Redesigning the GroupMe Experience
Creating a modernized experience!
Why a redesign?
I wanted to work on an unsolicited side project to build up my product design skills through an HCD (Human-Centered Design) framework, the Double Diamond. I chose GroupMe, which is a widely used messaging platform and as an avid user, I felt the experience and visual design of the product could be updated. However, I didn’t want to develop a redesign for myself. My main focus was to first discover and pinpoint current user pain points and to design for those needs and issues while heavily incorporating the people’s perspective when using GroupMe.
Understanding Empathy Through User Research
I first took a visit to the Google Play Store to read some recent GroupMe reviews to see what users are experiencing currently. The app has an overall rating of 4.6/5 from over 404k reviews as of August 2019, but it’s always best to learn from negative reviews (App Store rating is 4.7/5 with over a million reviews). While GroupMe is praised for its simplicity of setting up a group chat, the biggest complaint is the poor and inconsistent notification system that’s in place. This is more of a technical error to why there are notification inconsistencies. Users would either never receive notifications or receive an inconsistent amount of them. Users also voiced the need to add certain features that they feel would benefit the app since these features are standard in other messaging platforms.
Intrigued by some problems brought up I wanted to drill deeper to into these issues. I did more user research and briefly interviewed around a dozen other GroupMe users within my social circle regarding their experience when using the app.
- What do you like about GroupMe?
- What’s the easiest thing about using GroupMe?
- What’s the most difficult thing about using GroupMe?
- If you had a magic wand, what would you change or add to GroupMe?
While there were a variety of responses for each question, there was definitely an overlap between the Play Store reviews and the brief questions I gave. Users were extremely satisfied with the simplicity of the GroupMe app to facilitate group conversation with the usage of a phone number. Members didn’t need a social media account such as Facebook to sign up, making the barrier to entry easier.
“I’d add a feature which allows us to reply to each message and I’d also add the ability to delete or edit a message.”-P3 (participant 3)
“GroupMe makes it very easy to chat, the ability to form huge groups and communicate with them makes it super easy, it’s a chatting app that feels very easy.”-P5
There were also numerous testimonies from users who expressed how there were a lack of messaging mechanics such as replying to specific messages, editing/removing their own messages. This was prevalent in the Play Store reviews and from participants’ testimonies.
I then created an empathy map to put myself in the user’s perspective to better understand them with the data I’ve collected to supplement this map. I then created a journey map to understand what users go through when trying to perform a particular task from the amalgamation of data I’ve collected. I focused on the chat mechanisms, specifically the lack of a reply feature that users expressed in my brief interviews.
Combining feedback from the Play Store reviews, interviewing GroupMe users within my social circle, I was able to gather lots of data. With the various maps I created, this helped a lot in having a clearer understanding of current user sentiment. This allowed me to make some data-driven decisions on what to design in order to create a better GroupMe experience. I was able to discover numerous instances of wanting a new visual look for the app. They felt it was outdated with the rigid design. Another highly prominent comment was how there’s a lack of personalization in a group chat setting. There weren’t enough options to change nicknames or chat colours, and have access to more GIFS/sticker libraries. Users felt they couldn’t express themselves as freely as they would on other messaging platforms. By defining what the current user sentiment is, I was able to silo it into 3 categories.
Users’ Needs
- The app needs a visual update
- Lack of personalization options
- Lack of messaging mechanics
Design Iterations
Iteration 0: Develop
For the new visual design I was aiming for a playful, colourful, clean feel to make GroupMe more lively compared to the unexciting design that users felt on the current version. I wanted to make it somewhat saturated, bold, and flat in terms of colours shadows, and depth.
Lo-fi Wireframes:
I then started designing an interactive prototype based on several iterations of wireframes.
Iteration 1:
By combining the reviews on Play Store with the brief testimonies and pain-points people gave me when using GroupMe, I was able to test my first design based on the user sentiment from iteration 0.
“It looks cleaner with individual and group chats separated but as someone who does not use GroupMe for individual conversations, I wouldn’t care too much for this update.”-P2
“Flow was definitely easy to understand but I personally use GroupMe for groups mainly so I’d give that priority over DMs”-P4
“I feel like it is a genuine GroupMe redesign that incorporates a smooth interface and fluid variants in communications.”-P6
“Overall, it’s a clean look/design. Smooth and fluid flow. Prioritize Groups over DMs, have a setting to consolidate the chats if user doesn’t care.”-P7
From all the participants I tested on, there seemed to be a consensus that the overall visuals and flow of the app were cleaner. However, while users liked the idea of distinguishing groups/individual messages, they felt groups are the bigger usage of using GroupMe and therefore should be prioritized over the design. And if users don’t really care for the breakdown, there should be a setting/backdoor where they can revert to a consolidated format.
