KakaoTalk has gone through a myriad of version upgrades since launch, with each upgrade bringing improved and innovative features developed through intimate communication with users. The 4.0 upgrade continues this trend, with a stronger focus on UI/UX redesign. KakaoTalk has added a sophisticated touch to its design while maintaining all of its core features, and the user environment has been upgraded to allow greater accessibility to features that were previously less exposed. In addition, the new design places extra emphasis on the brand identity of KakaoTalk.
In KakaoTalk version 4.0, the discovery of optional function menus was enhanced, by bringing out menus that were previously accessed through the Android hard key buttons to the screen area. In the chat rooms, ‘notification,’ ‘invite,’ ‘leave’ and ‘setting’ options that were previously accessed through the hard key menu were replicated to a soft key menu on the upper right hand of the screen. In the ‘chats’ tab, a floating icon has been added so that users don’t have to scroll to the end of the chatroom list to create a new chat room. In the ‘find’ tab, various methods for finding friends, such as ‘ID Search’ and ‘QR code’ are now exposed on the top of the screen to ease the process of finding a friend.
Efforts to emphasize KakaoTalk’s brand identity are also evident throughout the updated version. Users will be greeted with a new splash screen upon upgrade, with a more voluminous BI that enhances readability and a sophisticated look. Yellow, KakaoTalk’s representative color, is also more predominant across the service. The status message on users profile and the ‘add’ buttons for Plus Friends have adopted a yellow touch, subtly strengthening KakaoTalk’s brand image. In addition, other features including VoiceTalk, has gone through a fresh makeover to display a more sophisticated and chic design.
The upgrade also reflects Kakao’s efforts to provide users of different OS with a more uniform experience. By shifting the menus that were previously only exposed through the hardware keys on Android devices to the screen level, like it is in iOS versions, iOS and Android users can enjoy a more unified user experience. Another example is the emoticons button. With the latest upgrade, the button has been relocated from the left of the text box to within the text input box. This move will also help facilitate users’ hand movement between text and emoticons.
Another obvious change is the group chat room profile image. For group chat rooms with three or more members, the profile images of participating friends are tiled as a collage on the profile picture area. A maximum of four pictures are displayed at a time. Also, instead of having to click the ‘friends’ ‘chats’ find’ and ‘more’ tabs to move from one screen to another, users can now simply swipe the screen right and left to move from one screen to the next.
Kakao said, “We focused on enhancing usability, discoverability of option menus and user convenience through subtle but meaningful changes. We hope this update will help users discover our useful features in a quicker and more convenient manner,” and continued, “We will continue to develop our service to be in the forefront of the evolving smartphone user environment and design trends.”
Meanwhile, KakaoTalk for iOS(currently v.3.6.9) will be upgraded to v.4.0 within the year.