ADD A FEATURE
Making a more customizable and organized experience for users in the Discover/Explore feature on Instagram.
Project Overview
This project was focused on adding a feature to an existing product. The goal was to come up with a potential feature to improve the product by assessing what users really want while making sure that the proposed design also helps the business continue to grow and thrive.
My Responsibilities
User Research & Competitive Analysis
Design Strategy
User Personas
User Flows & Task Flows
Visual Design
Wireframing
Prototyping & Usability Testing
My Role
Solo UX/UI Designer
Tools
My Process
Discover
Define
Ideate
Design
Test
Discover
Competitive Analysis
Click to enlarge
User Interviews
Interviews were conducted with 3 individuals who are users of Instagram with the focus being on their use of the Explore & Search page on Instagram. Going into these interviews it was left open what specific feature, Explore or Search, would ultimately be the focus of this project and this would be determined based on users responses.
Some questions included:
What do you use Explore/Search for?
What are your thoughts on the organization of the Explore page?
What content do you typically see on the Explore page? How relevant is it to you?
How effective do you find the Search feature in finding the content you are looking for?
What are your thoughts on the organization of the Search results? How effective do you find the organization of results in finding content?
How do you feel about being able to connect to your interests, hobbies, etc. thru Explore/Search?
What are your pain points with the usability and overall effectiveness of Explore/Search?
Key Takeaways
Full research synthesis can be viewed in FigJam: Affinity Map
Conclusion
After talking with users, there appeared to be more opportunity in focusing on improving the Explore page vs. Search. Users had more feedback on the Explore page, meanwhile they had less issue with Search as they tend to use the search bar less frequently and when they do it’s to look for a specific profile vs discovering content and they found this to work relatively well.
The Problem
Instagram has endless content covering all interests users may have. But, the search and explore feature has not been updated its functionality to account for this.
The explore page has an endless wall of content determined by an algorithm to serve relevant content to users. Users don’t have any categorization, context, or control of the content served on their explore page.
Instagram has content that likely goes unexplored due to this and could increase engagement by improving their explore page to be more tailored towards interests and categories of content.
The Goal
Understand how users use Instagram’s explore/search page, what they like about it, their pain points, and what they would like to see improve
Define the problem and user story through synthesis of user research findings and hone in on a proposed feature solution.
Build and test a feature to improve the user experience in Instagram.
Define
POVs & HMWs
Click to enlarge
I brainstormed 3 different HMW statements, based on the pain points and wants from the user input gathered I landed on:
How might we give users more control of the Explore page so they can more easily connect with their interests on Instagram?
User Persona
Ideate
Based on the research findings and steps taken to define the problem, in order to improve the experience in Instagram users would like to have a way to control and categorize the content in their Explore page so they can more easily connect with their interests. This would improve the experience of discovering new content as well as making it easy to return to content they’re interested in by taking the control away from the algorithm and giving it to the user.
New Feature
I am proposing an update to the organization of the Explore page to present content to users via categorization and additionally split the page into 3 views: For You, Trending, and Following.
Users can go to the For You view to see content influenced by their algorithm, as already seen in the current Explore page, and now by the categories they follow. Trending will show the user content that is currently popular on the app. And finally, Following is a personalized view where users can exclusively view content they follow and add in new categories to their page. Additionally, users can quickly jump into a category and only view content related to that category.
View ideation sketches here: Sketches
User Flows & Task Flows
With the basis of the new feature laid out, I took time to map out different scenarios for a User Flow and Task Flows to help build the organization of this feature and how it fits into the current state of Instagram.
View User Flow here: User Flow
View Task Flow here: Task Flow
After completing User Flow & Task Flows, I did a quick Crazy 8’s sketching exercise before heading to wireframing. View ideation sketches here: Sketches
Design
Wireframing
From my initial sketches I had landed on 2 potential options for the new feature layout.
I wanted to try them both out so determined I’d start with Mid-Fi wireframes to test out these options. The main screens I wanted to build were the Explore Page, a Category Page, and Adding a Category.
I designed an Option 1 and Option 2 for the Explore and Category page layouts and built a singular layout for the Adding a Category screen.
After testing these Mid-Fi frames with actual images, I determined Option 2 was the best layout to move forward with given Option 1 would prove difficult to have a legible Category Name over different colored images.
With a bit of tweaking through the process of creating the screens, I built the main screens for my Hi-Fi seen below:
Deliver
Usability Testing
Test Parameters
I built an interactive prototype in Figma and performed a mix of moderated/unmoderated tests with 10 participants. Each participant was a current use of Instagram. I asked participants to complete 3 tasks: Follow a Category, View Latest Posts in Category, and Unfollow a Category.
Results & Key Findings
After synthesizing results I came up with 4 key findings:
1. Users appreciated being able to customize their Explore page vs. being beholden to the Instagram algorithm and felt this would improve their experience and increase their use of the Explore page.
2. Users enjoy having the option to discover new content in categories and organized views vs. a wall of content and felt they could better connect with their interests on Instagram without feeling overwhelmed.
3. Users were still used to having to utilize the search bar when looking for something, as seen in the Follow a Category task, which still got them to the desired end point but there could be subtle changes to guide them to the add category + button. Also seen in the Unfollow Category task.
4. There was a small number of users who liked the feature but wanted the option of having a view similar to the current Explore page, so there could be a toggle of some sort to switch the way content is presented if viable.
Priority Revisions
Based on the feedback received in the usability tests, I was able to quickly update one aspect of the feature that caused some confusion for users.
This was to the Following button where I added a small downward-pointing arrow to signify that users could click to change its status, i.e. unfollow.
Future updates can include a toggle for the view of Explore page if users do not want to see content categorized and an improvement to better guide users to the add category + button.
Learnings
I learned a lot about plugging a new design into an already existing product. Utilizing already established design elements to build my feature showed me the importance of a well maintained design system so future designers can iterate and improve a product.
Additionally, I found I was able to go deeper on the user interviews for this project due to Instagram being a well known product, which provided more insights through the user research and usability testing vs. other projects that are completely new.
Next Project:
