From QQ at the beginning of the Internet to wechat, the national software, IM products have been playing an unattainable role in our life, so an IM product, what are some of its design points? In recent years, I have been engaged in intelligent customer service. In the process, I also participated in the functional design of some IM products. Here I will briefly talk about my thoughts on IM product design.

IM stands for Instant Message. IM is an important communication tool, we can feel a lot of products in daily life, wechat, QQ, Taobao Wangwang and so on.

From the role of IM products, the most authentic function is to solve instant communication among people: send messages, receive messages. With the development of communication technology, the message in sending and receiving messages has also changed. At the beginning, the bandwidth of network communication is very small. Through the telephone network and dial-up Internet access, the bandwidth can only be calculated according to byte and kbyte, and the message that can be sent is text. The types of messages that can be sent have become diversified, including expressions, pictures, texts, voice, video, red packets, voice calls, multi-party voice, video, multi-party video, etc., and the functions of IM products themselves have become complicated.

Let me structure IM product features from a personal perspective

1. Deconstruction of basic functions

1.1 Registration and Login

As an Internet product, it must have an account system. Through the account system, we can complete our identity identification and identity memory on the Internet. The identity here is our account in the product, such as QQ number, Wechat signal, Ali Wangwang account, etc.

Account access through registration, fill out our information, memory, complete identity system is a unique identification number assigned to us, the identification number as id number, in life is our id card in the network, especially in recent years popular social account cross-platform certification, so that the identification number is more like a id card.

1.2 Adding a Friend

This function is actually a very core function in IM products, because an IM user, if only he or she, is actually unable to complete instant communication, point-to-point first needs two points, and a person only has one point, how can form point-to-point communication, that is, add friends.

In fact, the function of adding friends is relatively simple in implementation, that is, you first know a person’s account, then enter this account, initiate the application of adding friends, wait for the other party’s approval, and then you become friends, and then you can start chatting.

1.3 Friend Discovery

As IM users, we are all familiar with the ability to add friends in IM products, but we have overlooked another important and often overlooked feature: friend discovery.

1.3.1 Why is friend discovery important?

Because the account in IM products is a virtual ID, there are several problems to be solved first

  1. How do we know someone’s ID to chat with?
  2. Why would I want to friend anyone else?
  3. What are the IM accounts of people I know in the real world?
  4. Can I add a stranger
  5. Can you find people with similar interests outside of your life?
  6. .

Only when these problems are solved can we enter the real instant chat. If these problems are not solved properly, there will be no users for our products. Without users, there will be no friends.

1.3.2 Why is this feature easily overlooked

The friend discovery feature, in particular, doesn’t work as it should, or even as it should.

In real life, the friend discovery function is reflected in a variety of situations:

  1. Class, grade, college, alumni formed because of classmate relations
  2. A circle of friends formed by friendship
  3. Factories, units, companies, studios formed because of work relations
  4. A family circle formed by blood ties
  5. Because of some random, serendipitous stranger
  6. .

It can be found that there are many social situations in real life. As a simulation of social scenes in real life, IM products also need to consider how to complete the mapping of the above scenes and realize various functions of friend discovery.

Take wechat, a social product we are familiar with, for example:

  • QQ Friends import

  • Mobile phone record import

  • The man near the

  • shake

  • radar

  • Drift bottle

  • B:

  • alumni

  • circle

From this we can obviously feel the shadow of friend discovery, maybe the first and the second, the rest are all in a variety of interesting, fun, practical situation to reflect the friend discovery, so as to help us complete adding friends, and finally reach instant chat.

Nowadays, the main highlight of various C-terminal IM products is the friend discovery function, such as soul design, stranger social interaction, music social interaction with common interests, etc., which shows the importance of friend discovery function for social products.

In recent years, QQ has developed functions aimed at Generation Z, such as warm talk and inclusion, to meet the needs of friend discovery for this specific user group.

1.4 Sending and Receiving Messages

After solving the problem of friends, enter the chat link, IM products need to solve the problem mainly have several points: send messages, receive messages, offline messages, withdraw, forward.

