UX issues when composing a new message

[petermdenton]

Describe the bug In waterloo, I observed people composing a new message on xmtp.chat and when clicking the "+" sign to compose a new message, were not able to understand where to compose a new message.

I believe the main issues were:

• The cursor should focus on input field and blink.
• The avatar was pre-populated, making it look like a visual/design space vs. the input field for name

To reproduce this error, refresh the page then click on some messages in the conversation list view. Then go to hit "+" to compose a new message, you will see the screen below.

My suggestion would be to:

• remove the pre-populated avatar - it's not clear where that's coming from
• focus the cursor on the input field so it's blinking there.

[nplasterer]

Mentioning @darickdang on this as some bigger design thoughts might be worth thinking about. In the meantime tho we can do the suggestions as a stop gap.