Why revamping?: People's messaging behavior was evolving.

I was the sole/lead designer for messaging for three years. At that moment, more than 1.3 billion people use Galaxy smartphones. And Messages has the highest usage rate of 95% among all Samsung applications. But it was hard for designers to innovate and revamp the messaging experience since we partnered with various careers worldwide. But over time, people have evolved the way they communicate from simple text to richer mediums, yet, Samsung Messages remained conservative. Therefore, PM and I assessed this as an excellent time to re-innovate the messaging experience as trend changes to build a foundation for future scalability and provide a tailored UX for the rich contents sharing experience.

Due to security concerns with samsung, only an overview, and the high-fidelity images can be shared.

My full design process is outlined in the timeline below. Product planning, design iterations, verification, and design documentation are not shown for confidentiality purposes.

Problem Identification

To explore the problem space, I conducted an analysis of a current experience to highlight underlying pain points.

To start, I needed to understand what's the underlying problems that make our messenger hard to send multi-media. While our researcher is running a survey and interview to learn what's the users' expectation of delightful messaging experience, I researched based on the log data and competitor analysis of Apple, Google, Huawei, and Xiaomi. I mapped out Samsung messenger's weakness to communicate with stakeholders and reach a consensus within the team to revamp the contents sharing experience. Below are a few issues hindering users from a seamless messaging experience.

Lengthy / seamlessness user flow

unable to check the context of messages

disconnected experience

hard to view contents, unnecessary margins, disorganized

Unorganized / too many options on menu

From the research, PM, researcher, and I validated that rich content sharing is a trend that makes the experience delightful. Most users, especially Millennials, were regarding messages more to the real-time communication method (We mapped out messaging is in between calling and email.) Based on the validation, we conducted several workshops to define the scope and set the goal to move forward.

Product Goal

Lack of seamlessness was the key problem areas I tackled during the design process. The others were usability and visibility.

From the workshop, we defined the overarching issues that block users from having a seamless experience. For the app being light and fast processing, Messages utilize numerous native components of Android. It includes switching to the other app to attach photos, view videos, and showing dialog to select an app. Those are the three goals we defined during the workshop.

• How can we let users have a seamless attaching experience to keep track of the conversation context?
  
• How can we let users view the contents without effort?
• How can we let users take control of the conversation more effectively and intuitively?

Wireframe Workflow

Extensive Exploration for the possibility to enhance the experience

After setting the goals, I explored the various possibility with the wireframe. In the meantime, I needed to find a way to overcome the restriction and specification and boost usability. I worked closely with PM to avoid regulations and worked closely with engineers for feasibility. Below is an example of the overview of flow and some detailed workflow.

Usability Test

Narrowing down the solutions, and tested to the users to validate.

After exploration and drew some of the solutions, the research team and I collaborated with a research firm to conduct user testing. To plan, we gathered people in their 10 to 60 who owns a various type of smartphone and tested. The tasks were consisted of attaching photos, videos, and receiving messages. The test was conducted using a high fidelity prototype that I created. From the testing, there was a few points that user is confused about in terms of usability.

The Outcome

After the Usability Test, I directly worked on fixing the usability issues and worked closely with developers to build the app. Overall, we successfully reduced two steps of attaching the most used attaching method: attaching directly from the camera and attaching photos from the Gallery app.

Contents navigation

Based on the log data, more than 90% of users attach from camera and gallery. As integrating those to the attaching sheet, users only need to take four steps instead of six to attach contents. Plus, they can now more easily see the messaging above as they don't have to jump to the other app that leads them to understand better about the conversation context.

attachment preview

In the previous version, the contents existed in the text field. I separated the attached area to the top to give a more organized view. Also, the users can change the camera ratio by simply swiping up to switch to the vertical view.

Sending / Receiving contents

The previous version separates the bubble contents by contents that take more space to view and disorganize the view. By emerging bubbles together and removing the margin between bubble and contents, we could retain visibility of both sending and receiving bubbles.

Video Preview

As time goes on, a new way of communication is to use video to share the moment. The video preview made this behavior simpler without further steps.

Web integration

Jumping apps made user flow disconnected and break the seamlessness of the user journey. I decided to integrate a simple web browser and provide fast task completion and seamless experience.

Bubble definement

Noticing what you send and what others send is essential to reduce cognitive loads, therefore, have less stressful and faster communication. I redesigned every bubble by contents type for content visibility.

Impact

the log data of attaching rate doubled from around 10% to 20%

Also, we defined the messaging design system that can unify components and interaction of Enhanced messages (similar concept to iMessage) and SMS/MMS. In addition to that, the new attach sheet could accommodate various new features, therefore, built a foundation for future scalability.