Problem

Unless you’ve been living under a rock and totally away from social media, you’d definitely have either seen a story or created one yourself. Invented by Snapchat in 2013, a story allows users of social media platforms to create ephemeral content — images, video clips, text broadcasts, etc. Over the past few years, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and even LinkedIn, have adopted some version of stories in the product.

Let’s talk about WhatsApp, which has over 2 billion monthly users. The Status feature, WhatsApp’s take on stories, isn’t well-designed, is very limiting compared to other platforms, and could use an overhaul.

Some of the top problems in WhatsApp Status (iPhone) are:

Even though the Status button is right there on the app’s dock, it’s not very discoverable right off the bat. Users primarily use WhatsApp for messaging, so going to the Status tab isn’t intuitive. Compare this to Instagram, which makes Stories a first-class element on the user’s home interface.
WhatsApp offers three statuses: image-based, video/gif-based, and text-only. But the customizations allowed in each kind of status are very limiting. You can create rudimentary content, sure, but the controls are way more primitive than Instagram or Snapchat’s stories.
There are some major usability problems when using a text-only status. For instance, adding an external link is very awkward when creating a status or viewing one. Sharing links to external content is a very common pattern among users, and the workflow could use some upgrade.

Your job is to redesign WhatsApp Status and ensure these problems, and others that might not be listed here, are solved reasonably.

Inspiration

Instagram Stories
Instagram Reels
Snapchat Stories

Problem

Inspiration

Resources