I performed the following research while interviewing for a startup in the creators economy space!
Task Prompt❓
As a part of WhatsApp's design team, come up with an end-to-end design solution for users to create polls in their WhatsApp groups.
Deliverables 🗒️
- Pen and Paper wireframe sketches of "Poll" feature in the WhatsApp mobile application.
- Brief overview of the process followed to come up with these wireframes.
Overview 🧭
For this exercise, I decided to use concepts and frameworks that I learnt from a few product books like Lean Product Playbook, Solving Product Design Exercises etc.,
Using these concepts, I created my own modified version of these frameworks (Lean Product Process + 5W1H), which helped me and my team build our product at treadapp.
I have split my process into two parts -
- The first is to research the product, its users, their needs and to analyze competitor products.
- The second is to focus on a design process to come up with the ideas, information architecture, wireframes and metrics to test the designs.
🔎 Research Process (Primary + Secondary)
- Understand the product's vision
- Figure out the need to build "Poll" option
- Find the target customer segment
- Identify their unmet needs & underlying motivation
- Analyze existing products solving those problems
✍️ Design Process
- Ideas for "Poll" option & Prioritization
- User Flow & Information Architecture
- Wireframes
- Metrics & Testing to validate design
- Iteration
I have made a few assumptions for the purpose of this task and have tried to give reasons behind those assumptions as well.
Research Process 🔎
1️⃣ WhatsApp's Product Vision
More than 2 billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends and family, anytime and anywhere. WhatsApp is free and offers simple, secure, reliable messaging and calling, available on phones worldwide.
One thing to note here is that WhatsApp wants people to communicate without any barriers.
2️⃣ The need to build "Poll" option
An online poll is a survey in which participants communicate responses via the Internet.
- Since an online poll is also a form of communication, it aligns well with WhatsApp's mission. However, we need to figure out if there is a real need for its users to create polls.
- So, I ran a poll on Instagram to test this hypothesis. 96 people voted, out of which 61% said they had felt the need to take "Polls" through their groups.
- Going through Reddit, I found a few posts that suggested a need for "Polls" in WhatsApp.
These pieces of information suggest that there might be a need for the "Poll".
However, we need to do a bit more extensive research to come to a solid conclusion - User interviews and surveys will help here.
For the purpose of this task, I'm assuming that there are a few user segments that might require the "Poll" option.
3️⃣ Target customer segment
WhatsApp has 2 billion users in over 180 countries. Hence, we can have numerous customer segments based on their geography, age, occupation, gender, behaviour, tech usage etc.
For this task, I'm considering a user segment that closely matches the 96 people who voted on my Instagram poll.
| Name | Tags |
|---|---|
Geography | IndiaTier 1 CitiesTier 2 Cities |
Age | 18 - 24 Years |
Occupation | College StudentEmployee with 1-3 Years of Work Experience |
Behavior | Uses WhatsApp Primarily for all communications2-3 Hours of Daily Usage |
Tech Usage | Highly tech-savvy |
Groups they are part of | College TeamsFriendsFamilyOfficeOnline Communities |
Most of my Instagram followers are my college friends (Including my juniors and seniors) and colleagues. I skimmed through the names of 96 people who voted on my poll to come up with the above customer segment.
There could be multiple other segments too like an online community member/admin, product user testing group admin, Business Accounts etc.,
4️⃣ Identify their unmet needs & underlying motivation
To get a deeper understanding of their needs, I asked a few questions to the people who replied to my poll. Through their answers, I was able to get some good insights.
- The following are the screenshots where people expressed a clear need to take polls through their groups.
- Academic needs - Deadlines, Marks Split up, Exam Dates etc
- Personal needs - Meetup dates & time, restaurants & food preferences, trip destinations etc
One interesting thing to observe is that two of them mentioned switching to telegram whenever there is a need to take polls.
I could also sense that when confused over options, people tend to rely on others to decide upon something, and they usually prefer an easier way to get others' opinions.
I have personally faced these instances while in college, so I might be a bit biased here.
Screenshots from one of the team groups that I headed in college where we used to get food preferences by counting the emojis 👇
- There were also a few responses where people mentioned not needing to create polls, mainly because they didn't have instances to ask for opinions or their group was small enough to DM and ask people individually.
The number of responses to my poll is too small to derive conclusive insights. Ideally, a larger subset of users should be surveyed and interviewed to get more concrete evidence.
However, there were a few people who clearly stated their need for polls. So I chose to assume that there was a user need for creating polls.
