WhatsApp stickers: a design story

At long last, stickers for WhatsApp has launched. I decided to put pen to paper and write a little bit about the design story behind stickers, as it’s a feature many people have waited quite awhile for.

A little background

For the past couple years at WhatsApp, the idea of stickers was a bit taboo. WhatsApp has always focused itself as a core utility, forgoing features that could conceivably be seen as mere gimmicks. And for a long time, stickers were perhaps seen as such. But over time, people have evolved the way they communicate from simple text to richer mediums like photos, videos, voice messages, and video calls. Supporting new mediums for communicating, provided they added real utility for people, has always been part of the WhatsApp product strategy.

Like always, it was a sunny day in California. Product manager Randall approached me quietly and casually asked if we should start a sticker project. A couple weeks previously I had shared with him an article about why stickers are becoming vital. Not surprisingly, he’d also thought for quite some time that stickers were a necessity to our product. So that’s how the project started.

Entry point

How do people seek out and find new features? How can we make it easy for people to use them? The design process was tough, right off the bat. Our product is by nature simple and intuitive — messing with that would not be accepted. At the same time, discoverability was crucial. Handfuls of designs came and went as I tried to straddle these two important factors. Stickers, by nature, are accompanied by flashy graphics. If user flow becomes complicated as a result, the screen can become jumbled. Even after several weeks, I couldn’t find a way to thread this stubborn needle. It seemed for a while that only my prototyping skills were improving, while problem solving lagging way behind. Not even coffee at this point could snap me back into focus. I went back to the drawing board. I asked myself,

why do we need stickers? How are they different from emojis?

And then, randomly, it occurred to me. The answer was so simple. The two aren’t so easily classified or divided; they are both simply “reactions”, used to establish flow in a conversation. Rather than divide the two, I decided to group them together in one tab. From there, the issues started to unravel themselves. Users can access the emoji keyboard to add reactions to the conversation, as they’ve always been able to do. From there, they can access a menu where they can choose from emojis, GIFs and stickers. GIFs and stickers are completely optional — if a user wants to use emojis exclusively, they don’t have to devote any time to learning the new feature. Users who are looking for more active reactions, however, can use the tab to easily send GIFs and stickers.

Emoji, GIF and Sticker are in the same depth. However, GIF and Sticker are completely optional.

Once we decided to go with this design, we sent it to a beta version of the app that included a bottom tab with GIFs we’d previously decided to include. On the recommendation of the engineering guru, we added an interaction feature that allows the user to see or block the tab, depending on how they scroll. This feature was added with the Android user in mind, whose screens are relatively smaller than other platforms. The reaction was great, users adopted the feature without hesitation.

Bottom tab is hiding depends on how user scrolls. This beta version was released in early 2018. GIFs from Giphy.

After grouping emojis, GIFs and stickers in the reaction category, the next step was comparatively easy. Just like emojis, users can scroll left to right through stickers. We also made it possible to browse more content vertically with seamless interaction.

Sticker store

From there we moved onto designing how users actually acquire stickers. It was important to get users to adopt a wide variety of stickers.

First, users are able to download stickers that friends send. This is super intuitive. You can tap on a sticker that’s been sent to you and see even more. And of course you can download them. This creates excellent flow. If stickers take off in a group, these users will find themselves in the sticker store, which adds incredible discoverability to other stickers as well.

Second, users can visit the sticker store through the keyboard. The + icon on the top right tab is the entry point. We had to do a few rounds of tests for this bit. We struggled with whether to place the ability to delete, update, or rearrange stickers in Settings, or to combine all of those actions in the store. Opinions were divided. After some testing, we went with the design that combines both options. It’s also been designed so the window can be closed in a simple swipe, so that the user is not overwhelmed by a menu overflowing with content.

Sticker Store. It’s also been designed so the window can be closed in a simple gesture, so that the user is not overwhelmed by a menu overflowing with content.

Third, it’s an open platform. WhatsApp users are spread across the globe. It’s impossible for us to know or predict the trends of places across the world as we sit at desks in California. So, we made the bold decision to share the sticker platform with the world. Artists and developers can share and distribute stickers on WhatsApp relatively easily using the template app and code — which is open to the public, of course. Here is a link to a detailed explanation. We hope to see artists and developers from countries all over the world!

More things

Because GIFs are quickly becoming as important a medium as stickers to our conversations, we also completely redesigned the GIF search panel. More so with GIFs, sending a timely reaction that nails the vibe of the conversation is inherent to their fun and value. We intentionally designed the search preview larger so that users could find their desired results more easily.

We intentionally designed the search preview larger so that users could find their desired results more easily. GIFs from Giphy.

And Cuppy

As the project progressed we needed test stickers. I thought it would be especially nice if there were a universal sticker that embodied our spirit. So, I took it on as a weekend side project, and eventually landed on ‘Cuppy.’ At first I tried to draw a cute pet, but I wasn’t sure that people from every country would find it endearing. In the end I decided to steer clear of animals or subjects that may be misunderstood depending on culture.

Cut to a Saturday afternoon — I’m sitting in front of my laptop, drinking an iced latte. I asked myself — is there something that everybody, regardless of country or creed, would enjoy? A bit of time passed, and I found the answer not so far away. Ha. The coffee I’m drinking right now! Or it could be tea! The two are basically everybody’s favorite things to consume. I took to the internet in search of research on coffee and tea. Ha. Nearly the entire population of the world enjoys either coffee or tea. That’s how Cuppy was born.

Cuppy was born from side project. We also have Salty and Komo stickers from our awesome team members.

To wrap up…

Simple. Secure. Reliable messaging is WhatsApp’s core product goal. That’s what we always keep in mind when we design products. Our sticker design successfully managed to leave this goal intact, and at the same time, make conversations smoother, more delightful and more meaningful.

I hope people will find a bit of happiness using this feature. And if you’re an artist? I hope you design some stickers that people all over the world will send and receive. They’ll laugh and cry and share and sympathize. Again, here is link for How to create stickers for WhatsApp

And just like the content from every WhatsApp conversation, Stickers are of course end-to-end encrypted.