Instagram
Mobile feature redesigns and marketing audit
For this case study, my management team and I were tasked with performing a marketing audit on a company of our choice and applying business frameworks to identify and solve some of the organization's current day challenges. I served as the team manager and lead designer for this project.
Instagram is the 4th largest social media platform in the world, and one of the only of its kind. It may not seem like it, but Instagram is in big trouble. Instagram has become an all encompassing platform for photo sharing, video content creation but most of all, is now driven by a dominating ad based marketplace.
Ever since Instagram made the shift towards promoting more ads, discontent among content creators and average users has been growing. After doing more research, we formed a more detailed problem statement.
Current Instagram users are finding it difficult to see content from people they follow, are seeing more ads, and are struggling to growth their accounts’ visibility.
To get started, we conducted research and delved through news reviews to find out more about Instagram's current struggles. We then created a research goal to help us maintain a focus when generating research questions to ask users.
We want to learn more about the experience that various user groups go through when using Instagram.
Next, we created market personas to help us better define our audience and their needs.
1) Meet Average Anna: she’s fed up with the ever-changing interface of her home page and has not been seeing her friends’ posts as often. Instead, she has been bombarded with ads.
2) Next is Influencer Inez. Inez is a fashion blogger who has struggled to grow her account recently and many of her posts have not garnered as many likes as they used to. In fact, influencers' engagement rates in just the past year have decreased to lows of 0.9% which is especially bad news since engagement is their main source of income.
3) When it comes to advertisers, the Instagram algorithm has pushed for them to occupy around 20% of user timelines. Since IG has put more prioritization on making revenue through ads, they have neglected the interests of their users.
We incorporated this framework to evaluate the decision-making process and how we would go about taking action. It outlines user-centric judgements and cognitive bias that would lead to specific conclusions. This gave us more awareness on how to approach each of our user groups.
1) There has been a lot of backlash against IG shopping and putting the feature in their face will only inconvenience users and make them less inclined to use it.
2) Video features are scattered all over the app’s interface. For those who enjoy Reels, IG Live, and other videos, it can be hard to move from tab to tab to enjoy their content.
We propose two solutions, both being low-effort, high reward. These quick, effective wins should help in the user’s impressions of the app and we plan on measuring its effectiveness through annual user experience surveys that will be explained later on.
Customizable home page
First is a customizable homepage, where users can move the various 8 homepage tabs to their liking. By giving users this power to customize, the interface will be more catered to the user. Furthermore, IG can continue pursuing their e-commerce features without sacrificing the user experience.
Centralized Videos
Secondly, we propose centralizing all of IG’s video content onto the ‘Explore’ tab. By clicking on the ‘Videos’ filter, users will have access to their recommended video content for them to enjoy. This adds an extra layer of convenience for those who are more interested in video content. Furthermore, influencers and other content creators will also benefit, as their videos can gain more exposure through this feature.
1) Instagram doesn’t have as strong of an original content creation culture and creators often get burnt out from posting so often to audiences who may not even see their content.
2) The average user is inundated with ads. Ads are one of the most critical factors that cause user engagement to decrease.
3) Users are unable to keep up with the continuous updates and new features, and thus, do not engage with them.
4) There is no concrete method of creating and using super-user groups to test new features and changes made to Instagram.
Instagram Certified Creators Team
With this program, we propose the development of a Certified Creator Team where users can receive funding for their content through Instagram, as similarly seen in TikTok's Creator program.
Instagram Premium
We created an ad-free environment called IG premium. For a premium fee, Instagram will significantly improve the user experience. Instagram premium includes zero advertisements, special emojis, animated profiles, personalized background, and many exciting features. It will also provide personal assistance in tracking user and follower activities. For example, premium users will quickly and conveniently identify changes in followers. The goal of IG premium is to offset the cost of ad while creating a more convenient, comfortable, and personalized environment that will help users engage.
Transparency and Updates
As of this moment, users aren’t notified of any changes or updates added to the app at the time of the update. When conducting our survey we revealed almost 43% of users are unaware of new updates added on the app at the time of the release.