1.4.1 message

The changes of message types follow the changes of communication technology. With the arrival of 1G to 5G, the types of messages have also increased from text to expression, picture, text, voice, video, red envelope, voice call, multi-party voice call, video call, multi-party video call, etc.

Because of the variety change, the product needs to support more and more complex functions, scenarios will also be more and more.

If the text, not too many dots, is the most basic function.

For pictures and videos, you need to consider how to call the camera, how to call the album, whether you can send more than one, how to transfer, how to preview, and whether the text can be mixed.

When it comes to voice messages, consider how long they can be sent, how to send them, how to sample them, how to escort them, and how to cancel them.

Red envelope is also a kind of message, is a kind of special message should be used by the people, this is the mobile payment ability after the interaction scene, which involves more content.

Voice call and video call are a qualitative change in the instant level of IM products, which really realize the functions that operators have been proposing but have not realized and promoted. Make it audible, make it real.

1.4.2 to receive message

The function of receiving messages is the key to reflect the instantness of messages. When friends send messages, we can receive reminders and see messages in the first time.

  • The other party is typing

There is also an interesting feature, chat status notification, that we are familiar with: the other party is typing. This feature first appeared in 1999 in Microsoft’s MSN Messenger version 1.0.

However, this seemingly simple function consumes network resources very much. At the beginning of this function, network communication was still very expensive, and 90% of the communication was used to complete this status alert.

  • Have read unread

Another interesting feature of the receive message function is unread and read.

Why is this an interesting feature?

Because this function is more of a consideration of human nature, in the domestic APP, I was the first to see in Ali Wangwang, and then in the nail spread out, and then the enterprise wechat also appeared this function.

This function actually chat on both sides is oppressive, read the implication is that you have seen my hair of the news, it’s time for a reply message to you, then can change the checking news is oppressive, because has not read unread function before we have reason to say, I didn’t see your message, and now, once you see the message, The status of the message immediately changes to read, and the reason for avoiding becomes untenable.

It can be seen that wechat does not have this function, and the products with this function, its applicable scenarios are more biased to work needs, such as Nails and enterprise wechat, and Ali Wangwang is biased to business, buyers and sellers, the two sides of the communication have urgent needs to know whether the message is seen.

1.4.3 Offline Message

The logic of offline messaging is that instead of communicating instantly, we can leave messages for each other and relay them when they come online.

Reminder of the number of messages

A function similar to the offline message function is the reminder of the number of messages. Before, many people said on the Internet that they have obsessive-compulsive disorder, they must click all the numbers or red dots in the software such as wechat and Weibo before it ends.

The numbers and red dots mentioned here are actually reminders of the number of messages. Common practices are as follows:

  • If someone sends us a message, the IM client will send the message to us as a message notification in the system.

  • It also displays a message comb on the head of the sender, showing the number of unread messages throughout the client.

Clicking off the number mentioned above is to go to the client and click on the session with unread messages to turn unread into read.

Such a reminder ensures the message delivery rate and read rate, and improves the efficiency of users to look up messages, but at the same time, it virtually gives users a sense of tension, curiosity and pressure.

1.4.4 withdraw

And the difference of computers is that people will continue to make mistakes, such as hair message hair the wrong person, typo, by accident, when sending a message to also will encounter all sorts of problems, therefore, withdraw function arises at the historic moment, if now IM products without a withdrawal function, will bring people chat oppressive feeling I can’t make a mistake.

An interesting point is that the withdrawal of wechat has a time limit, while the withdrawal of Dingpin has no time limit.

Wechat is more inclined to social contact with acquaintances, while Dingding is more in business and work situations, and needs to be more cautious in words and deeds, so it provides a more convenient error correction function in chat.

1.4.5 forward

The forwarding of messages, similar to our real life messaging, transmits one person’s words to another person, either one’s own or someone else’s.

Now IM products, the message forwarding function is strengthened to one time, can forward multiple conversations, retain the context of the conversation, so that the people who receive the message can see more clearly.

