Understanding User Experience with WhatsApp and WhatsApp Penetration in the developed and Developing World Author: Hope Chidziwisano (Michigan State University) email:
[email protected] [email protected] Phone Number: +15179400258 +254795620502 +265888592820
Abstract This paper focuses on understanding WhatsApp use in developing countries, in particular levels of penetration. Participant observations, preliminary interviews interviews as well final in depth interviews (recorded) were used as data collection tools on international students from various developing countries at Michigan State University. Human Computer Interaction (HCI) principles were used to explore problems users face when interacting with WhatsApp. Findings suggests that WhatsApp is widely used in developing nations than in developed countries however most users in developing countries find problems in using some tools the WhatsApp User Interface (UI) provides. WhatsApp UI as well as the phone calling functionality should be improved especially on the buttons for its outstanding future and continual usage.
Keywords Social media; Developing Countries; User Interface; Smartphones; Cheap
1.0
Introduction
Social media has become on of the most successful 21 st century technologies throughout the globe. The importance of social media has not left any single country and people are now living with it as if it was inherent in their lives. Among the 35.5% of the people who have smartphones world wide, over 80% have once used social media especially the young generation (Lenhart, 2010). One of the most popular social media applications is WhatsApp (Thakur, 2013). The emergence of WhatsApp has revolutionized the way people communicate with each other. With its existence in users’ phones they can now send messages to
different people including images, videos even documents at a very cheap price. Furthermore, with WhatsApp users are now able to make phone calls over voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) at a very cheap price (Church, 2013). This factor of communicating with other people in a cheaper way has contributed to it’s exponential growth especially in the developing world where people live on a dollar a day. As of today, WhatsApp has over 1 billion users world wide (Kharpal, 2016) as such I resolved to study this technology especially focusing on its user interface (UI) in order to establish problems users face as they are using WhatsApp. The study mainly aims at finding out whether the current WhatsApp UI gives user satisfaction as well as exploring why there are more WhatsApp users in developing countries than developed countries. The findings of the study, which were mainly based on the in depth interviews, would be very helpful in realizing and addressing problems WhatsApp users are currently facing. In HCI there are design principles which specifies that a good UI should have more visible functions (users should not keep wondering what to do next), provide feedback whether the action was successful or not, map the relationship between controls and their effects, have similar operations and use similar elements for achieving similar tasks (consistency) and provide a way of making users easily understand (affordance) how to use icons (Norman, 2002). The study will provide answers for HCI practitioners as to which areas are WhatsApp users still struggling with while using its UI. The study will also help Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) specialists in finding better ways of improving usability of WhatsApp in developing countries. I will first discuss the literature review in the following order: WhatsApp usage in developed and developing countries and benefits of using WhatsApp. Then I will discuss data collection methods I used in the following order: observations, preliminary interviews and final interviews. Thereafter, I will give a discussion of findings in the following structure: overview of participants, participants WhatsApp Background, participants user interface knowledge and why participants use WhatsApp. Finally, I will conclude the paper by focusing on main findings and projections of how WhatsApp should be modified for future use.
2.0 Literature Review 2.1 WhatsApp Usage in Developed and Developing Nations WhatsApp has now become the most popular technology for instant messaging (Ron, 2014). The number of users on WhatsApp has been increasing each and every day. As of today, WhatsApp community has grown to 1 billion users which is double more than it was two years ago (Kharpal, 2016).
