OVERVIEW:

The Brief:
This was a 3 hour design challenge to propose a new feature for a digital product I was already familiar with.

The Problem:
This idea was born out of my own frustrations and pain points within Instagram. I, like many others, use the app to find inspiration and ideas for everything from fashion to food to travel. There have been many instances when I’m traveling or planning a trip that I’ve recalled someone I follow sharing a bunch of cool or unique restaurants in the area I will be visiting. This typically leads me to their Instagram feed to recall what I saw and make note of restaurants I want to try on my trip. However, content on someone's feed is strictly organized by the date it was posted, so I often find myself scrolling through that person’s feed, clicking around, and manually noting or saving specific posts to find what I was looking for. This creates a lot of friction, constant clicking back and forth, and ultimately wastes a lot of time.

All of that being said, I have always wished there was an option to sort someone’s Instagram feed by location, rather than strictly chronologically.

The Solution:
This new feature allows users the option to organize someone’s Instagram feed by location, saving both time and frustration.

THE Process:

User Personas

I began by focusing on “the who” – in addition to myself, who else would find this feature useful? I started by brainstorming a bunch of different Instagram personas who I felt would benefit from a feature like this. Knowing that there were many types of users gave me the confidence that a feature like this would be worth pursuing. But for the purposes of this project, I decided to narrow and focus on one persona, “the food lover”, which is me.

Journey Mapping

I narrowed my focus to one specific use case and decided to build out a “current” and an “improved” user journey so I could visually look at how much I was (or wasn’t) simplifying things for the user with this new feature. Doing this allowed me to quickly see that a feature like this was indeed removing many frustrating steps for the user.

Visual Research

Before sketching any ideas, I did some high level visual research. I wanted to pull examples of other experiences that revolve around maps or location data. The goal when gathering this research was to see how others:

Organize and visualize pins on a map
Filter the places that show up on the map
Visualize cards with details of a specific place
Prioritize and simplify information of a specific place

Sketching & Wireframes

From this point, I started sketching ideas and ultimately decided to pursue a path to wireframe and present my idea.

Challenges & Opportunities

Fast Timeline:
As I mentioned above, the main challenge with this project was the timeline. I gave myself 3 hours to complete this prompt from beginning to end. The limited timeline was really an opportunity as well because it forced me to look at my process and prioritize how and where to divide my time. It also meant that the research would need to be very focused and somewhat surface level to meet the deadline.
Established Experience:
Instagram has been around since 2010 and it has a very established framework that users already know. I wanted to make sure this new feature fit into that framework naturally without causing any major redesigns to the platform as a whole. I chose the placement of this feature based on the current design, integrating it in a spot where users already know to click to view someone’s alternate content.
Existing Behaviors:
The great thing about this feature is that it doesn’t ask users to do anything new. Instagram already allows users to geotag and/or tag their posts, so this feature would work for past content as well as future content. No new post attributes needed.

FINAL NOTES & REFLECTION:

If given more time, much more research and exploration would go into how to bring this feature to life. Ideally, I would create several ways in and test it with users to find what way is smoothest and most intuitive.
Instagram already has some minor integrations with map providers elsewhere in the app, so it may lessen the development effort.
I also see lots of potential in how to filter a user’s content on the map. For example, a user might only be interested in seeing someone’s content from the last 5 years.