Understanding User Experience with WhatsApp and WhatsApp

Penetration in the developed and Developing World

Author: Hope Chidziwisano
(Michigan State University)
email: chidziwi@msu.edu
hchidzi@gmail.com
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 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 21st 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 its
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 WhatsApps 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 its 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
doesnt 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 30s and the other two were in their 20s. 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 didnt 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 thats 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 WhatsApps 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 its 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 didnt 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 didnt know how to find the privacy button hidden behind the
three dots. Thats when it was so hard, I couldnt 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.
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