The growth in number of users has been very substantial in developing countries especially those countries in Africa and Asia. For example, in India, by 2014 WhatsApp registered 70 million monthly number of active users on average. Prior to 2014, there were 60 million monthly active users on average which is 10 000 users less than 2014. A study has also shown that WhatsApp in India has double the number of its closest competitor, WeChat (Rai, 2014). In Africa, WhatsApp has history that it has helped to reduce the digital divide thereby improving socio-economic development in different areas of developing countries. For instance, recent research in South Africa indicates that the adoption of WhatsApp in the country has broken the vicious cycle of technological poverty (Shambare, 2014). Forbes has indicated that WhatsApp is the most favorite App in South Africa. WhatsApp has already achieved a ubiquitous status in South Africa and it is regarded as the primary replacement for SMS. It is the first mobile application users install in their smartphones in South Africa (Shapshak, 2015). In developed countries, there are mixed stories about WhatsApp’s popularity. In some developed countries, like Kenya and South Africa WhatsApp is popular while in other countries, like it is not popular. For instance, in the United States WhatsApp was not even known by many people until Facebook bought it. This is attributed to the fact that Americans had already started using other instant messaging applications way back before WhatsApp. The applications include Google Voice, Face time and Snapchat (Ho, 2014). These applications are however not popular in other countries which are just emerging in technological advancement. On the other hand, in countries like Germany people use WhatsApp almost everyday in their lives. By 2014, there were 30 million WhatsApp users in Germany of which most of them are young people. The young people in Germany prefers using WhatsApp than SMS (Nikola, 2014 ). This is contrary to the young people in the US where they rely mainly on Google Voice, Face Time and Snapchat. With this large number of users across the world, WhatsApp is one of the most important media application in the developing world. As such, I studied this application in order to establish problems users face as they are using it especially with their user interface. In so doing, better ways of improving the user interface would be found. This mainly targets users in the developing countries where the application is gaining much popularity. 2.2 Reasons Why People Use WhatsApp WhatsApp usage has grown exponentially through time due to a number of benefits it provides to it’s users. One of the most important reasons is that
WhatsApp is almost free in many countries across the globe. Though it was costing $0.99 per year in developed countries, WhatsApp has finally gone free forever (Moyo, 2016). All it requires is data to download and install it and it doesn’t cost much data once a person has started using it. This is very helpful especially in developing countries where the cost of Internet is very high. For instance, in Malawi 25MB of data cost $0.5 and it should be used within 30 days (Airtel, 2016). This amount seems little but it is huge in accumulation especially in a country where most people live on less than a dollar a day. As such WhatsApp has provided cheaper tool for instant messaging in developing countries. WhatsApp provides an easy way for collaborations with other people. This includes even when one wants to correspond with a group of people at once. The WhatsApp provides a functionality that allows users to easily create groups so that they can have discussions even though they are in different places. In addition to creating groups, WhatsApp allows users to send lightweight videos as well as images. For instance, WhatsApp was taken as a tool to enhance learning in Arabic Language Teaching Course. Aburezeq found that WhatsApp enhanced interaction in three ways as 71% of the participants reported that it enhances student-student interaction, 54% reported that it enhances student-content interaction and 42% of the participants stated that it enhances student-instructor interaction. They concluded that WhatsApp platform offers them a space for communicating, expressing ideas and exchanging information anytime and anywhere (Aburezeq, 2013). WhatsApp provide a novel platform for social support. Social support can be defined as a behavior that involves human interaction through which people express, perceive and receive emotional concern, instrumental help, or information (Dunkel-Schetter, 2009). Social support is the availability of family and friends who can provide psychological and material resources (Cohen, 1985). WhatsApp has the capability to fulfill all the three different types of social support namely emotional, instrumental and informational support where emotional support means empathy towards people we love, instrumental support addresses the transactional of goods and service and informational support focusses on the exchange of information regarding the environment and services (Aharony, 2016).
3.0 Site Description & Methods The study was done in three phases in Spartan Village. Spartan Village consist of apartments for graduate students at Michigan State University in Lansing Michigan, the United States. Most of the graduate students who live in Spartan Village are international students from Asia, Africa and South America. The data collection methods included observations, preliminary interviews and final interviews.
3.1 Observations The participant observation phase involved seeing the way different WhatsApp users interact with the social networking app. As the unknown observer, the author watched users while chatting with them. The main things which were being observed include background color of WhatsApp, how frequent users open WhatsApp when they are using their phones as well as whether they were having problems when using WhatsApp. It also helped in increasing the number of participants since this method was fast as it would not require in depth interviews and appointment. This phase also included asking users informal questions like “you seem so busy with your phone?”, in order to find out whether the user is on WhatsApp or not. If the user replied that he/she is on WhatsApp, then the observer would follow up on how the person is using WhatsApp. The observer then took field notes after chatting regarding the way users interacted with WhatsApp. This was done after chatting for the sake of keeping the observations hidden. The researcher wanted to establish how frequent people interact with WhatsApp without their knowledge that they were being studied. 3.2 Preliminary Face to Face Interviews The preliminary interviews involved three participants. All the participants are graduate students from Michigan State University. One of the participants is a citizen of the United States while the other two are international students from China and Nigeria. The preliminary interviews enlightened me in understanding of the trend of WhatsApp usage in different countries. It also provided an overview of different problems WhatsApp users face while interacting with the user interface. This shaped the course of the study in the way final interviews were carried out. The preliminary interviews helped in choosing the purposive sampling method for the final interviews. This is because from the preliminary interviews, field notes indicated that WhatsApp is not widely used in the United States. And so it was meaningful to incorporate more participants from other countries other than the United States in order to thoroughly establish problems users face while using WhatsApp. Additionally, the preliminary interviews also provided a better way of reshaping the questionnaire to be used for the final interviews. 3.3 Final Interviews and Recordings
There were four participants in the final interviews. The author interviewed participants from different countries in order to ensure that the data collected is representative for a larger population. Diversity of the participants could be used to trace whether WhatsApp users from different countries find the user interface friendly. Diversity in the participants also helped to find out level of WhatsApp usage in different countries. Each interview took about 30 minutes to complete. All the final interviews were recorded and then transcribed word by word. The transcriptions from audio recording were then coded (making sense of data) using Microsoft word commenting tools. Thereafter the codes were grouped in categories with respect to information which had the same context. These categories were then used to write short memos which were then integrated together in writing the findings of this paper. The findings also include triangulation (analyzing data from different perspectives) of field notes from observation and preliminary interviews.
