Read Receipts in Instant Messenger

There are some instant messenger applications have read receipts. However, lots of users complain about this feature because this is causing so many concerns and troubles in their user experience.

"read" is shown with the time of the receiver reading the message

The read receipts feature shows the time of the user reading messages to the people who chat with the user. As a user of the Facebook messenger app, I think the time of reading messages is something private and I am not willing to be known by other people. And the worst thing is, in Facebook's messenger app, this feature cannot be turned off.

This feature makes chatting online more similar to chatting in reality but it is a worse experience online than in reality. It is more similar because in conversation in reality, people acknowledge when other people receive their information. However, with this feature, knowing the time the receiver read the message is the only thing they have and things such as receiver's facial expression and reaction are missing, which could cause a huge misunderstanding between sender and receiver.

For a designer of an application, it is important to do research on what users really need before building anything. The designers of the read receipts in instant messenger obviously didn't do research on users' needs because there are lots of complaints from users, and even questions such as "Why? Why on earth would you voluntarily use Apple's read receipts?". Designers built this feature just because they want to. At the same time, when there is a new feature, leave the users a choice of not using the feature to test how users feel about it and it can also prevent users eventually choosing other apps over this one only because they do not like the new feature.

Citation:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/08/turn-off-your-read-receipts-now-a-plea.html?mid=twitter_nymag

Designing for General Population

Tow months ago, I purchased the game "tomb raider". I have never play the "tomb raider" series and hardly ever played any puzzle game. I put lots of expectation since it is quite famous and some comments online saying how great the graphic it has.

As I began, everything was good, until I got stuck in a level. In the game, there is always one hint for the next performance which is very helpful. However, some of the hints are too implicit and it is a goal rather than a hint that tells what the next action should be. I spent about 20 minutes on it and still couldn't figure out what to do and there is no option to skip the level, so I gave up.

This game only has one storyline and players have to follow what it tells them to do. Compare this game to Grand Theft Auto 5 which has one major storyline and some minor ones. In GTA's main storyline, if a player fails a level for couple times, there is an option that the play may skip this level. I really like this feature and I play most of the levels in GTA and still continuing. This option helps when I get frustrated for failing a one level couple times and it doesn't affect my understanding of the story since I have gone through most of it in the failures.

The designer of Tomb Raider may not consider enough for general population. The game experience for the game designer and players are different. The difficulty of a game to designer could be a lot less than players. Some players may enjoy solving the puzzle in this game, but I am not so into puzzle and more interested in adventure. Most importantly, the frustration of keeping failing a level in a game lowers the game experience a lot.

The designer of GTA did a much better job on designing a product for general population than the designer of Tomb Raider who creates a game for a more specific group. Designer of Tomb Raider could have been more considerate to general population rather than considering only for fans of the Tomb Raider series and puzzle games. Small things like "skip" option really affects user experience in a great extend.

Bibliography:

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4nJTmovrRAhWJ5oMKHSgUCwIQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRt_wruj1PfA&psig=AFQjCNGntfQBjHl6Gw1V29vPMk2A6pAaMw&ust=1486428983468038

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj1jt7Bo_rRAhVJ5YMKHXBlA7wQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgearnuke.com%2Frise-tomb-raider-xbox-one-vs-xbox-360-direct-feed-screenshots-comparison-worth-upgrade%2F&psig=AFQjCNH5snB31VlM_9aMf4YPt3vabZDhUg&ust=1486429494235676