What are the deep-seated product logics behind these 10 ineffective WeChat designs?

As the largest app for all people in the world, WeChat has surpassed the former dominant QQ in the field of instant messaging. In the field of product design, WeChat has always been regarded as a classic and has enjoyed countless praises and imitations.

However, when using the product, our users will inevitably have questions about some of WeChat’s designs. Some designs can be said to be out of touch with our understanding of user experience.

Why is this so? Is there a deeper logic behind these "unfriendly" designs of WeChat?

Below I will give 10 examples to analyze these "unfriendly" designs and the design product logic behind them (personal thinking and conjecture).

1. Why should likes and comments be aggregated? Add an operation level

Click the operation icon in Moments, and two operation buttons, Comment and Like, will appear. If you want to like a comment, you have to click the corresponding Like and Comment button, why not just put the Like and Comment buttons directly?

From the perspective of user operation efficiency, the current design of the Moments is not efficient enough, as it adds an extra operation path. What is the deep meaning and thinking behind WeChat's design?

The positioning of Moments is to share life, and the focus is on sharing rather than interaction. If the entrances to like and comment are directly released, the frequency of user interaction will increase, resulting in the intention and value of likers and commenters being far less than if the two operations are hidden. The praise and interaction received by hidden likes and comments will make the sharer more sincere, while also reducing the invalid interruption of message notifications. In this way, the entire interactive sharing ecosystem of Moments will become better.

2. Why is Moments not a separate tab, but just a module in the tab?

The two most used functions by the general public are conversation and Moments. However, Moments is a module in tab3. According to the high and low frequency of user operations, Moments can be a separate tab.

Why does WeChat do this? I think if WeChat Moments is used as a tab, then WeChat has really become a social tool, not a lifestyle. From the perspective of the pattern, the pattern definition of a lifestyle is much higher than that of a social tool. At the same time, as a module, Moments can well distribute part of the traffic to modules such as shopping, games, scanning and mini programs.

3. Why are shopping, wallets, and games, which are highly profitable products, only small modules in the tab?

In the Internet industry, the idea of ​​almost all products is how to make the product bigger and then realize monetization and profit. In China, the apps with the largest user traffic can have the most monetization methods, such as games, shopping, and payment, which are highly profitable products. However, WeChat only displays them to users as a list in the tab, which does not seem to conform to business logic.

If shopping, games and payments are upgraded and strengthened, the label and positioning of WeChat for users will no longer be a lifestyle, but a simple platform for selling goods, games and payments. This may affect WeChat's unbreakable user perception and product status.

4. Why doesn’t Moments support GIF?

GIFs are usually fun and interesting pictures, which can be full of various jokes and funny moments. For people who post on WeChat Moments, posting GIFs is a big demand of users.

When considering the needs of users who share, you also need to consider the users who browse the Moments. If you make GIF images, users will be easily distracted by the GIF animations when browsing the Moments, which will affect the visual focus of the viewers. Some users will deliberately post some sensational GIFs to attract the attention of WeChat friends, which will lead to a poor viewing experience for viewers.

Therefore, not all user needs must be met. It is necessary to comprehensively consider all the needs and experiences of all product roles.

5. Why is the address book the second tab when it is a very low-frequency demand?

On the WeChat homepage, the second tab undoubtedly represents a particularly important position, but the content of this tab is all related to contacts. Users rarely enter this page to operate, so why give such an important position to the address book contacts?

Due to historical reasons, the early version of WeChat was an instant messaging app, so contacts are more important. It is correct to use it as tab2, which makes it more like an instant messaging software.

As WeChat matured, the entry of other businesses led to the bloat of the WeChat platform. In order to avoid changes in the perception and ideology of WeChat products, after all, WeChat must still retain its attribute of being an instant tool, so this tab2 has been retained.

6. Why can’t the WeChat ID be modified?

Many users randomly chose their WeChat ID when they first set it up, such as their ex's pinyin, their previous phone number, a long random letter, etc. Now they want to change it. However, WeChat ID can only be set once and cannot be modified.

If the WeChat ID can be modified at will, it will be the same as the QQ nickname, without uniqueness and identifiability, and the entire backend data storage will become particularly confusing.

Many users will leave their WeChat ID (QR code) in many places for contact. If it can be modified, the WeChat ID (QR code) left may become invalid, which will greatly affect the success rate and experience of adding WeChat. As a result, both parties will not dare to use WeChat to add friends in the future for safety reasons, but will use QQ to add friends.

7. Why is My Album not called My Moments?

The Moments encourages posting photos, and posting photos is of higher quality than simply posting text. So, why is My Photo Album not called My Moments? If it is changed to My Moments, it will be more inclined to post dynamic content.

8. Why does Moments not support group viewing?

To implement grouping in the circle of friends, you first need to group all WeChat friends. This requires changing the logic of adding friends in WeChat, and the cost of maintaining the groups is extremely high, which is a disaster to use.

Most users check Moments to kill time. So the more content their friends send, the better. Adding the grouping function will reduce the amount of content, so users will need to do a lot of operations to read all the content.

For the needs of content filtering, the function of blocking someone has been provided.

From the perspective of content distribution, adding the ability to view content by group can easily lead to overlooking high-quality content produced by friends in other groups.

Grouping the Moments will cause many friends’ updates to be unavailable, which will affect the data in the Moments and the interactivity of the Moments.

9. Why is group messaging limited to 200 people?

Many people have group messaging needs and hope to send group messages to all their friends, but WeChat only supports group messaging with 200 people.

There are also two roles involved here: sender and receiver.

Current usage scenarios of mass messaging include: QR code promotion, like requests, New Year mass messaging, WeChat business sending advertising messages to a specific group of people, etc. These are all harassing messages to the recipients.

If unlimited mass messaging is supported, the recipients will receive more spam and will be overly disturbed.

10. Why can't I delete the conversation list in batches?

If batch deletion is possible, the overall activity of WeChat conversations will decrease. If batch deletion is possible, the entire chat list will be deleted, and the probability of subsequent active conversations with the deleted people will decrease.

Deletion is a cautious operation, and the chat history will no longer exist after deletion.

Summarize

The design logic of WeChat can be roughly divided into two aspects:

All roles should be considered as a whole. When considering the usage requirements of role A, we should also consider the impact of role A's usage requirements on roles B, C, or the platform (this is very important and is something we often overlook when designing).

Consider the positioning of the entire product and the platform ecology, and think globally before locally when considering needs or designs.