4.0 Analysis & Findings I will now focus on analysis and findings in this order: First I will discuss overview of participants followed by their WhatsApp background. Then I will discuss participant knowledge with the UI. This will mainly include colors, buttons and menus in WhatsApp UI. Finally, I will discuss user experience with phone calling on WhatsApp. 4.1 Overview of Participants The findings in this study mainly comes from four participants of which two are males and two are female. Three of the participants are international graduate students at Michigan State University (MSU). One of the participants is an international scholar at MSU. All the participants were less than 40 years old: two were in their 30’s and the other two were in their 20’s. The participants come from Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Malawi and Rwanda. The participants had a variety of different smartphones. Two had Samsung phone, one had HTC phone and the other Motorola phone. All these phones use Android operating system and are much affordable than iPhones. This suggests why in developing countries number of WhatsApp users is increasing. It is because people can afford cheap Android phones where WhatsApp is installable (McMillan, 2014). 4.2 Participants WhatsApp Background I will now present WhatsApp background of the participants based on
observations, preliminary interviews and the in depth interviews. The findings in this study suggests that WhatsApp has been used widely in different countries around the world like Papua New Guinea. The findings also suggest that most people have continuously used WhatsApp since the first time they installed WhatsApp. From observations, I noted that most of the participants are able to do basic tasks – like sending a message, changing profile picture, changing status as well as calling using WhatsApp – on WhatsApp without any problem. This suggest that the participants observed had used WhatsApp for some time as such they had a good experience with it. Three of the participants had an amazing first experience with WhatsApp however they do not hide the fact that it was difficult to use the application. One of the participants describe the first moment as funny, since she didn’t know how to install WhatsApp on the phone. After a week she got used on how it works and could do most of the things without seeking help. Another participant indicated that she is a dinosaur in technology so she did not know about WhatsApp until her sister told her about WhatsApp. This suggest users have a problem in knowing some of the functionality in WhatsApp however they get to know where to get what as time goes using the application. One of the participants expressed that she did not even know where to find the button for blocking contacts the first time she used WhatsApp and yet later she figured it out. In both preliminary and final interviews, 100% of the participants were by then using WhatsApp in their smartphones. In the final interviews, two of the participants had used WhatsApp for one year, the other two had used WhatsApp for 3 and 4 years. One of the participants had up to 100 contacts on his WhatsApp but after moving to the United states from his home country he remained with only 25 contacts. Another participant had 45 contacts while the other one had 10 contacts. The last participant had family members and few close friends on her contacts. This suggests that the participants had used WhatsApp for a long time that they should easily be familiar with WhatsApp user interface. All the participants do not text all of the people on their contacts. Basically most of the participants talk to those friends who they discuss with academic issues. This suggests that WhatsApp is used when there is a need to communicate with someone. This is to say that WhatsApp users do not communicate with all the people on their contact list for different reasons. For instance, one indicated that: “Basically those people I do not talk with do not have full access to the internet like here which is very free. Yah so that’s why, but whenever they get on the Internet I usually speak with them. But another problem we also have time differences so when they are available I am not, so yah.”
This suggests that Internet access is one of the reasons why WhatsApp users do not talk to all of the people on their contact list. In some areas people have WhatsApp installed in their phones but due to poor Internet connectivity they do not utilize it fully. 4.3 Participant User Interface Knowledge I will now focus on the findings regarding participant knowledge with WhatsApp User Interface. The user Interface is defined as a computer program designed to allow a computer user to interact easily with the computer typically by making choices from menus or groups of icons (Webster, 2016). WhatsApp as a modern mobile application software has different menus and buttons that allows users to interact with its functionalities thereby achieving their goals. Mainly I will focus on user experience with WhatsApp colors and menu button.
4.3.1 Colors The current default version of WhatsApp has two colors: green header and a white body which has been divided into a list of chats with the people one previously texted with (BrandColors, 2016). Choice of colors for social media matters a lot for users because they sway attitudes and emotions. Research has shown that 85% of people who purchase software put color into consideration before buying a software (Kissmetrics, 2016). All the participants liked the green color on WhatsApp’s header for the reasons that it is neutral, it is not too vibrant or too dim and it puts one in the mood. One but all did not like the mixture between green color and white color and she ended up changing the white background to another one of her preference. This is one good functionality WhatsApp has provided to it’s users: one can customize the background color of WhatsApp to what they want. WhatsApp users can even choose their own images to change the default background color. However, among the four participants only one knew how to customize the background color. The other participants indicated that they do not know which buttons to click in order to customize the background color.
