Nobody knows who’s bringing dessert.
A concept feature for coordinating shared responsibilities, right inside WhatsApp's group chats.
INDUSTRY.
Communication
Tools.
Figma, pen & paper
Role.
UI/UX Design
THE OPPORTUNITY
Everyone's talking. Nothing's getting coordinated.
WhatsApp connects over 3 billion people — but the moment a group tries to organize something, the app that's so good at talking becomes surprisingly bad at coordinating. Snack duty for the game, the volunteer shifts, who's on drinks — it all dissolves into a scroll of half-answered messages until someone gives up and pastes a SignUpGenius link.
The problem: messaging apps are built for conversation, not for tracking who committed to what. So I designed a way to close that gap — a lightweight Sign-Up that lives right inside the chat. The hard part wasn't the feature. It was earning a place in an app people around the world already know by heart, without adding a single thing that felt new. Here's how I got there. ↓
THE PROCESS
The problem wasn't the tools. It was leaving the chat to use them.
I’ve felt this in my own group chats — but a hunch isn’t enough. So I talked to the people who live in these threads — parents, sports coordinators, family planners, community organizers — and looked at how they cope today with tools like SignUpGenius, Doodle, and Google Forms.
The frustration wasn’t missing features or tools. It was the switching — leaving the app, opening a browser, pasting a link back, and hoping everyone actually taps it. That’s where coordination quietly falls apart. People didn’t want a more powerful tool. They wanted just enough structure, right in the chat, with no learning curve.
Two personas kept me honest — Peter, holding a 40-person team chat together, and Anna, who volunteers then loses track in the flood.
That reframed the project:
• How might we add structure to a chat without adding weight?
• How might we let people claim a task without leaving the conversation?
• How might we make commitments visible at a glance — without scrolling?
Those pointed to a clear direction: something lightweight, something that already felt like WhatsApp, something you could use without thinking. Which turned out to be the hard part.
— interviews, personas, and user/business goals.
THE DESIGN CHALLENGE
It had to feel native to WhatsApp
Three principles shaped the work: lightweight (purposefully scoped, not a project manager crammed into a chat), familiar (WhatsApp's existing visual and interaction language, nothing new to learn), and frictionless (as few taps as possible to create a Sign-Up or claim a slot). The constraint was the creative challenge — I couldn't invent new patterns or add navigation that could break the very simplicity that makes WhatsApp work.
The hardest call in the project: I considered letting the attachment menu reorder itself — surfacing the Sign-Up option first when the app sensed people coordinating in the chat. It was tempting: less hunting, faster discovery, especially the first time.
But the more I tested it, the clearer the cost became. Reordering a menu people navigate by reflex — even "smart" reordering — breaks the spatial memory that makes the app feel effortless. I'd be solving discoverability by sacrificing what I was trying to protect.
So I didn't build it. Instead, I surfaced the feature contextually — a gentle AI prompt when the app detects coordination language ("Want to create a Sign-Up?"), plus a subtle highlight on the existing icon, right where it always sits. Same discoverability. None of the disruption.
— user flows, wireframes, and high fidelity mockups.
Two rounds of testing shaped the iterations:
AI-powered suggestion text when app detects coordination happening
Date/Time input fields + automated reminders
Subtle guidance text encouraging organizers to pin
Participant names + slot count
Commitments reversible with a tap
A lightweight Sign-Up that lives right in the thread
Created, claimed, and tracked without anyone leaving the chat. Built entirely in WhatsApp's existing style, so it works like something that was always there.
