WhatsApp Product Improvement Case: Designing for Older Adults

You are a product manager at WhatsApp, and the team wants the app to be easier for elderly people to use. How would you improve it? Set the goal, decide which older users you are designing for, find their biggest pain points, propose and prioritize solutions, and explain how you would measure success. ```hint Follow one person through a day Pick one older user and trace how they keep in touch with family on a typical day: finding someone, reaching them, replying and answering. Mark each point where they hesitate, make a mistake or have to ask for help. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which older users are in scope: people in their 60s who have used smartphones for years, or people in their late 70s and beyond who were recently set up by a relative? - Is the aim to bring more older people onto WhatsApp, or to help those who already have it use it more confidently and on their own? - Should the changes live inside the main app, or is a separate simplified app on the table? - Should we start with one market and device type, or design for every market at once? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated objective for the change and why it matters to WhatsApp - Older-user segments distinguished by ability and experience as well as age, with one chosen and the reason for the choice - Pain points drawn from a concrete journey and ranked by how much they hurt - Solutions compared on explicit criteria, including how users would discover them and the effect on everyone else who uses the app - A primary metric with guardrails, plus the main risks and how to mitigate them ### Follow-up Questions - How would WhatsApp decide whom to offer a simpler experience to without collecting or inferring people's ages? - How would you protect older users from scams and impersonation messages without adding friction for everyone? - What would you test with older users before building anything, and how?