2 numbers after completing the task questions.
- 13 of the 14 interviewees explained that they did not know about majority of the features in app and that the features are hard to find (see Chart 1 for interviewees who completed task successfully)
- 4 out of 18 interviewees experience rating of the messaging application stayed the same
- 9 out of 18 interviewees did not use filter feature and just endlessly scrolled through to find their unknown numbers
- 9 out of 18 interviewees did not know how to pin conversations
- 14 out of 18 interviewees’ initial ratings of the Messages application decreased by 1-2 numbers after completing the task questions.
Design Spaces
After collecting this data from the interviews and identifying the problems and trends users face while using the application, our team created design spaces. The design spaces were created to compare and contrast other messaging applications to iPhone’s one.
Design Space #1 (Number of Features vs. Discoverability)
Design Space #2 (Convenience vs. Intuitiveness)
The Re-Design
Our re-design focused on three important features, filtering, searching, and pinning. Our team brainstormed and discussed these features to make them more discoverable and logical in order to help users find or organize their new/old messages more easily and quickly.
Key moments and Use Cases:
In the final redesign, we decided to incorporate the filter system permanently, rather as a toggle on and off feature in another app (the Settings application), to make the feature more discoverable to users. The filter feature button will be on the top left screen, with the button written as “Filter” in blue. The filter system will have more functionality, being able to sort by date and time from newest to oldest. This functionality allows users to quickly find messages which in turn maximizes their time.
A search feature in individual chats and group conservations is added, which will be indicated by a blue magnifying glass icon on the top right corner of the screen, next to the blue FaceTime icon. The feature will help users more efficiently find messages like that funny joke a friend sent them last month or any other messages a friend sent them.
The pin feature is improved upon, being more discoverable. Users can swipe a conversation they wish to pin, by swiping the conversation tab to the left, which prompts a purple bell icon, a yellow pin icon, and a red trash can icon. The yellow pin icon will pin the conversation to the top of the screen.
Iteration and Testing
This project was the final group project design for the course Design 1, Design of Everyday Things. Due to the time constraint and how this class is formatted testing the prototype was not a part of the deliverables for the assignment. However, some of our team members and myself want to test out this prototype in the future to better understand if the re-design is helpful to users’ needs.
Future Roadmap
Apple’s applications and features are known to be incredibly convenient. Yet, these applications and features are not always discoverable. After redesigning the messaging applications our team figured out that Apple has a filtering system to make it easier on users who want to find certain messages. But, the filtering feature was a toggle to be on and off in the settings application. So, if users did not know about this toggle switch in settings would not know filtering in Messages exists. This feature was one of the many examples of the lack of discoverability Apple devices have. In the future, our team wants to find more Apple applications, websites, devices, etc. that have features and resources that are obvious to users.
Thank you Note
I want to express my gratitude to my team members; Angelina Vo, Karina Kirsch, Siddharth Parsons, Lauren Pak, and Khang Quach as well as everyone I interviewed. Also, I would like to thank Professor Micheal Meyer for allowing our team to pursue this project.