A self initiated interface study: what WhatsApp would look like if it were redrawn for the flat design era.
At the time the app was carrying a lot of skeuomorphic weight, gradients, bevels and square avatar thumbnails, and it had one screen doing every job. The exercise was to strip the ornament out without touching what people already knew how to do, because a messaging app is the last place to reward a user for relearning anything.
Four decisions carry it. Avatars are masked to circles rather than squares, which reads as a person rather than a file. The whole surface is flattened to solid colour on the existing green, with the type reset in Helvetica. Navigation is split into Calls, Chats and Contacts as a three tab bar so the list stops being a single overloaded stack. And two slide menus are added to the chat screen: swipe left for contacts, swipe right for the profile and actions, so New Chat, New Group, New Broadcast List, Status and Settings sit one gesture away rather than three taps deep.
The set covers the welcome and account screens, the chat list, the conversation and keyboard state, both menu screens, an incoming call screen and a redrawn icon set.
Not client work. A concept, done because the app was on every phone I knew and nobody had drawn the version that felt inevitable.
