Although many people are designing mobile products that are social in nature, few understand what that really means, how it works, or why it's important.
In this series for Creative Bloq, Chris Bank of UXPin (opens in new tab), the UX design app, discusses the importance of social design patterns and details examples from some of the hottest websites and web apps today.
You can see previous posts from UXPin here (opens in new tab). Meanwhile, for more examples of web design patterns (opens in new tab), download UXPin's free e-book, Web UI Design Patterns 2014 (opens in new tab) and their free Web UI kit (opens in new tab).
The problem
The user wants to send private messages to their friends from within the system.
The solution
Allow users to interact with each other in private messages alongside their other interactions.
Many web apps, including Instagram and Spotify, now offer chat or direct messaging as an integral part of their experience.
We predict that private chat UI design patterns will continue to blossom across many web apps, not just traditional 'social networks'. That's because users becoming more and more comfortable sharing more private things online and they have substantial breadth in the content they're generating online.
Words: Chris Bank (opens in new tab)
Chris Bank (opens in new tab) is the growth lead at UXPin (opens in new tab), a UX design app that creates responsive interactive wireframes and prototypes.