Furthermore, people heavily expressed a lack of chat mechanics in group settings as seen earlier above by P3. This was also expressed in several GroupMe reviews on the Play Store too.
“Possibly a search feature that could find specific messages with keywords.”-P4
A/B Testing:
Different participants were shown different styles of design and I was able to see between the respective comparisons, which one was more effective. I later incorporated the results into iteration 2. Here are some early iterations of the design when tested to users before their feedback.
Iteration 2:
Using the feedback I had received from iteration 1, I went ahead synthesizing the data and finding consistent issues that people expressed. For the second feedback iteration, I wanted to focus primarily on design and chat mechanics (reply, @everyone, etc.) that was brought up a lot from the first round of testing. I recruited another batch of friends within my social circle to test this next iteration. These participants are completely different people from the first iteration. I wanted to a fresh pair of eyes and an “unbiased” understanding of what I’ve been working on since they’ve never seen this before.
These were asked questions in regards to their thoughts about the new design and chat mechanics. Here are some of their thoughts.
“Clean, not overly complicated.”-P8
“ First off, love the new UI, very simple and smooth and nice to look at. Large fonts are a big plus The event invite with the profile bubbles moving like that is really neat.”-P9
For the new design, participants from both testing groups continuously like the new design for its visuals and simplicity. This proves that the new visual design and UX of the main interface has pleased GroupMe users.
“Unsure about editing messages, might lead to issue of manipulation, remove edit feature, it’s unclear what it really does.”-P8
“The only thing I would change is the options when you click on a message, the font size is just a tad too big.”-P9
“The font size and the message spacing is a bit large.”-P12
However, for the font sizing and chat mechanics, several users pointed out how they feel some of these features might not be necessarily needed or could provide a negative group chat experience. In addition, they thought the font size was too big. From this feedback, I was able to provide a “backdoor” setting for people to have the ability to control their preferences if they were to use this updated GroupMe.
“Final Version”: Delivery
Of course, design is never truly finalized, it’s constantly changing. However, for the sake of this project, this is the final iteration of all the feedback I have received.
This “final iteration” incorporates all things liked by users and provides them with the ability to set the preferences freely to make it more suitable to their tastes. The “controversial” chat mechanics were simplified, to “copy,” “ forward,” and “hide.” These mechanics prevent potential chat manipulation that could alter a group experience and can only function on that respective user’s view. The new GroupMe experience is more modern, and exciting while still incorporating the core things that makes GroupMe great, which is its simplicity.
What’s Next?
While this redesign is just a small snippet of what could theoretically be improved upon for GroupMe, there are a lot of exciting possibilities I found interesting, which could later be incorporated.
“I would also include in-app applets to make it easier to integrate applications within it to make it more profitable.”-P5
“I would add custom themes and add synergies/integrations with other applications (something like UberEats ordering and whatnot).”-P6
Several participants explained that GroupMe could be more exciting with the possibility of including both internal/external API calls to other platforms or features such as UberEats. The concept is that if you’re in a group setting and perhaps you’re trying to order food, having a direct API call to the group chat setting and adding a voting poll feature to see what food item is preferred could enhance the community experience. To activate this feature, you could click “Services” under the “***” option in the top right. This potential feature can be another project measured with KPIs in the future.
Reflection:
Thanks for reading! First, I want to thank all my friends who were kind enough to help test and provide their feedback for this project. I am not a traditionally trained product designer, and thought this was would be a great way to get more exposure. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot about product design while working on this. I will definitely do a similar project like this in the future.
I initially only looked a Play Store reviews for GroupMe then checked App Store reviews. While they’re similar, I could’ve incorporated more of the App Store reviews for a broader perspective on the current sentiment for GroupMe.
I did my iteration testing on small groups. There could be an argument made for sampling a broader demographic of GroupMe users. This is far from perfect, designing and ideating constantly changes. I’d to love to hear your feedback and any other thoughts!
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, I’m always curious to learn more :)
