Slide to do everything
A simple "slide to do X" mechanism for any action a user could take on SwipeChat.
SwipeChat v1
SwipeChat's main screen for asynchronous voice messaging with close friends.
SwipeChat v2
Naturally, if friends are in the app at the same time, it would make sense to just be on a call.
“how can we get people to use audio for just 1 minute every day?”
Close Friends Communication
This begged the question: where are audio messages the most relevant and convenient for people?
If there’s one thing I learned from our previous audio apps, it’s that people find it extremely awkward to listen to their own voice, yet love hearing their close friends’ and loved ones’ voices. People generally feel awkward putting their voice out there for a lot of people to hear, the authenticity of the voice goes hand-in-hand with close friends messaging.
The dichotomy of Voice & Text: ease of creation != ease of consumption
Born and raised in the Netherlands, I knew recording voice messages in WhatsApp is great when you’re on a bike and can’t conveniently text. From an experience point of view: speaking is faster than typing, but reading is faster than listening. This is one of the core problems with voice messages: the ease of creation != ease of consumption, and vice-versa for text.
State of voice messages in messaging apps
I asked myself where people were using voice messages already and studied that experience. I found that most audio messaging tools use the same clumsy 20x20px voice recording button, which isn’t particularly useful in the scenarios where texting is inconvenient. Navigating to and tapping a small keyboard button to record an audio message whilst being on-the-go is not ideal in the scenarios where people want to record a voice message.
Cultural Perception
Voice messages are great for the sender in moments where texting is tough, but inconvenient for the receiver because it signals texting wasn’t worth the sender’s time. The worst experience in WhatsApp for most people is getting a handful of separate 40+ second voice messages back. People feel overwhelmed and feel like they don’t have the time or energy to listen.
In other words, the barrier to “create” audio messages is extremely low, yet the barrier to consume them is high.
The Core Loop
It became pretty clear that to get people to use audio message at least once a day, the mental barrier to consume audio messages had to be lowered, which resulted in constraining how audio messages on SwipeChat would be created.
“The ball is in your court now”
Constraining the creation of audio messages meant shortening the length and amount of messages people would be able to send to each other to cancel out the possibility of a sensory overload scenario with lots of messages to listen back to.
I was inspired by the saying “the ball is in your court now” and realized we could mechanically use this to only allow for one 30 second voice message to be sent to a friend at a time, which required that friend to listen and send one back again, until a new message could be sent.
This opened up a world of simplicity because this theoretically meant that 1 repetition of our core product hook could be completed in less than a minute (30 seconds listening, and 30 seconds recording a response).
We now had a loop that reduces significant psychological load. When someone receives a SwipeChat right before pulling up to a meeting, they know they can listen, reply and send something back in less than a minute. Now that felt freeing in a world of voice notes!
Product Design
Now that a simple core loop was established, it was time for an interaction that symbolizes and supports the core loop, and at the same time is fun to use.
It was obvious from the start that we had to move away from a small recording button. Since we were all about audio, I wondered, what if we the whole interface can be used without ever using a keyboard. Just gestures.
This led me to the iPhone’s original ‘slide to unlock’ mechanism. ‘Slide to unlock’ was designed to avoid accidental pocket-calls (which happened a lot in the pre-iPhone era) and was a very fitting for SwipeChat.
I asked myself: what if, every step of the core loop could be completed using a ‘Slide to do X’ mechanism? This would further simplify the experience, it would teach users the core loop well, and most importantly, it would be extremely useful in moments where audio messages are most convenient: when it’s hard to precisely look at your phone — while being on-the-move.
On top of that, the swiping left and right interaction nicely symbolizes the back & forth interaction and ethos of the product.
App Icon
For the app icon and logo the goal was to create a psychological association by using the native iMessage and Phone app color and style.
Asynchronous & Synchronous Convergence
After releasing the app we noticed a bunch of cases where people would be in the app at the same time sending each other asynchronous voice notes. In other words: the asynchronous experience started looking a lot more like a synchronous one.
Partly due to our use of push notifications as status indications we helped people “get ready” for an incoming message and mentally prepare to send a quick message back.
It became pretty clear that we brought people into the app with shorter time intervals through the simple asynchronous core loop. On a higher level, asynchronous audio messages pushed people naturally to having a synchronous conversation. At that point, why not be on a call?
A very logical next step, was changing the asynchronous voice message interaction to a synchronous calling interaction if two users were in the app (online) at the same time.
