Case study: How I added a new feature on Instagram
By: Caroline Graver
Tags: UX Design, Case Study, Features, Prototyping, Instagram

For this new project of my bootcamp, I had to work on an existing and highly adopted app and incorporate a new feature into the existing product. Instagram is one of my favorite apps and I spend a lot of time daily to scroll my thread and watch stories. I was very excited to work on it and see what I can suggest based on UX research.

The client : Instagram

Instagram is the 6th most used social network in the world. It highlights the photos and videos posted by its users through posts or stories. Now, the app is mainly used to follow friends and favorite influencers in areas such as fashion, beauty, sport, cooking etc…

Since its launch in 2010, more than 50 billon photos have been shared on Instagram and more than 100 million photos and videos are posted daily. The user is exposed to a colossal volume of content.

A loved app with some defaults

I went to meet them to find out more about their uses and to know what they think about the app.

Gains

Instagram is an app they like very much with a positive image.

Thanks to it, they can take their mind off the stressful news.

It is a source of inspiration : they can find products to buy, places to visit during their holidays, fitness exercice to do at home or cooking recipes.

Pains

Instagram doesn’t reflect the reality

They can get lost in the overflow of content

The can’t easily find a post that interests them, including places they would like to visit later.

A new feature using geolocation

Geolocation is very important on Instagram : the posts using geolocation get 79% more commitment.

Users can use geolocation when they post a story or on their feed. They like to use it to keep track, to give specific information to their followers and inspire them.

Adding an interactive map would be consistent with highly used geolocation on Instagram.

Instagram’s competitors using interactive map

To be able to make a relevant proposal in line with the users needs, I looked how the competitors use an interactive map.

Direct competitors

Facebook : User can use geolocation on this posts but there is no interactive map.

Snapshat : The Snap Map allows user to see where his friends are, to share his location with them and to watch stories made next door or at the end of the world.

Indirect competitors

Flick : It’s an app to share professional photos. An interactive map allows to see photos taken at a specific point on it.

Mapstr : The app allows the user to visualize his good addresses and ideas all on one only map.

Swarm : The app allows the user to keep track to places he has been to. When he is somewhere, he can check in and a pin is added to his personal map.

Market positioning

Instagram is rather positioned as an entertaining app oriented towards the community. Adding this map could allow it to strengthen its personal and interactive dimension. This way, the app would have a real practical utility to the user and wouldn’t be only a source of inspiration.

Emily, the daily user of Instagram

Goal

She browses her thread and her stories to find nice places to share good moments with her friends.

Motivation

When she sees an interesting post, she takes a screenshot to find it later.

Pain

But sometimes she looses it and has to do a Google search with tag words to find it again.

The problem to solve

How our feature might help Emily save places of interest in Instagram without having to use alternative ways ?

The concept : pin places on a map

The concept of this new feature is to pin a place of interest from a post or a story to make it appear on a personal interactive map.

An understandable and visible feature

Before designing the map, I wanted to implement the feature at a visible and understandable place for the user.

Low-fi prototype with the feature implementation

When geolocation is used on a post or a story, a pin appears below the photo to allow the user to pin the place to his map. He can access his map on his profil clinking on an icon add next to the preexistent ones.

When the user looks at his map, he sees a map with different color pins. Each color belongs to a category to more visibility as you can see on the prototype below.

High-fi prototype with the feature implementation

The prototype

Discover the feature through high-fi prototype

Iteration on categories awarding

After the testing session made between the two version of the prototype, I have refined categories awarding.

On the first version, the user was only warned that the place had been added on his map.

Mid-fi prototype before iteration

On the second version, the user is invited to give a category to the place before pinning it.

High-fi prototype after iteration

I added a red pin to show to the user that the place has been added to his map. It recalls the heart which turns red when the user likes a post.

What’s next ?

I would like to keep improving this feature by connecting it with the interactive map of the past stories section.

When the user would post using geolocation, the place would appear on his map. This way, the user would have a global vision of the places he have been. This feature would make sense for the users who post travel photos on Instagram.

What I learnt

For this new challenge I had to use the Lean UX method which consists in going quick and iterate. Each prototype version was tested by users and this feedback was really precious to improve the feature and go into the details. This way, I focused on an only problem to solve. I had to make choices and put some aspects away to be efficient and don’t loose time on useless details.