Konv aims to be a modern, easy-to-use and secure Instant Messaging Skype replacement. It should provides a cool UI/UX to end-users, with a « Power user » mode to allow more skilled guys to enjoy it too.
Konv should be finely designed and simple to understand with the first time, even a grandma should be able to use it without troubles.
Konv should provides at least features others IM apps (Skype, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc) has plus extra features that'll make it unique.
Konv aims to bring easy instant messaging to everyone and by so should be easy. Let's take the example of some really different people with different expectations.
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| Alice, 17 yo, France | Bob, 29 yo, USA | Monica, 75 yo, Sweden | Hakim, 24 yo, Iraq |
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Alice, a 17 years old teen, she lives in France, likes Music, Social networks and Clothes, she isn't a power-user and know nothing more about Computers than using a web browser to browse Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. She occasionally fetch their emails to get latest promotions on their favorites clothes. She owns a Windows 8 computer and wants things to « just works® ».
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Bob, a 29 years old guy, he lives in America, likes computers, and has done development studies. He usually use a computer to create applications and websites, listen to music and sometimes watching films (damn, productivity guy, productivity!). He fetch their mails automatically using a mail client and uses Slack and Skype for respectively Work and Family contact. He owns two computers, one running Windows 10, mainly for gaming usage and another one under Linux for work and daily usage. He wants to be able to customize and configure the tools he use on a daily basis, to make them match his personality.
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Monica, a 75 years old grand mother, she lives in Sweden, likes passing time with her family, organizing big diners at home. She also is member of the association of Grandmothers Knitting. When she use a computer that's for speaking via chat to his grandchildren, mainly via Skype. She also has an email address and doesn't specially care about privacy. What she want is that everything works nicely without having to do anything, just like Alice.
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Hakim, a 24 years old man, he lives in Iraq which is an authoritarian state where privacy isn't something people have. He likes food and works as a journalist for a local newspaper. He often publish papers that makes the government in bad mood, he was targeted for murdering 3 times yet because of the communication method he use. He needs a tool that is capable to protect him and his sources from spying eyes and governments. For him, privacy is a way to stay alive. Also, he isn't a tech-savvy and likes when interfaces are simple to understand and follow standards.
Here let's assume that we ask every of our personas the question beside.
How can Konv answer to that problem for every user, depending on their needs ?
Let's start by listing what every personas needs in a perfect instant messenger application.
| Property | Alice | Bob | Monica | Hakim |
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| Easy-to-use |  |
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| Customizable | |
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| Integrate with other apps | |
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| Secure (encrypted) | |
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| Respects user privacy | |
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Every people use a software in a different way, probably with different goals in mind. Let's assume our personas all downloaded Ricin (the predecessor of Konv) and use it. We can imagine how and why they use it.
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Alice: As a teen she probably use an instant messaging software in order to get in touch with friends, sharing fun cat .gif, sometimes maybe she makes an audio/video call with her mother. She also probably have text conversations that are full of emojis and social stuffs.
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Bob: As a developer he probably use an IM software in order to make his work done faster, or to get help from peers, he may sometimes make an audio call with a professor to answer a question. He also have some video calls with his father, speaking about football and boxe. He often send code snippets and send git patches to other developers from his team. He use some agile method and receive notifications from other services via the groupchat he setup for their projects.
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Monica: She mainly use an instant messenger to get in touch with family by making video calls but rarely do audio calls or text messages. Maybe she receive and send pictures and videos of vacations. She also sends happy birthday messages to their contacts, if she can remember their born dates.
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Hakim: As a journalist/political dissident, he mainly use an IM to send confidential documents a source leaked, search for new sources or talk with them. He also use a Tor proxy to stay anonymous and don't be detected by it's government. He always disable « report statistics sending » even if they are anonymous, taking 0-risks helps him to stay alive.
So by reading and analyzing the following paragraphs, we can now make a list of all the use cases a perfect instant messenger would need to have.
- Send text messages ;
- Send images and animated .gif ;
- Send files, inline musics or videos ;
- Send code snippets (syntax highlighting is a must) ;
- Make audio calls ;
- Make video calls ;
- Create a conference with many people ;
- Ability to setup a proxy ;
- Integrate with third-party services ;
- Being able to customize the interface and the behavior of the app ;
- Birthday reminders ;
- Search and add users ;
- Have an easy way to insert emojis.