Thursday, bsxtn gave you an introduction to the Cyanogen Design team. Today, they would like to present their vision for a Messaging app redesign, and want your opinion on the direction.
We want to build a refresh of the Messaging app which will be included in the CyanogenMod project. The Messaging app will handle SMS, MMS, and Group messages, while providing integration to a relaunched WhisperPush Service. Optionally, Cyanogen OS users will be able to use the TrueCaller integration to view caller ID information and block spammers.
Background: In November, we conducted a survey of our users on Google+ and Facebook. Of our CyanogenMod users, 66% reported sending at least one SMS message per day. Moreover, SalesForce via a commissioned study, reported that 90% of users in the US sent at least one SMS message per day. In the same Cyanogen Messaging Survey, 32% of our users reported using either the stock messaging app and 60% reported using Google Hangouts. In addition, “having a fun and fresh design” was listed by 41% of respondents as being the most important feature in an SMS app. The second most asked for feature was being able to text across platforms at 24% of users reporting.
Messaging is obviously an important part of the smartphone experience. Our current Messaging solution is looking dated with many community members stating that it looks like “KitKat with a FAB”. Moreover, with devices averaging 5.5 inches many operations are incorrectly placed on the screen. For example, the attachment entry point is at the top of the screen.
The first version of the Messaging redesign project will focus on building the base for the app so that later features can easily be added to it. For this reason, we will implement redesigns in 1) Messaging Conversation List, 2) Messaging Detail View, 3) Message Compose, and 4) Messaging Settings.
Once the first version is complete we will begin to focus on feature additions including 1) Attachment keyboard with mini-camera, mini-gallery, and mini-voice recorder in Message Compose, 2) Inline attachment previews in the Message Conversation List, 3) In-message media player for attachments (video, audio) in the Message Detail View, and 4) Swipe to delete in Message Conversation List. We are sharing these designs with the community in hopes that someone may want to pick up this week to see these features faster than we can build them.
Below are screen mocks for the first and second phases of the Messaging redesign. We welcome your feedback and look forward to having a productive conversation.
Please feel free to comment with any questions or concerns that you may have.
Edit: Getting reports of images being weird on mobile devices – if this includes you please see the alternative Gallery:
V1 – Message Conversation List
V1 – Message Detail View
V1 – Message Compose View
V2 – Attachment keyboard with mini-camera, mini-gallery, and mini-voice recorder in Message Compose
V2- Inline attachment previews in the Message Conversation List
V2- In-message media player for attachments (video, audio) in the Message Detail View
V2 -Swipe to delete in Message Conversation List
