Instagram Categories
By introducing the Sorting Followers into Categories feature, I aimed to enhance the Instagram experience for users by offering a personalized and organized way to manage their follower base by creating a user-friendly interface and intuitive category management.
Challenges: Many Instagram users follow a large number of accounts, including friends, family, celebrities, brands, businesses, and influencers. Managing and navigating this extensive list of followers can become overwhelming.
Target Users: The target audience for this feature includes all Instagram users who actively follow a substantial number of accounts and would benefit from a more organized follower management system.
Time frame: 80 hours for essential screens.
My roles: propose and oversee the creation of the new feature as well as design and testing.
Project scope: Adding a new feature.
Assumptions
Users want more customization options for their Instagram experience, such as the ability to categorize and group followers based on their interests or relationships.
By providing users with tools to categorize their followers, Instagram can enhance content discovery by making it easier for users to find and engage with content relevant to their interests.
Allowing users to engage with specific groups of followers more effectively will result in increased engagement on the platform.
Methodologies
Secondary Research: Market Analysis
Primary Research: User Interviews
Goals:
Market Analysis
User Interviews
Empathy Map
User Persona
01 Research
Secondary Research
Market Analysis
“Snapchat”
Strengths:
The Snap Map feature allows users to see the locations of friends who have enabled location sharing, fostering a sense of real-time connection.
“TikTok”
Strengths:
TikTok's For You Page is highly personalized, using advanced algorithms to recommend content based on user preferences and interactions. This keeps users engaged with a wide range of interesting content.
TikTok's Discover page suggests new profiles and trending hashtags, making it easy for users to discover and follow new accounts aligned with their interests.
Weakness:
Snapchat's primary focus is on personal communication, which means it may not be the best platform for discovering and following public figures or content creators.
Weakness:
TikTok's primary focus is on content consumption rather than direct communication. While users can comment on videos, one-on-one messaging is less prominent compared to Snapchat or Twitter.
“X, Twitter”
Strengths:
Twitter provides a dedicated "Following" tab, which offers a chronological feed of tweets from the profiles a user follows. This straightforward organization makes it easy for users to see the latest updates from their chosen accounts.
Users can create custom lists to categorize and organize the profiles they follow. This feature allows for greater control and personalization of the Twitter experience.
Weakness:
Twitter's fast-paced feed can become overwhelming, especially for users who follow a large number of profiles. This may lead to important tweets getting lost in the stream.
Primary Research
User Interviews
Using a Google Survey I conducted the initial research to validate the need of adding a new feature to help users organize their following list into categories.
Research Synthesis
Empathy Map
Assumptions Validation:
Users want more customization options for their Instagram experience. Validated: 60% of respondents expressed a definite interest in having the option to organize profiles into folders/categories, while 40% were open to it depending on the implementation.
Instagram can enhance content discovery by making it easier for users to find and engage with content relevant to their interests. Validated: 80% of users are following a large number of accounts and the following profiles can be organized in categories like: Business/Brands, Restaurants/Food, and Travel were the most desired categories, with 80%, 60%, and 60% of respondents selecting them, respectively.
Other categories of interest include Sports (40%), News/Media (20%), Celebrities/Influencers (20%), Fashion/Beauty (20%), Friends (20%), and Exercise/Design (20%)
Allowing users to engage with specific groups of followers more effectively will result in increased engagement on the platform. Validated: 60% of respondents stated they would be more likely to follow additional accounts if they could easily organize them into folders/categories, indicating that the proposed feature could potentially drive increased engagement and account discovery.
Organizing the results of the interviews:
Insights:
-80% of respondents use Instagram daily, indicating a high level of engagement.
-60% of respondents follow a large number of accounts, suggesting a need for improved follower management.
-60% of respondents expressed a definite interest in organizing profiles into folders/categories.
-Improved Follower Management: Users need better tools to manage their extensive follower lists efficiently.
Needs:
-Customization: Users desire the ability to customize their follower experience by categorizing profiles based on their interests.
-Ease of Use: Users want a feature that is user-friendly and offers both manual and automatic sorting options to suit their preferences.
User Persona
02 Roadmap
Goals:
User Flow
User Flow
In order to ensure a clear and intuitive user experience, I created a comprehensive sitemap to map out the navigation and structure of the app's features. The sitemap served as a visual guide, outlining the hierarchy and relationships between different screens and functionalities.
03 Design
Goals:
Wireframes
Visual UI
Wireframes & Responsive UI
Lo-Fi
Visual UI
To make sure the new feature for categorizing and organizing followed profiles fits well with Instagram's look and feel, I took a close look at how Instagram organizes saved content like posts, reels, and music. Initially, I used rectangles to show a sneak peek of this content in my basic sketches.
However, I believe good ideas often come from teamwork and discussions. So, after talking to my colleagues and our experienced designer, we decided to switch from rectangles to circles. This change is not just about looks; it also makes it easier for users to recognize and use this feature.
Now, we use circles to give the feature a unique style that goes well with Instagram. We also made it so that you can see a preview of three profiles. This makes it simpler for users to understand and quickly find the categories they want.
In summary, our switch from rectangles to circles and the introduction of three profile previews isn't just about looks. It's about making the feature better and easier to use, while still fitting perfectly into the Instagram world.
Goals:
High Fidelity
Usability Testing
Results
Iteration
04 Prototype & Testing
High-Fidelity
Adding a New Category
Deleting a Category
Adding a new Follower to a Category
Usability Testing
I performed a moderated usability test of the prototype. Three people participated in the series of tasks to experience the new feature of instagram and these are the results:
Conclusions: Overall, participants showed positive feedback regarding the process of adding a new category to sort followers.
They appreciated the intuitive interface and the potential benefits of having categorized follower groups.
Visual cues, such as stroke around category icons and using one color for badges, were suggested for improved clarity.
Participants found the feature useful, especially if they frequently use Instagram for specific interests, such as finding local events or organizing travel profiles.
Iteration
Ending notes
As I wrap up my UX/UI project focused on adding a feature for Instagram, I’m thrilled to reflect on this engaging journey. As a passionate user of the platform, I've always been fascinated by the latest design updates from a progressive company like Meta. For this project, I aimed to gather insights from fellow users to identify features that could significantly enhance the user experience.
One of my key ideas was to introduce organized folders for followers, allowing users to categorize accounts—such as Food, Restaurants, Friends, and Coffee Shops. This feature will help users easily locate long-forgotten profiles and revisit beloved coffee spots without the hassle of remembering usernames.
Overall, this project has deepened my understanding of user needs and the importance of thoughtful design in enhancing everyday interactions. I’m excited to see how these ideas could potentially shape the future of Instagram’s user experience!