WhatsApp Research
☸️ Overview
🎯 Purpose
🧐 Research Methodologies
📝 Research Plan
🤼 Participants
📰 Collecting Data
📊 Findings
🧑 User Personas
📈 Journey Maps
👁️ Insights
🎯 Purpose of this Research?
The purpose is to develop an understanding of how my family uses WhatsApp, their behavior, usage patterns, and gather findings that can be distilled into insights.
Understand what a Typical day on WhatsApp looks like for a User in 2020.
🧐 Research Methodologies used
Qualitative Research
- User Interviews
- Focus Group
- User Personas
- Journey Mapping
- Empathy Mapping
📝 Research Plan
🤼 Participants
A set of 5 participants.
❔ Questionnaire
The questions begin with the purpose of gaining background on each user and later focuses more on daily activities.
- The questions asked were open-ended as well as close-ended.
📊 Findings- Raw Data
A sneak peak into the type of content shared and groups.
After analyzing this raw data.
I categorized my participants into four categories.
- Social
- Professional
- Home business
- Student
Further I created a persona for each of these categories.
👧 User Personas
- Social Anne
- Professional Raj
- Well-Connected Monica
- Introvert Faye
📈 Journey Maps
- Journey Map for Social Anne
- Journey Map for Professional Raj
- Journey Map for Well-Connected Monica
- Journey Map for Introvert Faye
👁️ Insights
LANGUAGE
- The primary language used by users is English. The users are aware of the multilingual keyboard but they seldom use it.
USAGE
- The major reason for which a WhatsApp user uses WhatsApp is to keep in touch with family and friends, in fact, the motivation for them to install the app in the first place was because all their peers were on the app.
- They are long-term users of the app.
- Users find WhatsApp quick and easy to use to stay in touch with people.
TYPE OF CONTENT
- The type of content varies from jokes, funny videos, daily greetings sharing current events of their lives in the form of pictures, promotional content, announcements, etc.
FORMAT OF SHARED CONTENT
- The format of the content shared majorly consist of Texts, Images and Videos respectively.
The usage of each feature in the app is broken down into the below categories. The features are stated in the order of their popularity.
TEXT MESSAGES
- This is by far the most liked and popular feature of the app. Overuse of emojis is seen. Also, emojis are used rather than words, to show the emotions they want to depict.
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
- Sharing videos, daily greetings sharing current events of their lives in the form of pictures.
WHATSAPP VOICE AND VIDEO CALLS
- Whatsapp due to its free feature is favored for international text and calls.
- It can be said that WhatsApp chat and calls have been revolutionary and have replaced the normal call and text feature in a phone.
GROUP CHAT
- Groups seem to a very engaging feature amongst the users.
- Typically each user is a part of at least 5 groups.
- They consist of family, friends, workspace mostly.
- Family groups are the most common groups. The content ranges from greeting to announcements etc.
- The seniors in the family tend to reply more as the content shared by them doesn’t always relate to that of the younger generations.
SHOPPING
- Shopping isn’t a popular usage of the app, but due to the Covid 19 situation, ordering groceries and essentials through WhatsApp has become popular lately.
WHATSAPP ON WEB AND DESKTOP
- This feature is used rarely. It’s mostly used amongst users that are currently professionals and use WhatsApp for their work or business coordination.
DOCUMENTS
- Used mainly by working professionals, business owners. An example of this is sharing brochures of products to potential customers.
PAYMENTS
- No payments through WhatsApp. Rare cases of sharing UPI QR codes through the app to initiate payments.
STORY UPDATES
- Users in this group are aware of this feature but tend to not use it much.
VOICE MESSAGES
- Users in this group are aware of this feature but tend to not use it much.
END-TO-END ENCRYPTION
- Users in this group are not aware of this feature and do not have any idea about its functions.
VOICE TYPING
- Users in this group are aware of this feature but tend to not use it much.
PROBLEMS SOLVED
- Bridging the gap of communication,
- Send grocery lists to shopkeepers to avoid going out in the pandemic.
- Sharing important documents easily and quickly.
- Staying updated with family’s whereabouts.
FEARS
- Privacy violation.
- Strangers approaching their children,
- Addiction to the app
The general experience of the app amongst the users is positive except for a few pain points:
- Need for Better calling Service.
- Need for a Better video conference call.
- Stricter Group Permissions.
- Filtration of offensive content and ability to report.
A pattern is formed amongst the users to constantly check their phones for Whatsapp notifications, they spend hours on the app in a day.
Which leads us to think that the app has become an inevitable part of their routine.
Whatsapp provides users to maintain both professional and personal communications.
