cinch — app internal messaging
Assisting customers in completing pending tasks.
The problem
The hypothesis is that customers may overlook app actions, e.g., updating car details when their part-exchange quote expires. The team aimed to create a designated area for customers to review missed messages and pending actions to boost engagement with important app features and journeys.
Competitor review
I started exploring various apps that support internal messaging. While investigating, I discovered that most apps have a dedicated section for alerts, inbox messages, or notifications. I reviewed the following apps: Lidl, Waze, Aviva, Expedia, and Caha.
My objective was to analyse the different scenarios that could occur on each platform. For instance, I wanted to test the platform’s behaviour under different states, such as no messages, unread messages, removing a single message, removing all messages, and read messages. I relayed features of interest to my product owner for prioritisation using a MoSCoW grid to decide what would create the leanest version of a solution.
Naming the new feature
My product owner and I also discussed naming the area for internal messaging within the app. We considered a few terms:
- “Alerts” had negative connotations and sounded more like a warning.
- “Notifications” might be confusing and could be mistaken for push notifications.
- “Inbox (messages)” — the most suitable option
What messages?
My product owner and I categorised the main app features into MVP and MVP+ groups. Messages that didn’t have supporting push notifications were targeted for the leanest slice:
- Favourited car price reduction
- Favourited car unavailable
- Resume part-exchange quote builder
- Part-exchange quote expiring
- Part-exchange quote expired
- Shop cars on offer, e.g., Black Friday promotions
Low-fidelity wireframes
After determining the features and messages for the app’s inbox, I created low-fidelity wireframes. One of the design considerations was organising unread and read messages into separate tabs, utilising pre-built UI components.
Hi-fidelity designs and documentation
After the initial designs were thoroughly reviewed and approved by the developer, I sought final sign-off from the product owner before enhancing the designs to hi-fidelity. A second review with my development team suggested adding an undo functionality for removing messages. This feature already exists in the app for removing favourites and requires minimal technical effort to build.
Next steps
The next step is to refine and incorporate the designs into the development cycle. The team still has a few high-priority tickets to address before determining where this falls on the roadmap.
