Take a picture…it lasts longer! Well, it certainly does! And, who does pictures better than Instagram?
Project: Add a Feature (Mobile) App Concept
Role: UX/UI Designer
UX Design Tool: Adobe Xd
Timeline: 4Day Sprint
The Brief: Analyze an already existing and highly adopted app and incorporate a new feature into the existing product. The feature you develop will be based on an area of functionality to be explored and compared to user input.
The App: Instagram
Instagram was launched on October 6, 2010. The first post, shown above, was from Instagram co-creator Kevin Systrom.
“Believe it or not, people took photos before Instagram. People even shared photos before Instagram. With its snazzy filters and easy sharing options, soon we were all addicted to posting our holiday hot dog legs and hipster food snaps”. from Kit Smith
Discover
Research, research, research. I started with industry research. What are the experts saying about Instagram? What are the pros and cons? What are the trends? Especially during COVID-19!
To start with, footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo has the most popular Instagram account. Well, he’s the most-followed person. Instagram’s own account has over 360 million following. Ronaldo has over 237 million followers.
As of June 2018, the cross-platform app reported more than 1 billion monthly active users. Currently, there are approximately 112 million Instagram users in the United States and experts project this figure to surpass 120 million users in 2023.
What’s trending? Social media challenges have been huge in 2020, with the biggest driver being #QuarantineLife.
As any good UI/UX student, I began with a Lean UX Canvas. I focused on current users of Instagram and identified business outcomes and user benefits.
Competitive Feature Analysis
As you can see I made a list of features provided by the various social media platforms to access how Instagram compares with its competition. After examining the different features, I plotted out my Market Positioning Chart. I compared community-oriented to less community-oriented and hard-to-find people like me to easy-to-find people like me.
I interviewed eight Instagram users on Day 1. (It’s a four-day sprint! No time to waste!) I typed up my data into virtual sticky notes. Now, it was time to sort those into an Affinity Map. First grouping by what the users like about IG, don’t like, why they use it, how often they use it, what they wish were different, what other social media they are using, and why they like or don’t like other social media.
What Instagram Users Are Saying:
“It’s simple, direct, and easy…you just post a picture.
“good aesthetically for promoting my business”
“use it to share photos and for social networking”
“text formatting can be frustrating, you want it to look a certain way and it’s all squished together”
DAY 2
Going solo this week, I have to move quickly through this four-day sprint. My first task for day 2 is to begin the “customer” side of the Value Proposition Canvas.
Some of the pains that came up were formatting the caption, annoying ads, and frustrations with connecting with new people. Customer gains I noted were Instagram is easy to use, like to use it for business to promote artwork, and users like how it’s organized. Some of the jobs of Instagram are keeping up with friends and family, finding events nearby, and passing the time.
From the data, I created an As-Is Scenario Map going through what a user might experience when using the app. Which led right into the Customer Journey Map that further illustrates what the user is doing, thinking, and feeling.
From there, I was able to refine my opportunities to develop a feature that could bring value to the Instagram experience.
Opportunities I pulled out of the User Journey were:
Create Groups to help users find other users.
Expand the number of pictures you can post.
Optimize text feature for longer, more stylized captions.
I developed my three problem statements and turned them into “how might we” questions.
Posing the HMW questions was the jumping-off point for brainstorming. Since I am working alone on this project, I invited some of my classmates to join in the brainstorming session.
I narrowed the brainstorming ideas into the Moscow Method. Finding the options that were must-haves. Thus, helping me get a step closer to my solution for the new feature to add. Based on my research up this point, I decided to focus on adding a feature that would help users connect with groups. These groups would be formed by common interests.
Time to revisit the Value Proposition Canvas. I added some gains and pain relievers. The pain relievers I identified were to create groups, incorporate hashtags to follow, provide a section to find users with similar interests. The gains I noted were, make new friends and express themselves more creatively.
JOBS TO BE DONE
When looking for users to follow on Instagram, the user wants to find people with similar interests, so that they can connect with people they can relate to, which will make them feel happy.
Day 3: Today I came up with my MVP
Using Jobs To Be Done as my guide, my Minimum Viable Product, MVP is to add a “Groups” feature to Instagram. Similar to Facebook, users can start groups that are specific to hobbies, common interests, etc.
Low-fi Prototypes
I got five tests on my lo-fi prototypes. I linked my prototype into Maze and here are some of the results:
- Tested Five Users
- Direct Success 83.3%
- One Tester Gave Up
- Misclick Rate 28.6%
- Most users had trouble on the first screen
Mid-fi Prototypes
Day 4. I quickly moved into mid-fi since my project is due tomorrow. I was in a rush to complete the four-day sprint and did not adequately address this issue of confusion on the first screen. Again, I linked my prototypes in Maze and tested five users. The misclick rate for the home page was 75%.
High-fi Prototypes
Now, the really fun part!! I created my High-fi Prototypes.
Success & Failure Metrics
I will measure success by how many groups are created, how quickly users are able to create groups, and new users added. I will measure failures by a lower number of groups created, time on task of creating new groups, and churn rate.
Atomic Design
Below are the icons and UI Kit elements I used for my prototyping.
Key Learnings
I am learning so much. I loved working on the prototypes and using Maze. It was a lot of fun seeing what I can do on my own. Flexing my own UI/UX “muscle”. However, I missed the benefit of working with a team. I did utilize the expertise of my instructor David Fast, TA Dave Ostergren, and my classmates throughout the sprint.
Next Steps:
- More research
- I want to do further develop my high-fi prototypes. Implement more XD features.
- Do more testing on my prototypes.
Time To Roll The Credits
Thank you to the following creators for icons and photos:
Shopping Bag by Angriawan Ditya Zulkarnain from the Noun Project
Heart by Bluetip Design from the Noun Project
group by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project
Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash
Photo by Omid Armin on Unsplash
Photo by dulkimso Santoso on Unsplash
Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash
Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash
Photo by Les Triconautes on Unsplash
Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash
Photo by frankie cordoba on Unsplash
Photo by Fábio Alves on Unsplash
hoto by Bailey Zindel on Unsplash
Photo by Daniel Ebersole on Unsplash
Photo by Marcela Vitória on Unsplash
Photo by Daniel Novykov on Unsplash
Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash
Ozzy Osbourne Twitter Photo
Photo by Steele Rutherford on Unsplash
Photo by John Bakator on Unsplash
Photo by Irene Kredenets on Unsplash
Photo by Melanie Pongratz on Unsplash
Photo by Getúlio Moraes on Unsplash