Currently the CEO of Instagram posts weekly updates regarding new features but it does not receive a widespread enough audience. Instead, users need to be told directly what's going on. To do so, we propose implementing an announcement feature that notifies all users of any updates on the app, a low effort high turnaround solution.
1) Stress individual notification through direct messaging.
Instagram will direct message users with notifications regarding any app updates and the CEO's weekly post.
2) Send personalized links and features curated for them and implement more detailed patch notes released for all software updates.
We can ensure users know about the features and how to use them through the app directly rather than a third source.
3) To track the success of this feature, we will implement satisfaction surveys.
We predict higher engagement and satisfaction levels with new features within a month of implementation.
Microsurveys
Microsurveys would be extremely useful in creating super-user groups. As of this moment, Instagram does not have a method of creating and using super-user groups to test new features and changes made to the Instagram experience. According to the Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, new features are shipped to 1-2% of the users to test its’ success, followed by a large-scale shipment of the feature to ALL users.
1) Users despise the algorithm which does not provide relevant content. There is a disconnect between users and their interests.
2) Users don’t have as much power to choose what they see.
3) It is difficult to pinpoint set communities online that contribute to depression and actively being able to avoid them.
Setting User Interests
Users can set their interests when they register on the app (a quick and effective way to improve their algorithm). When a new user registers for Instagram, they will be given the option to set their interests when making their profile. This will allow the algorithm to provide more accurate ads and suggested posts to their users in which the algorithm is catered to each user instead of adding random and vague interests in the user’s ad interests.
Instagram Lists
On Instagram List, users can select from various topics like fashion, sports, or music. Posts in these categories will be pushed more on the user's feed. Secondly, users can select their favorite content creators and friends. This will allow them to see more content they want instead of sponsored content. This allows users like Average Anna to have more control over what they want to see on their feed.
Tapping in to Mental Health
Studies show that it is difficult to pinpoint set “communities” online that contribute to depression. “Instead of finding a clear, coherent sense of community concerned with depression, we found patterns of deliberative profile management, careful aesthetic curation and affiliation practices through memetic content.” These are signals that IG can monitor for.
The algorithm determines which users see what content, the users current usage habits inform what content is placed on their feeds in the future. The problem arises when at-risk users find themselves in a spiral of content that creates intense negative feelings and serves to exacerbate mental health issues. Our solution to this is using the algorithm as a tool to target users-at-risk with uplifting content and the right resources.
How this process would be established:
1) Develop a process to identify users that show mentally harmful tendencies. It would include monitoring user trends to identify if a user is viewing or seeking out content flagged as harmful or negative.
2) Track these users and have a team implement and monitor a risk tier system. If viewing of these posts is irregular and brief this is not a high risk, but if viewing becomes daily and increases in volume risk would increase.
3) Create a culture within the company and within the platform database addressing mental health and provide resources. This would also include resources for how to connect to counseling services for the user. Instagram could partner with online therapy platforms to provide options to users.
4) Recommended posts and communities to users. Through algorithm recommendations, we would try to steer the users towards positive posts and recommend less posts with harmful tags.
Mid-fi Prototyping
I was in charge of the prototyping for this project. After defining all our pain points and solutions, I sketched out ideas then made wireframes for the application changes.
High-fi Prototyping
As I moved into developing the high-fidelity prototypes, I started incorporating branding from Instagram and keeping the design system consistent throughout. Given that this was a redesign, there were plenty of times when my team and I wanted to add our own opinions, but we took a step back to remember we were designing for our users.
Takeaways
Our team successfully placed 2nd in our case competition. Studying Instagram on a more analytical level provided me with a better understanding of the interrelationships between business strategy, analytical frameworks, user experience, and product innovation. Here is a photo of my team and I!
Next Steps
I enjoyed my role as project manager and lead designer and would love to conduct more case studies similar to this project in the future. It was refreshing having the opportunity to incorporate my product design skills in a more business focused setting.
