Design Critique--Tencent QQ

1. Introduction

QQ, also called “the MSN killer that’s made in China”, is a free instant messaging software, first released in February 1999 as OICQ. QQ offers a variety of services, including online social games, social website, email, online payment, browser, microblogging, music, shopping, and online chat. It’s easy and useful, and it has been grown up with me. I’ve become a QQ user for nearly ten years and I never hate it. 

To download the international version: http://www.imqq.com/ (International version is in English, and it is a simplified version)

2. Consistency

QQ can be used in multiple operating systems, including Android, iOS, Linux, OSX, Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile/CE, Symbian, Java ME and Web App. QQ has great consistency in different devices. No matter a user logs in QQ on his or her PC, or mobile phone and tablet, he or she will find the general design of QQ is unified. 

QQ also does a good job on synchronization. If a user starts chatting, QQ allows him or her to pick up the chat where the user left off on any devices in the user's ecosystem. The user can easily find the chatting history. An amazing part that I must address is that QQ allows a user to resume an interrupted download when he or she is sharing files with friends. Considering the poor web condition in China, this is really a great job.

3. Affordance

If a user wants to try some new features, he can simply put the mouse over the icon. QQ will give a general description of the function. Once the user clicks the icon, QQ will give guidelines step by step. A user will never feel himself stupid or need extra help. Even my grandma can use it smoothly.

4. Visibility & Mapping

As we can see, QQ puts different icons in different orders. QQ’s related functions are in one row, Tencent’s other products are listed in another row, and settings of the software are put in the bottom. It is quite easy to find what a user wants. Besides, when your mouse leave QQ for some other work, QQ will become invisible, giving you entire desktop to do what you want.

5. Feedback

QQ will give immediate feedback during a user’s operation. For example, I plan to have a video chat with my mum, and send her my recent photos. Once I click the “video” icon, QQ will show me “inviting your mum to have a video chat, invitation accepted, connecting, connected, video quality is good, you’ve been connected for 10:36.” It show me every step and I never feel lost. I drag the photos into the chat window, and I’ll get “the contact is offline or invisible now, would you like to send the files offline?” See? Never lost. After the video chat, QQ will ask me to rate this chat and give my feedback. It feels like I’m really interacting with QQ.

6. Limitations

There are also some limitations I think. QQ develops too many features like online social game, QQ pet, email, news, microblogging, online payment. This may benefit experienced QQ user, but for new users and inexperienced users, useless functions are too many to handle. At the same time, the variety of features make QQ take a great place of computer memory.

For mobile version, the major problem I think is it takes many steps to log out.