A more private WhatsApp?

Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey and Edward Snowden are just 3 of the influential advocates for Signal—a messaging app that’s like WhatsApp, but with more of a focus on privacy.

And when WhatsApp announced changes to their data-sharing policy, Signal exploded.

But this rapid growth has introduced a UX complexity: the app is now being used by a much broader group of people.

Signal may be more private than WhatsApp, but if they ever want to rival their 2 billion users (yes, you read that correctly), then they’ll need a product that’s just as easy to use.

The golden question is this: when the hype dies, will people be able to convince their lazy friends, who don’t care about internet privacy, to sign up?

The answer to that depends on a number of factors, one being how easy the experience of migrating from WhatsApp to Signal is. So let’s take a look.

Context is essentially UX wizardry.

It converts confusing and awkward tasks into things that people do on autopilot, without hesitation. For example, imagine if someone asked for a copy of your passport:

With that in mind, it’s ironic that an app which so heavily forces the conversation of privacy, also asks for access to sensitive information entirely out of context, twice, during the account creation process.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself while designing permissions modals:

1: Is it obvious why this information is required? (i.e., is the benefit specific).

2: Is the user currently trying to do a task that would benefit from this?

In Signal’s case, the answer to both of those is no.

I often find myself repeating the following: if you’re asking the user to set a password, tell them all the password rules.

At this point it’s a well-versed ‘Built for Mars sin’. But there’s a more frustrating version of this: failing a password rule, and still not being told what the rule was.

And frustratingly, this is what Signal do while setting a PIN number.

That’s it, that’s literally all you’re given, which is problematic for a few reasons:

1: What makes a PIN code stronger?

2: How much stronger does my PIN code have to be?

But if we step backwards for a moment, you can see why this may not have been a problem up until now. Those who were motivated to sign up to Signal presumably had an interest in internet privacy, and probably also had at least a basic understanding of what makes a strong password.

There are a few ways that they could tackle this:

And after that validation issue, I submitted a new PIN and… Signal errored. I later found out that the flood of new users may have been the cause of the problem.

To understand why, let’s dissect it into 4 parts.

1: What just happened — it’s clear right away what the error was (in plain English, not an obscure code).

2: Why this affects you — this is the result of that error, and why you should care.

3: What happens next — this is how the error will be handled. Without the promise of this automatic reminder, the user may be anxious about having to remember to set a PIN in the future.

4: Here’s the next action — this gives the user a clear next action, and lets them continue using the app as normal.

Most of the time when designing software, people don’t remember (or don’t want to invest the time into) good error handling.

I see this (left) all the time:

Tip: if you’re building software, it’s worth the investment to handle errors well.

There’s an onboarding strategy which can be difficult to get right, often backfires if done incorrectly but has the potentially to be immensely rewarding: encouraging discovery.

The feeling of using an app and stumbling upon a ‘hidden’ feature is enjoyable and addictive. It gives depth to a product, that otherwise might have appeared quite shallow, and taps into the psychology of a 🎰 Variable Reward.

If you go to start a new message, and search for ‘S’…

You can now privately send messages to yourself—and yes, it’s very similar to the ‘your space’ feature on Slack.

But the point isn’t that it’s innovative, it’s that Signal took a ‘hands off’ approach, and let the user stumble across this in their own time.

The nuance here is to know when to proactively teach someone how to use a feature, and when to let them discover it on their own.

Here are two reasons why word of mouth is so important to Signal:

Which introduces a UX challenge: how can you design an experience which maximises the number of new users that then bother to invite all of their friends?

Certainly an influential factor is how much effort it takes to create an account (people are more likely to share things that they thought were easy to do).

That means removing anything from the initial onboarding experience that doesn’t directly help the user get to that milestone.

And yes, having to decide whether or not to give Signal permission to access all the devices in your house does take effort.

It’s not just the physical action of reading the modal and then clicking a button, but the cognitive attention required to make a decision—i.e., 🛌🏽 Decision Fatigue.

I spent about 40 hours using, analysing and writing up my experience of using Signal, and—in addition to the privacy angle—there’s certainly a lot to like:

1: Some of the error handling was great.

2: I was delighted to stumble across the ‘Notes to self’ feature.

3: The core product is very similar to WhatsApp, which is a good thing.

But there’s still a lot of work to do, and dare I say it; the UX wasn’t as good as WhatsApp’s.

I created a new WhatsApp account to test the most recent version, and I don’t think anybody can deny that their product is world-class.

Signal could get there, and to start they should improve the following:

1: For an app so focused on privacy, they do a really poor job of asking for permission to access your stuff. It’s often totally out of context.

2: Some of the error handling was really poor.

3: Remove any unnecessary steps, so the process of replacing WhatsApp feels easier.