We are building a cross platform mobile application and I am kind of responsible for iOS part. I'm the first one to begin to work on the instant messaging feature, so my decisions will affect my colleagues who develop Android and Windows Phone parts. And I'm stuck with the question how to properly indicate the message is sent, received, and (may be) seen?
I know that there is the WhatsApp way one tick sent and two ticks received, but this kind of mis-leading users to think that one tick is for received and two ticks for seen. I don't want this mis-leading but I also cannot tell how much damage this will do. I am open for suggestions in this matter.
Answer
I would not rely on colors alone for accessibility reasons, nor would I recommend WhatsApp ticks because not self-explanatory.
Apple do a good job in that they write Read below the last message. This method is definitely the easier to understand for everybody but has the "disadvantage" of having to be localized.
Also, two states should suffice: Delivered and Read. The Sent state is useless because once the message has been posted to the server there is no need to confirm it; in the case that there was an error instead, near the message you should have a Retry button.
Clean, accessible, self-explanatory.
No comments:
Post a Comment