Hey APPLE & ANDROID!
Let us mark text messages as unread.
Forgot to Reply To Your Message...
the u/x problem
How often do you forget to respond to a text? We forget a lot. Sometimes we text each other and tell the other person verbally not to open it so that they remember to open that text later to remind them to do something... what? Sounds quite convoluted.
People have a lot going on. Text messages from friends you don't talk to on a regular basis can go by the wayside because you opened it up at work to read it, planned on responding later since you were at work, and then totally forgot to reply.
It sucks to drop the proverbial ball.
the u/x solution
Enable a button that allows users to mark the text message as unread. Heck, even throw in the ability to add a reminder. Marking a text as unread does just that - when you leave the text message thread, the phone goes back to marking the text like it was brand new! The only difference is that the phone does not notify you via a vibrate / sound alert / notification that you received a new text message, only the red icon with number of unread texts increases by the number of messages marked unread.
product iteration
To take it a step further, or a PRODUCT ITERATION, add a link to make a reminder. Once clicked, this link will take you to the reminder function (iPhone) with some of the data pre-populated.
conclusion
Marking emails as unread helps people stay organized. Text messages have evolved to a pseudo email and should similarly have the same ability to mark as unread to help people remember they need to communicate with someone. By also adding the ability to create a reminder with pre-populated data supplied by a certain text message, the overall user experience can be made more efficient and useful.
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