Instagram, A New Way to Storytell— UX Case Study

Project Contributers: Kevin Park

Role: Product Designer

Timeline: Spring 2021, 10 Weeks

Overview

A redesign of Instagram Stories to optimize a users time spent on the app when scrolling through stories while also allowing users to better engage with their “close friends” activity in a time-efficient manner.

The Problem

Users sometimes have a difficult time finishing viewing all their stories because they:

1. Don’t care or have the time to go through all of them
2. And, they only care about content from their close friends.

Result

Through analysis from interviews and user testing, Close Friends Stories as placed on the home page for quick and easy access. Regular Stories were moved and placed onto their own new page, with the entry point displayed as the new icon placed at the top.

Final Mockup of Instagram Stories Redesign

Introduction

Instagram stories — a quick and easy way to share moments and experiences for up to 24 hours. This slideshow reel allows users to go live, post about their daily lives, take polls and answer questions, or even promote their own brand or business work.

However, whats the use of adding to your story if nobody will ever see it? Or perhaps, maybe, the only story I wanna see, are the ones I only care about.

With the number of stories being posted on the platform often surpassing the number of regular posts being posted, users often don’t have the time, nor patience, to tap through each and every story. Rather, users merely have the time to quickly swipe through, looking for their close friends, and see if they have posted or not.

Read along, as I take you through my journey to create a solution for optimized story viewing, balancing the importance of time efficiency and user engagement.

Where Instagram Stories fail to share their narrative

Exploring how users interact and engage with Instagram Stories

I interviewed a couple of my peers to get a better understanding of how they use and engage with Instagram Stories. From the results I was able to discover some key insights and trends:

1. Users tend to navigate to stories first — Stories are the first thing users see, thus it entices them to begin there.
2. Users only watch a few stories — Users know whose stories and content they want to watch.
3. Users don’t reach the end of their feed or finish watching all stories — Users don’t have the time to watch all posts and stories.
4. Users quickly tap through stories without really looking at the content — Users don’t care about content not from their close friends.

Conclusively, I was able to summarize the People Problem as users who desired to view stories, go through them quickly, and finish them quickly, but couldn’t do so because:

1. They didn’t have the time nor patience to go through the stories to efficiently fully engage their interest to finish them all, and…
2. Users don’t care about content from users that aren’t their close friends.

Redesign Proposals

Brainstorming, brainstorming, brainstorming…

I recruited two creative and aspiring designers to help me brainstorm possible solutions.

Pictured left to right: Sally Han, Kevin Park (me), & Becky Han

After the intensive 3 hour brainstorming session, we were able to distill the results into 6 distinct solutions, shown below:

When evaluating the six solutions, I resorted to using the SWOT method to identify the strengths and weaknesses for each solution.

From the research, I looked at the feasibility and impact of each solution and was able to develop three low-fidelity screens:

Feature 1: Close Friends Stories

This feature had high feasibility and medium impact because it would be:

• Fairly simple to implement another row of stories (i.e., directly below current stories)
• But, would clutter the home page even more.
• Moreover, though it allows users to view stories they only care about, it reduces the users interest in other content.

Feature 2: Stories — Vertical Scroll Page

This feature had high feasibility and high impact because it

• First, declutters home page.
• Allows stories to have its own page which may encourage users to stay on it (less distraction from other features).
• Vertical scrolling fashion allows users to quickly sift back and forth between stories. Vertical scroll has been known to be “addicting” in the sense that users will be more curious about the next content and stay on the more, boosting users to go through all content.

Feature 3: Friend’s Activity

This feature had high feasibility and medium impact because this feature

• Doesn’t really solve the solution to quick viewing
• But, does offer the user a way of viewing new stories that they would not usually want to see, encouraging user engagement.

Feature I decided to proceed with.

Edited Feature 3 Low Fidelity screen

I ultimately decided to proceed with Feature 3, after implementing a close friends stories above the “Friends” and “Your Page” tab (as seen in the second screen).

The “Friends Activity” feature utilizes a quick way to see your “close friends” stories while also seeing the content they engage in.

I hypothesized that this would be a good feature to address my People Problem because it:

1. Allows a user to see what they want to see (content from their close friends) while giving them the opportunity to explore other content, as friends may share common interest. This way of exploring new content is more engaging as there may exist a higher chance that your friends interest will also spike your own interest, and…
2. It finally utilizes a more efficient way of seeing your personalized content because it eliminates the need to aimlessly click or swipe through uninteresting content.

Medium Fidelity Screens

Hierarchy Diagram

I used a hierarchy diagram to better illustrate my selected feature in relation to the app as a whole.

