Design a pinning feature in a chat app such as WhatsApp.

Objective or Goal of the feature: To help users pin a chat in a Chat App/messenger such that it is the first chat that appears in the conversation threads (irrespective of the recency)

You can pin conversations with -- a) individual contacts, and b) groups

User need: A user who has several chats going on during a day finds it time consuming to navigate through conversation threads. The importance of a conversation thread can be based on: a) frequency of use, and b) importance of conversations/contact (eg: family, emergency contacts, boss). Allowing

Solution Flow:

User selects a message through a long press --> selects to pin the thread.

Since the intent to pin can be either: freq of use or importance of the contact, user should be asked about the duration for which she would like to pin (8 hrs, 1 week, 1 year).

Introducing the feature to the user: If a particular chat is being actively opened by the user multiple times in a day, suggest they can pin the threads now. Can pin upto 3 threads/contacts.

Unpinning: long press/left swipe to unpin; then ranks based on recency

Metrics to measure:

No of pinning used/user per month and associated time period selected (to understand what type of usecase the feature is being used for)