Week 3 post - Rich user experience

WHY RICH USER EXPERIENCE

The concept of ‘rich user experience’ is involved in building a successful Web 2.0 platform mainly because it’s users who play an important role and countless great desktop applications are already there as well. If there’re few good to explore online, what’s the fun? For this week, I’m going to introduce another influential Web 2.0 platform in China which is WeChat to illustrate how it fosters a fantastic user experience.

WHY WECHAT

Since Blog took root in China from 2005, then four years later Weibo(MicroBlog) was born

and soon took it over, now core Web 2.0 services have evolved to cross-platform WeChat based on private relationship networks. With expected features kept up to date and progressive implementation matched to the latest requirement, in first two years people signing in have grown up to 600 million. Basically WeChat successfully embedded a lot to give user convenience and impression and what’s more than that, business profits(which is the current trend).

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

1) Combine the best of smartphone & online experiences

On the one hand, you can use type-in or voice chat with your friends just as a normal mobile; on the other hand, WeChat creates a specific function under the ‘Discovery’ section called ‘Moments’ allowing users to share pics, songs, articles even the ranking list of a new game. So it’s like a personal gallery and your friends are welcome to drop in. What’s good to do this is that if something is really gorgeous or controversial, everyone will get to know it in a short time.

Simply a user can both open a webpage in WeChat and vice versa, just like you take the best of the world home and show the best of you to the world. The future of user experience is to be unconscious of the distinction and that data to be accessed ubiquitously.

2) Match the technology usage to the requirements

As a good instance, here I’m about to talk more about ‘Discovery’. During the spring festival this year WeChat launched an online activity called ‘Hand out red packet’, which precisely met the needs of the majority. In this case, people don’t need to spend plenty of time preparing substantial red packets and thinking of their styles and the amount of money put in them. Instead, what people need to do is to simply transfer some change to their WeChat accounts or only wait for some lucky money that they’re given. Receive your money and do the same in return, and that’s how it works. Don’t look down upon this simple operation. It did help to save money via the social network effect and more importantly, bring unexpected fun because people came out with the idea to ‘earn extra’ in this way. With the support of new technology of online payment, no wonder it can set fire to such a wide range of interaction overnight.

3) Deep, adaptive personalization

We often scan through the comments on the post we’re keen on, but WeChat only let users see specific ones whose commentators are your friends. It’s a smart choice to do so when mostly people just don’t give an eye to the redundant comments, and it will be interesting if C someday notices that A comments on B’s post which you think they don’t have any relationship. In this way, an interconnected social network becomes much more likely to take shape.

 

SUM UP

There’s no doubt that WeChat has gained huge popularity in China and some Asian countries but it’s aiming for more. It has already begun to promote the platform via Facebook and Twitter. People from overseas are able to download it for free and multi-language versions are available as well. The question really is, how to push the product itself take in new users instead of occasional recommendation from one of your friends?

References:
Pic_1: http://thefusejoplin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/wechat2.jpg
Pic_2: https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wechat-hongbao.png?w=720
Pic_3: https://value2020.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/wechat-in-the-world-by-value2020-jan20132.jpg