Messenger Redesign
I was the User Research Lead and the Visual Designer on the Messenger Redesign Team.
I contributed to redefining messenger as an app for simple communication in personal chats, video calls, and marketplace features.
Facebook’s messaging app, Messenger, has been one of the most downloaded apps for years. Many discover the messaging platform through its integration within Facebook but often users defect to other apps such as iMessage as their main communication platforms. Its plethora of features makes finding information and using it to its full capacity difficult.
In the span of 6 weeks, our team redesigned Messenger for users to amplify successful communication features.
Awarded Most Customer Centric UX & Netflix XD Enterprise
Jump to SolutionProduct Review
Buy and sell items at your convenience
Marketplace chats is a widely used feature on the current messenger. Now, you can manage all Marketplace Chats as a buyer and seller.
Video call your loved ones
Distance should not be a concern with our redesign video call feature, emphasizing in easy access to personalized video rooms.
Organize Personal and Group Chats
We get it, you are a popular one. We organized chats into personal and group messages to declutter all bunched messages.
Design Process
A Human-Centered Approach ✨
Research
Collecting Qualitative and Quantitative Data
User-Research
Literature Review
As a User-Research Lead, I started with conducting Literature reviews, analyzing people’s current pain-points with the messenger app on the app store.
User-Research
Early Research Goals
After Literature Reviews, I communicated with my team members to create early goals for our user interviews and surveys to better understand specific pain-points and experiences of the current messenger redesign
User-Research
Google Survey
I wanted the survey to be quick and simple so our participants would be able to answer the questions to the best of their ability. I also made sure to eliminate any biases in our questions. I questioned their familiarity with Messenger and what they use Messenger for.
Our Goals from the survey:
•Understand how many people have/had used Messenger
•Analyze what aspects of messenger were successful/failures
•Determine why people lean towards other messenging-apps
•Observe how frequently they use messenger on specific features
User-Research
Empathy
To understand the logistical applications of the app, we used sticky notes to denote our insights and to find a pattern. It helped me understand the concerns/questions from the user’s perspective.
User Interviews
I conducted User Interviews to empathize with their current experiences using Messenger.
After, I narrowed down the findings using what they Say, Feel, Do, and Think about the current Messenger
User-Research
Personas
From understanding our user’s standpoint, my team and I created a persona to narrate the experiences of how a certain user would use messenger.
Meet Walter Rodriguez, a first-generation college student who struggles with maintaining communication with his family outside of the U.S. From learning to live alone, Walter seeks affordable options to be more financially secure. Walter is a popular kid, so he finds difficulty communicating with all of his friends at once.
Synthesis
Affinity-Map
After our research, I used a few analysis strategies, including affinity mapping, HMOs, and pain points to narrow our findings
We narrowed down our thinking into chat organization, improving the video call feature, and emphasizing the connection with others.
Define the problem
“How do we repurpose Messenger as a goal-oriented messaging app through amplifying successful communication features, such as Marketplace and Rooms, while also streamlining user interactions by deprioritizing less favored features.”
Ideate
Sketches
Next step is Ideating. My team and I sketched out possible solutions to address certain pain points from our affinity mapping.
This is to expand our ideations together, and communicate closely which features to focus on during our wireframes
Wireframes & Prototypes
Bringing ideas to life
Mid Fidelity Wireframes
Positive feedback
•Marketplace Chats being separate are useful to help declutter all the chats
•Interviewees liked the emphasize on spaces for communication
•Videos is a very unique feature that could be adapted better to be more consistent as a unique Messenger feature
Areas to Improve on
•Wording for the Marketplace Chats is a bit confusing
•Groups feature seemed to be a little redundant
•Videos Feature felt a little too similar to Face-time.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Areas to Improve on
•Finalized names of the pages: Messenger, Rooms, and Marketplace
•Reevaluate current designs, and transform redesigns to be new, unique, but also recognized in Meta’s story and branding
•Establish consistency throughout all pages and components used
Messenger Demo
So what changed?
Here’s a shot with the existing design and our proposed design. Walter can now use Marketplace, Rooms, & Messenger with ease. Chats are no longer one long list, but organized and clean. Video calls to his family in Ecuador, texts to his friends, and communication with sellers and buyers should be no sweat!
Find chats more easily
Redesigned landing page from personal vs group for a better experience while using Messenger chats
Buy and Sell with ease
We wanted Marketplace to organize conversations to help streamline transactions and bidding
Room Rooms
We redefined Messenger's Rooms to make it easy for people to connect with their close ones n video and audio calls together
Design System
Visual and User Interface Design✨
Identity
Branding
We aligned with messenger’s current design system, “Design at Meta” to maintain consistency and branding for the redesign including typography, color palettes, and icons.
Reflection
Next Steps
I loved this case study because there were so many clear and open communication especially when narrowing down ideas.
Huge thanks to my team because we all worked harmoniously on different aspects of messenger in only 6 weeks. Together, we were the only team to win not just the Most Customer Centric UX Award, but also highly recognized by a Netflix Product Designer and received a Netflix XD Enterprise Award!
For our next steps, my team and I would like to refine the UI, and make further adjustments to the Rooms features. We also want to make changes to the bidding and selling aspect of Marketplace. This will all be done through more usability tests and user interviews.
Click below to see the prototype!
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