Instagram’s save experience, an important metric for creators, has not been updated since 2017. I was curious why that feature would be underutilized, especially with the success of similar experiences, like Pinterest.
SUMMARY
Adding a feature
SCOPE
Figma, FigJam, Google Meets, Notion, Otter AI
ROLE
UX Research & Design
TIMELINE
August 1-14, 2023
TOOLS
The Challenge
Increase usage of save feature in order to help people connect with something they love.*
*Instagram’s macro business goal as stated by Adam Mosseri, Jan 2023
Business Goal
Understand and define what users need to increase usage of the save feature.
Research Goal
User Interviews & Persona
Competitive Analysis
Prototype Testing
RESEARCH METHODS
Task & User Flows
Information Architecture
DISCOVER & DEFINE
To find my user base, I was interested in people who use Pinterest and Instagram regularly. I made the assumption that people who use Pinterest also use Instagram’s similar function. I was wrong. The interviews revealed You can’t save anything if there is nothing to save! People are not saving if they don’t see anything worthy of saving. That led to the logical conclusion that the Explore page needs to be reinterpreted, in addition to the save experience.
“I hate my relationship with Instagram and want to limit my time on it. It adds no value to my life. If I need inspiration, I’ll go to Pinterest.”
Participant 3
Brainstorming the updated capabilities
Why not repurpose existing capabilities that already exist?
Instagram already allows you to search and sort through followers. What would it look like if we applied that function to search through posts?
DESIGN
Design Evolution
Explore Page
My initial concept recreated the Explore page to have more points of interest visually.
I thought this would be a good opportunity to restore the brand’s reputation with the frustrated users and added spacing between the posts to be more visually engaging and include a button to allow users to decide if they want more. This would help limit the doomscroll and in turn, restore the relationship Instagram has with users.
Version 1
After reflecting on the explore page and getting feedback from other designers, I realized reconfiguring the explore page was reinventing too much of the app and also affecting an important revenue-generating asset. Instagram can change the algorithm to appeal to users however they choose to keep it and appeal to creators and advertisers. Therefore I decided to streamline the wireframes and just focus on the tasks- the save experience.
Version 2
TESTING
TASK 1
View explore page and access saved posts to find previously saved post
TASK 2
Keyword search for previously saved posts
TASK 3
Filter through saved posts to view recently saved for newsletter
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It was interesting to discover that the users instinctively went to click on the profile icon in order to access their saved posts. They didn’t even realize the new ease of access location. To complete the second task which required them to return to their saved posts, they immediately went to the new location.
With the second task, it was interesting that they preferred to scroll instead of sorting their findings. I imagine this is due to the ease of scrolling and also not realizing the tools at their disposal which seems to be a reoccurring behavior for IG users.
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I added whitespace to make the new saved posts location more prominent. Users were unsure of the sorting capabilities which was less of a UX issue than it being a behavioral issue and more of a marketing challenge.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
Users no longer have to go to their profile settings to access their saved posts. Now they can access it more readily from the Explore page.
Easily access saved posts
Key Word Search Saved Posts
Users can keyword search through previously saved posts, sparing themselves from the frustrating doom scroll to locate a saved post.
Filter Saved Posts
To expedite finding something, users can now filter their feed chronologically and by media type.
IMPACT
It was fun to experiment with an existing brand, especially one as big as Instagram. The user interviews were eye-opening to see how users view social media and their relationships with it. Social media is such a new phenomenon with unprecedented consequences— positive and negative—that this project really highlighted the ethical responsibilities of designers and how to find common ground between those duties and business goals.
If this project were to become real, I hope Instagram would listen to theirs users and take a good look at their algorithm and subsequent feed pages.