Apple Messages

Added Feature to Existing Product

See Final Prototype

background

As a part of the Designlab's UX Academy curriculum, I created some new features within Apple's messages app: the options to mark texts as unread after looking at them and to set a reminder for texts to reappear as unread notifications.

problem

Billions of text messages are being sent every day. With the rise of text messaging being a form of communication, there is also the rise for miscommunication due to people forgetting to respond after looking at a text message, whether or not it is intentional.

goal

My goal was to understand how users interact with texting and come up with a possible solution to alleviate the problem of forgetting to respond to text messages.

ROLE

UX/UI Designer

timeline

2 weeks

Process

1. Empathize
Understand users' texting habits and what causes them to forget to respond to a text
2. Define
Design a feature that would help the users remember that they have texts they have not responded to
3. Ideate & Prototype
Create high-fidelity wireframes for the task flow based on research findings using established UI kit
4. Test
Test prototypes to confirm usability and sense of the task flows

1. Empathize

To better understand users' texting habits and what causes them to forget to respond to a text I conducted market research, competitive analysis, and user interviews. I was able to get a better understanding of the user's wants, needs, and frustrations when it comes to Apple's messages app.
Market Research
A main function of smartphones is the use of the messaging app. In 2014, the CEO of Apple said they handle 40 billion iMessage notifications per day. About 65% of the world's population send and receive text messages. 92% of adults carry text-enabled phones and 98% of smartphone users text on a daily basis. Texts have a 99% open rate and 95% of texts will be read within 3 minutes of it being received.
Competitive Analysis
User Interviews

"It would be nice to flag text messages or flag as need to respond, like on email."

"Even if I'm out, I'll usually read my texts to check if it is important or needs immediate response. If it's just a normal or random text, I'll leave it for later because reading it only takes a second. But then I usually forget to respond after."

iMessage Goals

  • Participants want to be able to use their device to communicate with friends, family, etc. through texting, calling, and social media

iMessage Needs

  • Ability to respond to people and to reach them
  • Notifications to notify a message has been received

iMessage Frustrations

  • Looking at texts and forgetting to respond to it
  • Consideration of what to say in response to a text
  • Being lazy to text
  • Being able to find previous texts

Motivations for using iMessage

  • Keeping in touch with friends and family
  • Planning hangouts
  • An easier form of communication
  • Less demand and pressure of a response than phone call
Key Findings
  • The primary use of their phone was to communicate with others through texting, calling, and social media
  • All participants mentioned having the option to mark a text as unread or a reminder to respond would be nice
  • All participants kept their phone with them at all times and checked it often
  • Their responsiveness to a text depends on the text received and who it was sent from
  • All participants looked at their texts when they received them to determine how urgent it was and would decide whether or not to respond
  • All participants said they would not respond right away if they had to consider what to say in response, which usually caused them to forget to respond because they got distracted
  • Some participants said they were lazy to text and respond sometimes
  • Some participants said they would look through their messages list at the end of the day to check for messages they hadn't responded to
Possible Solutions
  1. Ability to mark a text message as unread so the user would still have the notification and can go back to the text at a later time, after having read it and considered a response
  2. Ability to set a reminder for a text so that a notification would pop up that there is still an unread text or a text that needs a response if the user cannot respond right after reading the text

2. Define

From my research findings and user interviews, I created an empathy map and persona for Jana, a busy student, who always has her phone with her but still forgets to respond to texts sometimes.
empathy map
persona
task flow
The task flows created were focused on users successfully marking texts as unread after opening them but either not wanting to respond right away or being unable to and setting a reminder for an unread text's notification to reappear. The first task flow shows the steps to marking a text as unread, while the second task flow shows the steps in setting a reminder for an unread text notification to appear.

3. ideate & prototype

After my research and interviews, I created high-fidelity wireframes of two features: marking a text as unread and setting a reminder for a text message. I created different designs to test which one gave users a better experience. All the options started off and ended in the same way. The user would be on their home screen and a notification would pop up. They would click on the text message and it would take them to the message thread. This is where the different options of marking the text as unread or setting a reminder would come in. Once the user either marked a text as unread or set a reminder, a notification would appear in the message thread, on the messages list, as a badge notification and would appear again in the notification center.

MARK as unread options

Text Button

This option requires a user to hold down the text message in order for the pop up menu to appear. Then, to mark the text as unread, the user would need to tap the "Mark as Unread" button. A blue dot notification would then appear next to the text marked as unread.

Icon

This option requires a user to hold down the text message in order for the pop up menu to appear. Then, to mark the text as unread, the user would need to tap the "Mark as Unread" icon. A blue dot notification would appear next to the text marked as unread.

