Telegram and user experience

I started using Telegram 8 months ago. The reason I installed the app is to talk to my best friend. At first, I thought it’s yet another messaging app with the same basic features. But my opinion changed as soon as I got introduced to its unmatched user experience.

I’m not an expert in user experience and design. But as an end-user who has tried different apps, I can tell you one thing for sure: ‘How a product makes you feel?’ determines how much you value the product. For example, consider the time you installed your most favorite app on your phone. Now, take a look at the questions below. See if your answer is a YES! for most of them.

• Were you motivated to learn how the app works?
• Did you understand how the app works in the first few mins of using it?
• Did you have the urge to test most of its features?
• Did you talk to your friends about it?
• Did you consider writing a review or a blog post about it? *cough*

All these questions are especially relevant for consumer apps. And yes, Telegram made sure my answers to the above questions signaled ‘satisfaction’ and ‘delight.’

There are many interesting features in Telegram that each one of you might find useful, but I’m going to keep my focus only on my personal favorites.

The magical touch of creativity

If you’re a heavy user of emojis, then you’d greatly appreciate the existence of Telegram stickers. Telegram stickers are quirky, funny, and relatable. Every time you use a sticker, the conversation becomes all the more exciting. Some stickers have an excellent touch of creativity that they become a superb distraction from a boring conversation. Sometimes I chat with my friends only using stickers and no text. *plays Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence*

These stickers are also easy to find. All you’ve to do is, select an emoji, and related stickers will appear at the top of your keypad automatically.

Small improvements, significant impact

Another essential aspect of consumer apps is you don’t really need to be feature-rich to attract users. Focus on the little things that might frustrate a user and make it easy. Again, Telegram is an excellent example of this.

We’re all familiar with recording voice notes and sending it to our friends. It’s not a new feature. But what if the voice note duration is longer? Imagine your friend sending you a voice note explaining how it sucked to bump into their ex. It’s not going to be a 10-sec or a 40-sec voice note. They’ll have stories to tell, and it’s not going to be easy for you to sit in a place and patiently listen to the drama. It could be a frustrating experience. Telegram takes into account this frustration and makes it easy for you to listen to voice recordings at 2x speed. Because of this feature, voice note is my top mode of communication. *grin*

But if you’re a text-only user, typos are common. And the one feature you’d love in any messaging app is the ability to edit your text, or even delete it permanently. WhatsApp allows you to delete a message but by making sure the other person knows that you had sent a creepy text. However, Telegram lets you edit a message (with ‘edited’ label) and delete a message permanently, leaving no signs of it.

Unique attributes, a secret sauce

Imagine sharing confidential information with a friend on a messaging app. You know it isn’t right for the message to stay in the chat for a longer time. So you delete every single message to make sure you leave no traces of sensitive information in the chat. This task is tedious and time-consuming. With Telegram’s secret chat, this can be handled in a breeze.

Secret chat automatically deletes chat messages after a specific time period. You can choose times between one second and one week before the messages disappear. Not just this, you won’t even be able to take a screenshot of the secret chat conversation. The thought process behind building such a feature still fascinates me.

As someone who thought there could be no messaging app as good as Yahoo Messenger, I’d say, Telegram comes as a breath of fresh air. It carries its own share of hiccups, but that doesn’t change my opinion that it offers a delightful user experience. 🤡