So Ramotion made this post quite a while back (May 6, 2019) and it had stirred up a conversation in our workplace.
Ramotion asked this:
Hey, folks. Here is a question for you: why all new messages appear at the bottom of the screen in all messaging apps, while recent chats show up at the top of the screen? (e.g. iMessage, Viber, WhatsApp, etc.)
They made a presumption that having both recent chats and conversations/chatrooms at the bottom of the screen could improve the user experience on large devices and showcased a prototype based on that.
I mean that’s a perfectly good presumption. Why don’t we have both new messages and the recent chats show up at the bottom? Why should the new messages appear at the bottom while the recent chats appear at the top?
Now, this is by no means a solid theory on why messaging apps are designed that way. But I do think it is a possible explanation.
Everything goes back to the desk-top
All digital products have their interface based on real interactions. We have folders on the desktop to organize our files because that’s how we organize our files in real life.
It helps to think of chat systems in the same way. Imagine you have a card for each person that you have a conversation with. And each card is expandable to reveal the conversation with that person. Let’s take an A4 paper for our example here. Our characters will be Tyrion, Oberyn, Jamie and Cersei (from Game of Thrones, just to add some fun). I’m pretending to be Bran. No spoilers, promise.
Now I get a message from Tyrion first. If this is the only conversation that I’m having, that note stays on the top of the table. Let’s say my table is small and I’ve been too lazy to organize. What happens when Oberyn sends me a note?
Since Oberyn’s note is now my focus, I would naturally lay this conversation on top of the one I had with Tyrion. Following this pattern, each new conversation would appear on a new page, with the most recent one appearing as a note on the top of the stack.
It explains why the same happens in most chat applications. You see the recent chats on top.
This also applies to other applications where the items are sorted on the basis of time of creation or arrival — email inboxes display the same way, with the top ones always the most recent. Makes sense, I would have my latest mail on top of everything on the mail stack.
Okay, but why are the recent messages at the bottom?
This one, too, goes down to human behavior. We’re trained to write from the top-down and left-to-right in most languages. If I were to open that card from Tyrion up, his message saying “Care for some wine? It’s the best one from Dorne.” would be written at the top of the page. Assuming we’re passing the same card back and forth, I would write “No, that’s not the best one in Dorne, That wine merchant tricked you.” directly below Tyrion’s message. Any additional messages from Tyrion or me would be written vertically below. This puts the oldest one at the top and the newest messages at the bottom.
But digital screens and papers interactions are different, aren’t they?
Are they really? As I already mentioned, all UI interactions are modeled after real-life interactions. Folders, tabs, emails, messages, transactions and so on. Name a product, service or a feature — quite possibly there’s always a real-life concept or interaction they were modeled after.
Sure, there are additional parameters when designing the application that aim to make the chat experience better. The new messages show up at the bottom because when the user opens up the keyboard to reply, it appears above the newest message that gives the user context shows up directly above the keyboard.
This is easier in comparison to the other option where the user’s eye would have to all the top of the screen and back to the keyboard which always sits at the bottom.
The Verdict
Ramotion’s prototype could work in theory, as it puts that frequently tapped component to a safe space even on larger screens but at the cost of including a steep learning curve for the users as they’re all accustomed to the current style.
So yeah, that’s my view on this. Do you agree with the analogy? I’d love to hear what you guys have to say about Ramotion’s concept and why ‘Recent Chats ‘and ‘Message’ screens are designed the way they are.
