iMessage unread message indicator

I’ve done a few explorations lately on what it would look like if an iOS user's notifications were shown in Roman numerals, tally marks, and more. However, I haven’t done much investigation into the other end of these interactions.

I’m pretty good at zeroing out my iMessage and email inboxes. My DMs are another story, but let’s avoid that for now. I got the new iPhone this weekend and noticed that in addition to showing the user name, you can also see their current location if you have Find My Friends turned on. This is precious real estate that could be used to communicate any number of things.

What if we used this space to show how many unread messages someone has? I think there is actually some inherent value here because it would give you insight into whether or not to send someone another text to bump your message thread to the top of their inbox. The con here is that the recipient would end up getting more and more texts, which they are already obviously ignoring.

Could be a fun feature though.

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