Design a pinning feature in a chat app such as WhatsApp.
- Anushka Garg
Objective or Goal of the feature: To help users pin a chat in a Chat App/messenger such that it is the first chat that appears in the conversation threads (irrespective of the recency)
You can pin conversations with — a) individual contacts, and b) groups
User need: A user who has several chats going on during a day finds it time consuming to navigate through conversation threads. The importance of a conversation thread can be based on: a) frequency of use, and b) importance of conversations/contact (eg: family, emergency contacts, boss). Allowing
Solution Flow:
User selects a message through a long press –> selects to pin the thread.
Since the intent to pin can be either: freq of use or importance of the contact, user should be asked about the duration for which she would like to pin (8 hrs, 1 week, 1 year).
Introducing the feature to the user: If a particular chat is being actively opened by the user multiple times in a day, suggest they can pin the threads now. Can pin upto 3 threads/contacts.
Unpinning: long press/left swipe to unpin; then ranks based on recency
Metrics to measure:
No of pinning used/user per month and associated time period selected (to understand what type of usecase the feature is being used for)

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