Diary study using WhatsApp

Challenge

A research tool was never going to work

I needed to understand what the first month actually felt like for a new seller joining ManoMano's marketplace — from the decision to sign up through account setup and the first sale. Not a satisfaction score at the end. The texture of it: what confused them, what reassured them, what almost made them give up.

A traditional diary study tool would have asked sellers to log into something new, on top of everything else they were already managing in their first weeks running a business on the platform. That friction alone would have thinned the data — fewer entries, shorter entries, entries written to look complete rather than entries written in the moment.

So the study ran on WhatsApp instead. Four sellers, one month — the length of the onboarding period, ending when each sold their first product — sharing daily, in whatever form was fastest: a voice note between tasks, a photo of a confusing screen, a two-line text. WhatsApp wasn't a workaround for a proper research method. It was the deliberate choice, because sellers were already spending time there, and that changed what they were willing to say.

Solution

Real-time entries, plus the reflection layer

I monitored entries as they came in, prompting for clarification when something was unclear and keeping the thread useful without steering it. But real-time capture alone doesn't tell you what actually stuck. Mid-month and end-of-month interviews added the reflection layer: what sellers remembered, what had shifted, what they still didn't understand, weeks after the moment had passed. The combination — logged in the moment, then revisited with distance — gave a much richer picture than either method alone would have.

Every account was cross-checked. I reviewed interview notes, aligned with account managers, and read the email trail so I could compare what sellers reported against what was actually happening in the relationship — not to catch anyone out, but because sentiment and fact don't always match, and the gap between them is often the finding.

From the raw material — WhatsApp messages, voice notes, photos, interview notes, account manager input — I built a user journey per seller: key dates, what happened, needs, pain points, opportunities, and verbatims kept in the seller's own words rather than paraphrased into research-speak.

Impact

The findings fed directly into the Toolbox vision work at ManoMano — the diary study is what clarified that the first weeks, not the platform overall, were where trust was won or lost. Read how that translated into a shared direction for seven squads →

As a method, WhatsApp worked because it removed friction from the seller's side and added almost none of my own — no tool to configure, no login to maintain. What it demanded instead was attention: daily monitoring, timely prompts when an entry trailed off, and the discipline to keep the channel useful without turning it into another obligation for people who already had enough of those in their first month.