4.3.2 Menus and Buttons I also wanted to find out whether WhatsApp users are able to navigate through different sections by using menus and buttons. WhatsApp has a main menu – located in its header, which helps users to navigate through calls, chats and contacts. The main menu has also a search bar embedded in it and on the right side of the menu is the three-dot drop down menu. The drop down menu has five buttons: New group, New broadcast, WhatsApp Web, Status and broadcast.
Clicking on these buttons allows one to navigate to other buttons (Kim, 2011). All the participants were able to navigate through calls, chats and contacts. This suggest that the users were able to make calls and send messages. In the main menu the participants had problems utilizing the search button so that they can find contacts faster. Out of the four participants only one knew how to search for contacts using the search button. The others indicated that they didn’t even know that there is a search button on the main menu. When I showed it to some of the participants, they said that they thought it is only an image embedded in the header. This suggest that representing buttons using symbols may confuse users who are not familiar with those symbols. On the three dot drop down menu all the participants had problems realizing that there were other buttons hidden behind the three dot menu. One of the participants said: “No I had to explore to know what is there. Actually I had to ask someone how to use it. I didn’t know how to find the privacy button hidden behind the three dots. That’s when it was so hard, I couldn’t just guess. It is different from other software like for example in my phone calls list, I know clearly that is about settings and the like but not with that button on WhatsApp”.
This suggests that it is difficult for WhatsApp users to find the settings button. This is because to most WhatsApp users, the three dots do not have any meaning. The users do not have to bang their heads in order to realize that the three dots represent a list of buttons behind the drop down button. The settings button is one of the most important buttons hence it should be exposed so that users do not have problems finding it. Findings regarding the settings button suggested that most of the participants had little knowledge using the settings button. As all participants realized about the drop down menu late (it took over a year for the three participants to realize that there are other buttons hidden behind the three dots) it was difficult for the to use the menu button since its one of the buttons in the three dots drop down menu. Following this, the participants disclosed that previously they did not know how to do some tasks as shown in Appendix C. The table indicates that a year ago the participants had little knowledge about the functionalities in the settings button. However, the buttons which are behind the settings button are very important for users as they give them full control over their accounts. Though a year later as the table suggests, most users were able to change their profile picture, status as well as last seen (When was the user last seen on WhatsApp), the table suggests that up to date users are still struggling to
use privacy and help buttons. 4.4 Phone Calling on WhatsApp All the participants valued phone calling as one of the reasons why they use WhatsApp. Findings suggest that calling using WhatsApp is affordable however participants worried about the problems with network. All participants indicated that sometimes when they are on call using WhatsApp, the conversation is replaced with a dialing tone and this happens regularly. One participant also suggested that it would be great if WhatsApp also included a feature for emergency calling. This suggest that users are frustrated with the quality of phone calling service on WhatsApp as such an improve on the network part would provide user satisfaction.
5.0 Conclusion The study is very important in enhancing WhatsApp as a way of communication through phone calling as well as messaging. The findings suggest that WhatsApp is widely used across the globe especially in the developing world. However, for an outstanding future and continual usage, WhatsApp should improve some areas on its UI especially on buttons. It is important that buttons are changed in such a way that users can easily notice their use. For instance, instead of only using icons that are difficult to understand – like the three dots and the search icon – I would suggest adding more indications that would communicate to the users that there are more buttons behind those icons. Findings also suggested that WhatsApp users frequently take advantage of its free calling service though the quality of the phone calls is not very good compared to other services like Skype and Facebook. I would recommend that WhatsApp engineers should work hand in hand with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the developing world to improve the quality of network (Facebook has already embarked on this as such WhatsApp should take advantage of it (Arce, 2015)). Finally, WhatsApp is more appealing to people in the developing world and most people in this side of the world have feature phones hence finding better ways of integrating WhatsApp in feature phones would be a huge step ahead. Bibliography Aburezeq, I. (2013). The Impact of WhatsApp on Interaction in an Arabic Language Teaching Course. International Journal of Arts & Sciences. Aharony, N. (2016). The importance of the Whatsapp family group: an exploratory analysis. Aslib Journal of Information Management. Airtel. (2016, 4 4). Tarrif Plans. Retrieved 4 23, 2016, from Airtel: http://africa.airtel.com/wps/wcm/connect/africarevamp/malawi/home/personal/inte rnet/3g/tariff-plans
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