Chat stickers finally came to Apple’s popular iMessage platform with the release of iOS 10 last September. Since then tens of thousands of sticker packs have been shared on the iMessage app store by brands and independent artists alike.

Creative and relatable sticker packs are fantastic for making any conversation more playful. But the user interface for selecting stickers to use in your messages is clunky and cumbersome.

Current Problems

In its current state stickers can be tedious to find in a pinch. Since text conversations can move lighting fast, it’s important that users are always able to quickly find the sticker they’re looking for. Users can switch between sticker packs by swiping left or right, but the order in which their sticker packs are arranged is inconsistent.

Having more than a couple of sticker packs means this UI quickly becomes difficult to navigate. To make matters worse, sticker packs and other iMessage apps are all mixed together in the same UI meaning more to swipe through.

Currently the most elegant way to find the sticker you need is to use the unlabeled button in the bottom-left corner to display all of your iMessage apps. But this still fails to distinguish between apps and sticker packs. It also requires a minimum of two taps to find the sticker pack you’re looking for.

For my redesign I’ll be focusing on the swipe-based navigation.

My Solutions

Tab Bar

My redesign

In the words of former Apple designer Don Norman, users can use the new tab bar to gauge affordances (their available sticker packs) and map them (understand where they are and how to get to them).

Facebook Messenger’s sticker tab bar is great inspiration

The tab bar utilizes Apple’s classic “cover flow” style to display vital information while staying whimsically on-brand. It also shares similarities with Facebook Messenger’s sticker platform. This consistency means users can intuitively understand how to navigate through their stickers.

New Categories

In the current system sticker packs like “Kittimoji” are lumped together with iMessage apps like “Venmo” and “Google Maps.” With my redesign, stickers would be separated into their own category. The new stickers button takes the place of the underutilized Digital Touch feature and takes users directly to their sticker packs.

Moving Digital Touch

Digital Touch is removed from the main iMessage navigation bar in my redesign. I surveyed 71 iPhone users and found that 85% of them never use Digital Touch. This prime real estate would be better used to distinguish stickers and bring them a tap closer.

Apple’s Digital Touch icon

Digital Touch lives on in my redesign grouped in with the other iMessage apps.

I was pretty surprised at Digital Touch’s severe lack of use as I think it has potential. This would definitely be a great area to explore in a future post.

Playing Favorites

The new “Favorites” pack allows users to pull in stickers from different packs and put them in one easy-to-reach place.

Users can access the “Favorites” pack just as they would any other sticker pack. Once inside, users can tap the “+” icon then select the stickers they’d like to add.

Conclusion

The current swipe-based system for navigating sticker packs is unintuitive. Users can’t form mental maps of sticker locations because the ordering of sticker packs on the hierarchy frequently changes. Because sticker packs and other iMessage apps are lumped together, users must either limit how many iMessage apps they use (not the best scenario for Apple) or get bogged down.

By bringing in a navigational tab bar, users are able to form a mental map of which sticker packs they have and how they can get to them. Allowing users to tap sticker pack icons creates a new and easy way to skip between packs.

Moving the Digital Touch icon to the iMessage apps won’t affect many users and still allows its functionality within iMessage. By giving the icon’s valuable real estate to the new Stickers category, users won’t get bogged down with too many apps in one place.

The new “Favorites” sticker pack gives users an easy way to quickly access their favorite stickers from a variety of packs.

Thanks for reading! Please ❤ and comment!

And let me know — would you miss Digital Touch if it was moved?