The great design debate: Will being as cumbersome as WeChat become a mess?

From buying train tickets to finding a massage service, WeChat provides almost a full-platform Internet service. It is no exaggeration to say that "you can do everything on WeChat."

But all these features come at a price - providing users with a hopelessly cluttered interface. If you want to buy movie tickets through WeChat, you first have to open WeChat, then without opening any chat windows, go to "My", open "Wallet", and then swipe the screen to scroll down to "Movie Tickets". And this is just the beginning. You still need to jump to the page before you can choose your favorite movie and finally make the payment. If your friend is chatting with you during this time, it will mean that you have to exit, return to your chat window, and then start all over again. In contrast, if you download a dedicated movie ticket application, then perhaps one or two clicks will complete the entire process.

There is a debate going on around the world about app design: should apps cater to every possible need of users, or should they focus on doing one thing well? At one extreme is WeChat, which is becoming increasingly crowded with what seems like 10,000 apps on the platform. At the other end is Facebook's suite of apps, Facebook, Messenger, Groups, Pages, and some apps designed specifically for a single function.

Frog Design is a professional creative design company from the United States. The company is known as the European taste of Silicon Valley and brings this beauty and elegance into the field of IT manufacturing. At present, Frog has reached cooperation with business giants such as Nike and Microsoft. We asked several designers from this company to answer this question: Is the future of application design powerful chaos or limited simplicity?

Cultural differences

"As a European designer focusing on the Chinese market, I may not insist on the idea of ​​simplification," said Simone Rebaudengo, senior interaction designer at Frog. "I just see that the increased complexity driven by customers is not a problem for users, but more of a test for designers."

Looking at many Chinese and Japanese apps, plain design isn’t a priority; bright colors, long menus, and as many features as the eye can see are often the key.

However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. East Asian users have different expectations than elsewhere. Busy design is often seen as a sign of functionality, rather than confusing excess.

“In China and Japan, users tend to be comfortable with cluttered, high-information-dense applications and websites,” said Alan Stafford, a solutions architect at Frog. “I’ve heard people say that the dominant model of the early Internet in Asia, BBS and portals, was this kind of clutter.”

He added, “This does not mean that users do not appreciate simple and intuitive design, a case in point being Apple and Xiaomi.”

Designers are quick to point out that it would be a mistake to think that only "China", "Japan" or Asia is complex and "the West" is simple. Just look at the early iterations of Android a few years ago to see that there are many examples of complex design in the West. And Apple's huge success in China and Asia also shows that simple design that appeals to taste can also succeed in these regions.

But there is a trend that is already quite obvious in China, the chaos of integrating more applications.

Tear down this wall

"Compared to the more isolated approach in the United States and Europe, examples like Didi Kuaidi are smoothly embedded in WeChat services, which makes China's application ecosystem more interesting," Simone said. Didi Kuaidi is not a perfect example, after all, WeChat's parent company Tencent owns part of the company. But the problem is that many of the huge number of one-stop services provided by WeChat are not its own.

WeChat is less like Facebook Messenger than it is like Google: It’s a platform, not an app. While that approach can make menus and interfaces more complicated, it also means users can spend more time on one company’s service.

Simone calls this design "avoiding the Home button." In his opinion, Chinese designers seem to be particularly concerned about the war with the Home button and are doing everything they can to keep users in a single application instead of jumping between programs.

One potential reason why Chinese users are so eager to stay with one app is due to the country’s lack of an effective app discovery mechanism. Google Play is not allowed in China, so the Chinese Android market lacks a standard app store, making it difficult for new developers to get their apps noticed.

If developers accept WeChat as a platform, they can more easily publish their services and gain attention, while also making WeChat more functional.

China's secret weapon: a killer app

"The difference between a single app and a comprehensive app integration is not just about the user experience, but also about the different cultures rooted in the killer app," said Eric Sun, a strategist at Frog's Shanghai office.

In China, the killer app is undoubtedly WeChat. The app is able to hijack BBSs (WeChat public accounts), accept complex designs, and eventually completely transform them into new companies. An app is not shy about doing a thousand things.

Eric predicts that Facebook Messenger may add additional features in the future in the same way as WeChat, and will not only be a chat application, but will also be able to link portals and services together.

It seems that Facebook has already started doing this. At the end of last month, Facebook and Uber reached a cooperation, allowing Messenger users to call Uber services directly through the chat application. This may be the beginning of the competition between Facebook and WeChat.

If you open Facebook Messenger this time next year, order a coffee, video chat with a friend, and play a game, you will be able to do it all without leaving the app.