FACEBOOK MESSENGER CASE STUDY

For the Students Who Design online product design course application, applicants were given a design exercise to improve an aspect of Facebook messenger.

USER RESEARCH

In order to start tackling the prompt of improving Facebook messenger, I took to Instagram stories to ask a question to my followers (I made the assumption that users of Instagram most likely also used Facebook messenger):

After receiving responses for this question, I realized that the responses I received were more user-proposed solutions rather than the raw description of the problems they were encountering.

• Pinned messages
• Customized reactions
• Threads
• Shortcuts
• Better searchability
• Tiered chats

Looking back, I should have phrased my question better by asking what problems people faced when using Facebook messenger rather than what they would improve. So, I backtracked and asked the people who responded what problem they were thinking of when they proposed their solution.

The problem that most people described no matter what solution they proposed was that it is hard to find a message they want to view again if many messages have been sent after it. They would either have to scroll for a long time or search many potential keywords and click through the search results to see if they find what they're looking for. Many referenced Slack's ability to pin messages. (The context in which Slack is used, though, is usually for work or for a large organization, so I wanted to somehow incorporate a version of pinned messages on Facebook messenger without taking away from the casual feel of chatting with friends.)

PEOPLE PROBLEM

Here is the problem stated again in the people problem format.
When someone sends a message with important information, I want to be able to easily find it again later, so I can remind myself of what it said. But I can’t because:

1. I might have to scroll very far back, which would take a long time, and I might miss it while skimming.
2. I don't remember what the message said, so I don't know what keywords to search.

USER FLOW

Current user flow for finding a message that was sent in Facebook messenger

Pain Points:

• It is easy for messages to get lost when people are sending a lot of messages in the chat
• An inconvenient and indirect workaround is needed if you want to make sure you remember a message that was sent
• There is no one straightforward solution to save a message
• Scrolling can take a long time and is annoying
• Using the “search conversation” feature could require a lot of guessing if you don’t remember what was said in the message (which you probably don’t; that’s why you’re looking for it)
• Because they can’t find the message they’re looking for, people may ask the same questions over and over again

ANALYSIS

After talking to people who responded to my Instagram story question, I found that many of them were very enthusiastic about improving the ability to search and find messages in a chat. They were pretty satisfied with the rest of messenger, and the problem of not being able to easily find a message isn’t so bad that it made them stop using messenger altogether, but it would definitely be a big nice-to-have. Many people applauded how Slack is designed and how you’re able to pin messages in Slack, and they had many examples of when it would have been nice to be able to pin a message while they were using messenger:

• Someone's address
• Meeting time and location
• Login credentials of a shared streaming service
• Links to spreadsheets and documents related to travel planning
• Announcements if using group chat for a team
• Information that could help for an assignement for a class they are all in

IDEATION

Pinning a message seemed to be the most logical way to save a message to view again later, so I brainstormed some ideas for how this feature could be implemented.

• Pinned messages would stay persistent at the top of the chat and always visible kind of like how a reminder will stay at the top of the chat until it is over or deleted (this idea was eventually discarded because if there are more than one pinned message, the top of the chat could become cluttered and cover the contents of the actual chat)
• Pinned messages can be saved and found in a separate tab under the settings/more info section of a chat
• Clicking on a pinned message would bring you to the point in the conversation when the message was sent so you can gain more context about the message
• All members of the chat can view pinned messages and who pinned them but only the person who pinned a message should be able to unpin it

SOLUTION

1. User navigates to project group chat → 2. Someone messages when and where to meet → 3. Someone pins the message so it's not forgotten → 4. Navigate to chat settings → 5. Click on pinned messages tab to view all pinned messages → 6. Click on pin emoji button to unpin a message when it's not needed anymore → 7. Click unpin in the popup modal to confirm → 8. Message shows that it's not pinned anymore

My solution tries to incorporate Facebook messenger’s current UI so that it doesn’t feel unfamiliar to the user. The example I show in the user flow above is of a group chat where the members are deciding on a time and place to meet and work on a project because that was the example brought up the most while I was interviewing users. In order to pin a message, you would have to long press on the message the same way you would if you want to react to it. A pin emoji would show up as a button next to the reaction emojis and reply button. You would then click on the name of the group chat to find a tab named “Pinned Messages” under “Options”. Here you would be able to see all pinned messages in the chat or switch to the “pinned by you” tab to only see messages pinned by you. Before you can unpin a message, a popup modal would ask you to confirm similar to when you try to leave a chat. I feel like this new pin feature wouldn’t be hard to find because people already know how to react to messages, and they would discover it the next time they try to do that. Long pressing a message in order to pin it is also how it is done in Slack, and since many people who suggested pinning also mentioned Slack, this would be a very familiar interaction. If Facebook ever adds this feature to messenger, I believe it would be very positively received, but of course, my next steps would be to test my prototype in order to confirm any assumptions I made.
Below is a video of a rough prototype of how the pinning feature would work: