Instagram Message
Case Study
Calling for more interpersonal engagement and high-quality conversations among users.
OVERVIEW
This is a semester-long case study where I was able to explore Instagram. As a social-media enthusiast, I recreated Instagram's direct message based on my personal frustrations.
I found users less engaged in communicating with others on Instagram because they couldn't locate the information quickly. Therefore, I redesigned to call for more interpersonal engagement and high-quality conversations among Instagram users.
TEAM
Just myself!👩🏻💻
WORK
Mobile Design (iOS), Visual Design, UX Research
TOOLS
Figma, Principle, Photoshop, Pencil ✏️
DURATION
February 2019 - April 2019 (3 months)
Outcome
Overview
Design a new way for users to locate certain information quickly so they can engage in more high-quality conversations with others.
Inspirations
"More interpersonal experiences"
Imagine that I need to buy some art materials for my design class. I remembered that a friend mentioned that there is an online store on Instagram. I opened my Instagram page and hoped to find out, but I cannot do that because I couldn't locate it. What shall I do??
Like many others, I’m an Instagram heavy user. During my experience, I notice that people love to continue conversations with friends on it. Therefore, Instagram Message becomes more interpersonal for users to exchange information, communicate more efficiently. Nevertheless, many users are not able to locate relevant information quickly and thus unable to communicate well. Realizing that Instagram became more interpersonal nowadays, I decided to redesign its Message features to help users more engage in communicating with friends.
Challenge
"People want to engage in communication on Instagram, but they cannot do that well because they are not able to quickly refer to relevant information."
How might we allow Instagram users to engage in high-quality conversations where they can exchange information and communicate more efficiently?
My responsibilities
Because this is a passion project addressing a pain point that many Instagram users have - to engage in quality conversations on Instagram. I completed all the process myself. As a matter of fact, Instagram implemented very similar (I would say it's exactly the same!) Reply-specific-message feature in the following year for a better conversational experience after I completed this case study. As mentioned, I found this latest feature super helpful and engaging with my Instagram friends to have more longer and higher-quality conversations.
Process
Research
Audit
Navigating through Instagram’s current Message page, I found some weakness in the user flow:
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Only users’ name/accounts can be found through searching
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Instagram only provides options such as “copy” and “report” features when users long press the context. This limits their interactions with others.
User
interviews
Continuing to find out the pain points, I conducted five interviews with Cornell students who interact frequently on Instagram. Here are some of the sample questions I asked:
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How do you describe your experience in using Instagram's direct message feature with your friends?
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how do you feel about the Message function in Instagram's home page?
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Have you felt annoyed when using Instagram? What does it happen?
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Could you show me how to send a message to your friend?
Then I created an affinity diagram narrating their feedback:
What I found...
Users tend to continue conversations after reacting to friends' posts and stories
Users feel frustrated when they are not able to locate some certain information
Opportunity
evaluation
Walking through the brainstorming with two friends who are both Instagram heavy users, I chose three opportunity spaces that are more feasible.
We evaluated the three solution spaces in an Impact & Effort matrix as below. We carefully analyzed each pros and cons, and ranked Opportunity 2 among the highest because it offers a lower effort but the highest impact. Here are some thoughts that are key to our decision:
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Keyword searching is the quickest way to find information and chat (time-saving)
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Keyword searching can filter the information both efficiently and accurately (efficiency)
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Keyword searching allows the user to respond to information in positive ways (satisfaction)
Market inspirations
Tackling the efficient keyword searching process, controlling the possible areas of privacy, time, and misinformation, I was inspired by WeChat and Messenger’s keyword searching design, and see how they adopt it to enhance the searching experience by successfully filtering the information upon user's needs.
Messenger's keyword searching process
WeChat's keyword searching process
Ideation
In this step, I reconfirmed my goal and research findings . These helped me determine that my solution space would consist of two crucial features:
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Searching by keyword to locate/refer to relevant information
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Allowing user to reply and share messages to others so that both can quickly refer to the relevant information
Then my design was divided into two parts, and for each, I created different high-fidelity explorations.
Solution
Entry point:
keyword searching
I followed a simple but structured information architecture: searching, replying and sharing. Searching is the entry point, while replying and sharing are parallel features after the user searches a keyword.
Exploration: Reply
I conducted some usability testing and chose option B, because it allows the user to reply to a specific message right below it, using the Law of Proximity. That means, they can locate relevant information from chat history, thereby effectively chatting with the sender. Option B also refers to the replying method from Messenger, another Facebook product in which I intend to strengthen a horizontal consistency within the company.
Exploration: Share
I also designed the sharing experience that allows the user to share the message and helps both the recipient and sender to understand the context. In the critique, we decided to vote option C because I wanted to group every information (share-related) together using Law of Similarity and created a popup window to share the information to a third recipient.
Visual guidance
I followed Instagram's design language when choosing fonts and color palette. I wanted to create an intuitive and approachable mobile application that users would find it convenient to use. While Instagram Blue is the predominant color, I also keep an eye on details for different layers, where red stands for privacy account, gray colors are my secondary and tertiary choices that support the fluency of some important UI components such as fonts, columns, and buttons.
Final design
Search
Reply
Share
At last 🎨
Now after using these new features, I am able to find out where to buy the art materials needed for my class quickly!
I’m confident with my design because I might foresee the future of Instagram — an app that is interpersonal. While Instagram now has mature and successful public interaction features, users look forward to more interpersonal interactions as well. My design allows users to decide how to communicate with others and hence they can engage efficiently by quickly searching keyword information. This is a functional benefit that users have control over their own conversations. It’s time-saving, clear-minded.
Although some constraints might limit the design, features such as Saved Posts and Stories are both also very important resources that users frequently refer to when communicating with friends, I believe that Instagram is no longer simply a platform to post and react to images. People are gradually more willing to chat on Instagram and it will ultimately provide more insights into making this happen :)