Sharing Your Personalized Content
Instagram Exchange
Exchange is a feature within Instagram that allows users to share their unique, personalized explore page algorithm with others to allow them to learn about one another based on their recommended content.
Time Frame:
January - May 2024
Team:
Teddy Koutsoftas
Role:
Research, User Testing, UX/UI Design
Skills/ Tools:
Figma, Adobe Suite
Research Question
How can we take advantage of how well social media platforms know who we are and utilize this to build relationships?
Trends
In order to frame the problem for the project, trends in today’s society were identified to focus on.
Mentors at Instagram
I was lucky enough to connect with two designers at Instagram who gave me amazing critiques and feedback throughout the entire process. I learned a great deal from their professional insights and was able to produce a product would be very accurate to what Instagram would make.
“Instagram used to be about personal sharing, now it has migrated to all interest based content.”
“Form identity, share identity”
“Create something that is familiar to users by utilizing the design system Instagram has established.”
Wireframes + User Testing
Final Wireframes
Starting an Exchange
Sharing your explore page with Exchange is simple and snaps to the pattern of sharing any other piece of content in Instagram.
Receiving an Exchange
Receiving an Exchange brings you to DMs, a flow that users expect to see when something is shared within Instagram.
Accessing Sent/ Received
Within the settings of Instagram you would be able to find the accounts you have shared your explore page with, accounts that have shared their explore page with you, and how long they are viewable for. You could also access this information from the user profile within DMs.
Discoverability
When Instagram releases a new feature, they will call it out in some way. While some call outs are extremely emphasized, others are more subtle such as “tooltips”.
Reflection
Overall I am happy with how the final product turned out. Practicing working within an established design system and following the rules of the brand was a great learning experience. Being such a design forward company, it was a pleasure working with Instagram’s branding and I believe I was able to successful understand and utilize the system.
Looking back I would have liked to have conducted more research with a bigger population. I was good with user testing and talking with a few specific people for feedback, but I never received input from a large group of people. This would have been helpful in proving the usefulness of the concept and in smaller design decisions.
Looking back I would have liked to have conducted more research with a bigger population. I was good with user testing and talking with a few specific people for feedback, but I never received input from a large group of people. This would have been helpful in proving the usefulness of the concept and in smaller design decisions.