To explain why my feature fits in this diagram, I decided that as the feature “Friends” contains the activity of your close friends and their interaction with stories, it made most sense for me to place the feature within the Activity Page.

Moreover, the Close Friends Stories are also placed in this page. Before, I had contemplated whether I should place the stories within the Home Page but decided that it would:

• Clutter the home page even more than it already is, and…
• Would take away the primary use of Instagram — posts.

In comparison to the app’s primary use, this close friends feature (stories and activity) does not play that great or important of a role.

However, I do believe it helps:

1. Increase the user’s experience with the app and
2. Increases engagement.

But, because this feature focuses on stories and not posts (the primary use), its role is complimentary.

Explorations

It was time to create and develop more sophisticated and thought out flows for my selected feature.

Six aspects of the product were created to develop solutions.

Flow 1

Exploration through Activity page

Pros:

• Easily accessible close friends story.
• Can also see friends activity on same page.
• Can directly see stories friends are watching.

Cons:

• User must frequently visit Activity Page in order for this feature to be effective.

Flow 2

Exploration through Profile page

Pros:

• Close Friends Activity page is clear and focused.
• Can see close friends stories quickly.
• Friends activity easily accessbile and available.

Cons:

• Instagram automatically opens on the home page therefore user must go to profile page and then swipe down.
• User may not visit profile page often.

Flow 3

Exploration through new “Stories” page and Activity page

Pros:

• Close Friends Stories directly on home page — allows for quick access and is efficient.
• Stories are in vertical scroll which may increase engagement and decrease time spent viewing stories.
• Suggested stories are shown at the end give users more relevant suggestion base on close friends’ activity.

Con:

• Many icons on home page, which make it cluttered or could cause confusion.

Flow 4

Exploration through Discover page

Pros:

• Can see general content of many stories at once
• Integrates smoothly with pre-existing UI

Cons:

• Entry point is through Explore Page — user may not click through Explore Page often
• Not immediately visible — user may forget about the feature or find it difficult to find

Flow 5

Exploration through revamped Activity page

Pros:

• Not cluttery
• UI format is more engaging than Flow 1

Con:

• Tapping through stories may be slow
• Additional clicks needed to reach Close Friends Page

User Testing

It was now time, to conduct another round of user testing. The objective of this round of testing were to:

• Identify efficiency of user flow between each flow
• Identify pain points with user engagement and time spent on app
• Identify user confusion with flow, icons, ui, and user experience

Users were categorized into three groups based on their experience and familiarity with the Instagram app.

1. The Influencer — user who uses Instagram frequently, post stories often.
2. The Casual — user who uses Instagram occasionally to catch up with friends and will post here and there.
3. The Noob — Posts once a year.

The users in the study were presented with three different High-fidelity screens:

Prototype 1

User flow of Prototype 1

Prototype 2

User flow of Prototype 2

Prototype 3

User flow for Prototype 3

The results after conducting user research showed overwhelming popularity for the feature where close friends stories were displayed on the Home page.

“Having the close friends story on the home page, where it was directly accessible was highly convenient in terms of reducing time spent on the app.”

“I liked how the close friends stories were on the homepage, as it prioritized them, as I, myself, also only watch stories from my friends.”

Moreover, users tended to appreciate the use of a vertical scroll to view stories, as they felt flows that had the vertical scroll were the most interactive and engaging.

“The 2nd and 3rd prototype, with the vertical scroll story function were the most engaging.”

Final Prototype

Upon deciding on the features for the final prototype, I took into consideration the results from my user testing. As such, close friends stories were placed on the home page for quick and easy access. Stories were placed into their own new page, with the entry point as the new icon placed at the top. I ended up changing the design of the vertical scroll display, because I realized that the aspects of the previous design was too small, therefore limiting the user’s ability to post or capture a photo or video. The new design displays the content better and better recognizes the original function of an Instagram Story.

All photos used courtesy of unsplash.com

Conclusion

Instagram is a leading social networking platform that allows individuals to socialize through photos and videos, all the while being able to “Capture and Share the World’s Moments.” The launch of Instagram Stories in 2016, offered users a multitude of ways to capture and share, not only the world’s, but also their own moments. I hope my redesign of Instagram Stories allows a new engaging way for users to share their moments, as everyone has a story to tell.

Special thanks Trisha and Ishika, and the rest of the Intro to DPD course staff, for guiding me through this process of developing my first ever case study.

This is a case study for Introduction to Digital Product Design class taught at Cornell University. I am in no way affiliated with Instagram.