Select Message

This option requires a user to hold down the text message in order for the pop up menu to appear. Then, the user would need to tap the "More" button to open up a new page. From there, the user could select which messages they want to mark as unread.

Then, they would tap the "Mark as Unread" icon in the bottom navigation. That would prompt a confirmation button to pop up. Once confirmed, a blue dot notification would appear next to the text marked as unread.

Set as a reminder options

Text Button
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This option requires a user to hold down the text message in order for the pop up menu to appear. The user would then tap the "Remind" button from the menu. A pop up menu of reminder times would appear for the user to select when they would like the reminder notification to come.

Once selected, a blue dot notification as well as an alarm icon would appear next to the text and the messages list.

Icon

This option requires a user to hold down the text message in order for the pop up menu to appear. The user would then tap the "Remind" icon from the menu. A pop up menu of reminder times would appear for the user to select when they would like the reminder notification to come.

Once selected, a blue dot notification as well as an alarm icon would appear next to the text and the messages list.

Which option did the userS LIKE BEST?

4. test

I conducted usability testing of my prototypes to see if they all made sense to users and if they were able to complete the task flows with the different methods. This allowed for user feedback and insight into why one method worked more and was more preferred than the other.
Usability Testing
  • 3 participants
  • Ages 19-27 years old
Findings
  • All participants preferred the Text Button option for both features as they felt the text instruction was more clear than icons and required less steps
  • All participants were successful in completing both task flows of marking a text message as unread and setting a reminder for a text message
  • All participants said the flows were intuitive
  • All participants liked the menu calling out what the action was, rather than just seeing an icon. They also mentioned the icon was small and if the user was in a hurry, it might be hard to tap it
  • 2 out of the 3 participants said having the action as an icon could be helpful if the user already knew what the icon stood for. The "Mark as Unread" icon was less recognizable than the "Set as a Reminder" icon.
Affinity Map

ITERATIONS: mark as unread

Since the Text Button option for the marking as unread was the clear winner of the options, my mentor and I discussed that it would be a good use case for a single text message. However, since I received some positive feedback on the Select Message option for marking as unread, we decided to use that as an option for marking multiple texts as unread at once.

Text Button: Single Text

I updated this option by adding another text to show how even with multiple texts, a user can pick which text they want to mark as unread. The unread notification would still appear in the message thread, messages list, as a badge notification, and in the notification center.

Text Button: Multiple Texts

I updated this option to show how a user could mark multiple texts as unread at once by selecting messages they want to mark as unread. The unread notifications would still appear in the message thread and messages list, however with the most recently marked unread message. The badge notification on the app would reflect how many unread messages there are and all messages would appear stacked in the notification center.

FINal prototypeS

Mark as Unread: Text Button; Single Text
Mark as Unread: Text Button, Multiple Texts
Set a Reminder

bonus

Although Designlab only required one new feature to be added, because the iOS UI kit was available, I had the time to begin adding another feature: scheduling a text message to be sent at a future time. Based on research and competitive analysis, I wanted to try designing what scheduling a text to be sent would look like on an iPhone. 
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After receiving feedback on my preliminary design, I made a few changes to my design and flow. I updated it to match more of the use case of this feature. I felt that it would be more user friendly and orderly to have the user type out their message first and then move on to scheduling the date and time to send it.
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I updated the send button to show the clock so the user could be certain that the text they are about to hit send on, would be sent at the scheduled time they selected. I also updated the actual text to look as if it were disabled, letting the user know the text hasn't gone through yet. The message would appear in the messages list with a clock icon to let the user know that the message thread is in progress and not completely finished yet.
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Due to time constraints, I did not get a chance to design and create the rest of the task flow pages. To avoid confusion with any new message notifications, I considered it would be best to keep the badge notification as it currently is. I also thought about including a reminder that would pop up in the notification center a few minutes before the scheduled text would send, in the event the user wanted to make any changes or cancel their scheduled message.

next steps

As I began the process of considering and designing what it would look like to mark a text as unread on the iPhone, I realized there were a lot of factors that could potentially go into this seemingly simple feature.

Some other potential features that came up in my research and interviews were having the option to filter messages or file them similar to emails, having suggested messages as a response, and scheduling a text to be sent. My next steps would be to continue with the design thinking process for the features I began designing, conducting more usability testing, and researching further the use case for each potential feature. Ideally, these designs could be handed off to engineers, implemented, and released for all to enjoy and have better texting habits.

I really liked the way my design turned out and received feedback from my participants and friends that they wish these features were implemented already and wonder why it hasn't, but I guess there is some reason these haven't been incorporated into iPhones yet!

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