1.4.6 Historical Records

This function is neither important nor important, because chat records carry people’s mental process in the past, growth memories and so on, and also retain many important moments of memory.

So far, the chat record has done well, and it should be nailing, with messages kept entirely in the cloud and synchronized from multiple sources.

While QQ chat records have been recorded in the way of local database, cloud synchronization and multi-terminal synchronization functions have various limitations, the first for charging function, later time limit, at the same time with the iteration of its version, the record format of local database also appeared incompatible problems.

Wechat chat records have been clearly stated from the very beginning that they are not kept in the cloud and cannot be synchronized from multiple terminals. They are all stored in the local database.

Second, enhanced functions

After talking about the basic functions, then I will analyze the enhanced functions of IM products. If these functions are not available, THE functions of IM products can also be exactly right. But if YOU want IM products to develop better, you need various functions to expand the connection between people, increase the number of people interacting with each other, and create more opportunities for interaction.

2.1 Personal expression: Space, circle of friends

This is a typical function of social products, providing a stage for users to express themselves. Before the emergence of wechat, QQ space was the most popular blog website at that time. QQ users would post personal views, blog, post long articles, and provide comments, likes and forwarding functions. At the same time, these status information can be timely notified to the QQ client, and constantly create opportunities and scenes for human interaction.

Many functions of today’s microblog are very similar to those of QQ Space at that time.

After wechat came out, it brought another social place on the Internet: circle of friends, which shows one’s life and work by way of pictures and text, and provides the function of “like” and “comment”. In an acquaintance social network, this approach brings more user engagement and creates more interactive plans and topics.

2.2 Multi-point communication: groups and discussion groups

This function can be understood as the online expression of situations such as group discussion and temporary meeting in real life, which solves the problem of multi-point communication and multi-person information synchronization.

In the beginning, QQ only had groups, and there were many restrictions. Groups could only be created after reaching a certain level. Later, discussion groups appeared, allowing several people to communicate more in the same group.

2.3 Virtual Body Language: emojis

One of the reasons for QQ’s longevity is its rich emoticons. Through the built-in emoticons and the rich and convenient homemade emoticons, QQ can not only chat with simple text, pictures, voice and video, but also carry more facial expressions and body language before the language.

Emoticons are more popular among young people. One of the reasons I understand is that emoticons make up for the lack of tone, intonation, facial expressions, body parts and other essential parts of real communication that cannot be communicated face-to-face online.

Also because of the emojis, it stimulates the interest and vitality of interaction.

2.4 Bring the atmosphere of the special day: red envelopes

In China, it is traditional to give red envelopes to friends and relatives on special occasions such as Spring Festival, birthdays and anniversaries, and the idea of giving red envelopes was born from the fact that in Guangdong province, where Tencent is based, it is customary for company bosses to give bonuses to employees on their first day at work after the Spring Festival. Based on the abstraction and mapping of real life, the red envelope function emerged as a special function of IM products.

The appearance of red envelopes paved the way for Tencent’s wechat Pay, which quickly grabbed the market share of mobile payments.

Now the red envelope function, has appeared a variety of variations: directional red envelope, random red envelope, group red envelope and so on.

The core element here is to push people to rely more on IM and interact with IT.

2.5 We media expression venue: official account

Wechat’s public account is intended to help the company better reach users and establish an online portal based on social networking. It has never been expected to become the first position of “we media”.

Now social software, after a certain size, will consider building functions and products similar to the public account. No matter how misaligned understanding and use, public accounts in a large part of IM products enhance the viscosity, increase the reason and motivation to open IM.

2.6 Enterprise Service Tools: applets

Since WeChat appear small programs, now small program has been a standard feature in the social product, its purpose is to facilitate the B2C scenarios of enterprise services can be more convenient contact with target users, at the same time also can not add user installed APP, in the maintenance of the private domain provides more convenient traffic, more complete service closed loop.

Through IM, public account, small program, enterprise IM, can indeed form a complete service link of C2C, B2C, C2B, B2B.

The above is my understanding and thinking of IM product functions. There are still deficiencies in many places, which can be corrected through messages, wechat and other ways to discuss together.