🙋♂️ User Persona
Based on the understanding of the user segments, I sketched two mini personas to give an overall idea about them and their mindset.
I decided to focus on the first user persona - Dharanya, as it has a clear need to take polls in their groups.
🧠 Underlying Motivation
There a quite a few invisible psychological factors why people might want to take others opinions or votes through polls. Some of them are 👇
- Choice Overloading - When faced with too many options, the person responsible for making a choice might feel decision fatigue. When in doubt, they often let others decide.
- Inclusive Decision Making - In a close group/community, people tend to make decisions collectively by including everyone. It gives a sense of belonging to everyone.
- Group Think Effect - People strive for consensus within a group. In many cases, people will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group.
These are some of the psychological reasons why I feel people might want to take polls within their groups. While leading different teams in my college, I myself have observed these behaviours closely. If we dig deeper, we might find more factors supporting this narrative.
However, since my personal experiences are involved, there might be a few biases here. Also, a more comprehensive study on these psychological principles is needed before jumping to a solid conclusion.
🚶♂️ User Story
Based on the user persona and some of their underlying motivations, I came up with a couple of user stories supporting the need for polls within WhatsApp.
There could be multiple other user stories as well, but I'm going ahead with these two for the purpose of the task.
5️⃣ Existing products with Poll Option
Most of the industry's social media and communication products, like Instagram, Telegram, Twitter, Messenger, LinkedIn etc., have an inbuilt Poll option for their users.
1️⃣ Telegram
2️⃣ Instagram
3️⃣ Twitter
4️⃣ Facebook Messenger
5️⃣ Slack & Discord
Currently, as a workaround, there are many third-party applications that let users take polls within their WhatsApp groups.
Design Process ✍️
1️⃣ Ideas for "Poll" option & Prioritization
Some of the different types of "Poll" options are 👇
- Multiple Choices (One or more than one options to choose)
- Quiz Mode (Shows right or wrong answers after the vote)
- Open-Ended Questions (Respondents can submit any text as answer)
- Visible Votes (Reveal the percentage of votes after the user chooses an option)
- Invisible & Anonymous Votes (Not reveal the vote percentage & name of voters)
- Slider Ratings (To get an average number within a range)
- Up-vote or Down-vote responses (Suitable for yes/no questions)
- Nested Questions (Questions change based on responses like Typeform)
From the user persona and their respective user stories, I deduced that multiple choices, visible & invisible voting and up-down voting are relevant to the target user segment.
- Visible & invisible voting option can be toggled in the settings while creating a poll.
- Up-down voting can be simulated in the multiple-choice questions by having the answer options as Yes/No or Up/Down. The user creating the poll can change the setting to show the number of votes instead of the percentage mimicking the Up-Down voting.
WhatsApp Design Principles
So, instead of giving many types of poll options to the user, I decided to go with only multiple-choice polls with different setting variations.
2️⃣ User Flow & Information Architecture
For the user flow, I have gone with a poll where users can't change their options once voted. However, the poll creator can enable/disable the option to change votes in the poll configuration while creating one.
3️⃣ Wireframes
Before starting to sketch the wireframes, I read about WhatsApp's design principles.
WhatsApp's Design Principles ✍️
- The interface should feel native to the device the person is using
- The app should be lightweight and require as little storage as possible
- The interface should be simple
- User actions and animations should be quick to respond
- Features should provide obvious utility so they require little introduction
4️⃣ Metrics & Testing to validate the designs
Based on this use case, once the wireframes are converted into high fidelity prototypes, some of the following metrics could be used to validate the design solution through usability testing with a few potential users.
Using the prototype, what are the :
- Task completion rate for creating a poll
- Task completion time for creating a poll
- Task completion rate for answering a poll
- Task completion time for answering a poll
Once the feature is shipped live, what are the :
- Number of active WhatsApp groups using the poll feature
- Number of Polls created in a day/week/month
- Number of people who have voted in a poll in the last 24hrs/week/month
A/B testing could also be done on different variations of the design with a select few users to understand which version of the design gives the desired results.
Users can also be asked about their experiences using the poll feature and their feedback for the same.
5️⃣ Iteration
Based on the obtained metrics and user feedback, the designs can be further improved by iterating through the process again.
Reference Links 🔗
Things that I could have done better 🙋♂️
- Could have taken a few user interviews and asked a few more questions.
- Could have sketched user flows for a few more edge cases like editing a poll etc.,
- Could have made a more detailed user persona and more user stories.
- Could have made the Notion doc short and concise.
- Wanted to add a short loom video giving a quick walkthrough of the whole process.