No one would likely describe WhatsApp as a beautiful piece of mobile software – in fact most would probably say quite the opposite. But it doesn’t have to be that way, and one designer has taken it upon himself to envision what might be possible under Facebook, with a look at how the interface and user experience might be made better.
Konrad Ziemlewski of Entropii pretty much nails it when he notes that WhatsApp as it currently stands is “an app you ‘have’ to use rather than one you ‘want’ to,” which is to say that it’s a utility through and through, without much in the way of joy. The design of the app hasn’t changed much over the years and multiple iterations, even when iOS 7 reinvented the visual language of apps on Apple’s mobile OS.
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But Ziemlewski tackled not only the visual look of WhatsApp, but also the functionality, putting actions into slide menus that have previously been harder to find, and focusing on making it easier to find and browser rich media content, too. The design is one part Instagram, one part Facebook mobile, and one part Dribbble iOS 7 best practices mock-up, which results in an attractive package that’s unfortunately not likely to ever become a reality.
Why not, the optimistic among you may ask? Well, primarily because there’s no reason WhatsApp considers a drastic visual redesign important to its continued success. The current version helped it attain a $19 billion exit, as well as hundreds of millions of active users, so that’s not likely a priority for the mobile messaging service. The best we can hope for now is that Entropii sells this design to a would-be WhatsApp competitor and we can finally message in style.