Final Word
The concept started from first principles and as it went on, future iterations made a lot of sense but unfortunately never saw the light of day. Within the consumer studio, we always took pride in iterating fast on theses and their respective assumptions. SwipeChat is still available on the App Store.
“how can we get people to use audio for just 1 minute every day?”
Close Friends Communication
This begged the question: where are audio messages the most relevant and convenient for people?
If there’s one thing I learned from our previous audio apps, it’s that people find it extremely awkward to listen to their own voice, yet love hearing their close friends’ and loved ones’ voices. People generally feel awkward putting their voice out there for a lot of people to hear, the authenticity of the voice goes hand-in-hand with close friends messaging.
The dichotomy of Voice & Text: ease of creation != ease of consumption
Born and raised in the Netherlands, I knew recording voice messages in WhatsApp is great when you’re on a bike and can’t conveniently text. From an experience point of view: speaking is faster than typing, but reading is faster than listening. This is one of the core problems with voice messages: the ease of creation != ease of consumption, and vice-versa for text.
State of voice messages in messaging apps
I asked myself where people were using voice messages already and studied that experience. I found that most audio messaging tools use the same clumsy 20x20px voice recording button, which isn’t particularly useful in the scenarios where texting is inconvenient. Navigating to and tapping a small keyboard button to record an audio message whilst being on-the-go is not ideal in the scenarios where people want to record a voice message.
Cultural Perception
Voice messages are great for the sender in moments where texting is tough, but inconvenient for the receiver because it signals texting wasn’t worth the sender’s time. The worst experience in WhatsApp for most people is getting a handful of separate 40+ second voice messages back. People feel overwhelmed and feel like they don’t have the time or energy to listen.
In other words, the barrier to “create” audio messages is extremely low, yet the barrier to consume them is high.
The Core Loop
It became pretty clear that to get people to use audio message at least once a day, the mental barrier to consume audio messages had to be lowered, which resulted in constraining how audio messages on SwipeChat would be created.
“The ball is in your court now”
Constraining the creation of audio messages meant shortening the length and amount of messages people would be able to send to each other to cancel out the possibility of a sensory overload scenario with lots of messages to listen back to.
I was inspired by the saying “the ball is in your court now” and realized we could mechanically use this to only allow for one 30 second voice message to be sent to a friend at a time, which required that friend to listen and send one back again, until a new message could be sent.
This opened up a world of simplicity because this theoretically meant that 1 repetition of our core product hook could be completed in less than a minute (30 seconds listening, and 30 seconds recording a response).
We now had a loop that reduces significant psychological load. When someone receives a SwipeChat right before pulling up to a meeting, they know they can listen, reply and send something back in less than a minute. Now that felt freeing in a world of voice notes!
Product Design
Now that a simple core loop was established, it was time for an interaction that symbolizes and supports the core loop, and at the same time is fun to use.
It was obvious from the start that we had to move away from a small recording button. Since we were all about audio, I wondered, what if we the whole interface can be used without ever using a keyboard. Just gestures.
This led me to the iPhone’s original ‘slide to unlock’ mechanism. ‘Slide to unlock’ was designed to avoid accidental pocket-calls (which happened a lot in the pre-iPhone era) and was a very fitting for SwipeChat.
I asked myself: what if, every step of the core loop could be completed using a ‘Slide to do X’ mechanism? This would further simplify the experience, it would teach users the core loop well, and most importantly, it would be extremely useful in moments where audio messages are most convenient: when it’s hard to precisely look at your phone — while being on-the-move.
On top of that, the swiping left and right interaction nicely symbolizes the back & forth interaction and ethos of the product.
App Icon
For the app icon and logo the goal was to create a psychological association by using the native iMessage and Phone app color and style.
Asynchronous & Synchronous Convergence
After releasing the app we noticed a bunch of cases where people would be in the app at the same time sending each other asynchronous voice notes. In other words: the asynchronous experience started looking a lot more like a synchronous one.
Partly due to our use of push notifications as status indications we helped people “get ready” for an incoming message and mentally prepare to send a quick message back.
It became pretty clear that we brought people into the app with shorter time intervals through the simple asynchronous core loop. On a higher level, asynchronous audio messages pushed people naturally to having a synchronous conversation. At that point, why not be on a call?
A very logical next step, was changing the asynchronous voice message interaction to a synchronous calling interaction if two users were in the app (online) at the same time.
Final Word
The concept started from first principles and as it went on, future iterations made a lot of sense but unfortunately never saw the light of day. Within the consumer studio, we always took pride in iterating fast on theses and their respective assumptions. SwipeChat is still available on the App Store.