Instagram offers a broad platform where people can connect with friends, share unique and interesting image/video content, and interact with other users through a number of fun and useful tools. Although Instagram is generally considered one of the more well-encompassed social media platforms, one area where it is lacking is with content re-sharing. Platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and even Facebook all offer options for reposting other users’ content which opens the possibility for users to have their content seen by a much broader audience beyond that of their immediate following. Even for other users, this is beneficial towards their overall experience because they will in turn be exposed to a much wider range of content that they will likely enjoy or be interested in.
Currently, Instagram offers some options for re-sharing content; however, this only includes sharing posts to your story or through direct messages rather than directly to the main feed. This generally results in significantly less reach, as users typically do not pay as much attention to story posts and are less likely to engage with them.
This poses a significant barrier for users and leads us to the following Problem Space: Users have a limited reach on Instagram making it very difficult to have their content seen by people beyond their own personal following without using paid promotion.
From this we formulated the following People Problem: Users, particularly business owners and public figures, want to increase the potential reach of their posts, so that their content can be seen beyond their immediate following, but they can’t do that because…
- Users typically do not pay much attention to content re-shared on stories, and when posts are re-shared through direct message, the reach is still very limited.
- Users focus most of their attention towards posts in their feed, but on the main feed, Instagram only shows content from accounts that a user is following.
Understanding The Problem
From my user research, I took away the following key insights:
- Users like to re-share content they enjoyed or found interesting.
- Users are less likely to engage with content on someone’s story because they feel there is already a precedent to just look through users’ stories and not engage as much.
- Users generally do not feel inclined to view posts re-shared to someone’s story because it requires them to interrupt their current flow and especially when it comes to videos or reels, they have no idea and no way to gauge if they will even enjoy the content.
- A lot of users want to increase the reach of their content but are not willing to use paid promotion to achieve this.
- Almost all users would appreciate more diverse content that they would likely be interested in.
Finding a Solution
Initial Brainstorm:
I recruited my friends Shadie and Josh to help me brainstorm some potential solutions for this problem space. From our brainstorm session we were able to narrow down our ideas into 3 possible features:
- Reposting to the explore page — Users can re-share posts from other accounts to their followers’ explore pages. This approach was intended to diversify Instagram by allowing the main feed to be where users find all content from accounts they follow and modifying the explore page to also include content users would like to re-share with their followers.
- Interest score on story reposts — Users are asked to rate their interest in a post after viewing it from someone’s story in order to help future viewers to be able to gauge their potential interest in the re-shared content. This approach was intended to boost user engagement on content re-shared through Instagram Stories, since we found that many users tend to ignore them or don’t feel inclined to navigate away from stories to view a completely separate post.
- Give users the option to post to the main feed or the explore page — Users are allowed to choose between two options when creating a new Instagram post: (1) have the post appear on the main feed to their followers as usual or (2) have their content posted to the explore page where less of their own followers will see it, but more new users will see and engage with it. This approach was intended to provide users with an alternative option for expanding the reach of their content without having to use paid promotion or relying on other users to share their content.
Creating a More Effective Re-Sharing Experience
At this point, I was able to narrow down the primary issue to be that users were certainly interested in re-sharing content; however, if not presented in the proper context, users would be less likely to engage with re-shared posts. Based on this knowledge, I decided to proceed with the first approach introduced in the previous section — Reposting to the explore page.
Interaction Design
The first step in fleshing out this idea was to determine what features would be required. I compiled the following list of needed features:
- Option for users to share the original post
- Specify whether to share via direct message, to the explore page, and/or to the story.
- Option to add caption/message to re-shared content
- Send button: re-shares the post in whichever way the user specified
- Followers view re-shared post on explore page
From this I went on to create a preliminary list of content requirements, and compiled all this information to begin outlining some potential user flows.
Where it all fits in
The next step in my design process was to determine how I would fit my new feature into Instagram’s current framework. To do this, I put together the following Information Hierarchy Diagram that illustrates my proposed feature in relation to the app as a whole.
I decided to place my new feature within the already-present “Share” submenu on Instagram. I decided to place the feature here because I felt it made the most sense to place a new reposting feature in the same location where all current re-sharing functionality can be found. I felt that this would make it easiest for users to find the new feature as they would naturally see it in their normal user flow.
Initial Low Fidelity Design
The next step in my design process was to create a simple sketch (seen below) to provide a general guideline of how I wanted the feature to look and be implemented.
External Inspiration
Prior to designing my medium fidelity mockups, I decided to research some other apps with features similar to the one I was looking to implement into Instagram. I looked at how they integrated the feature into their app design and took inspiration for my own designs. My primary inspirations for my own designs came from Twitter and Facebook.
Medium Fidelity Mockups
I then went on to create 5 different medium fidelity mockups, all with various pros and cons. After creating my designs, I analyzed the tradeoffs between them and narrowed them down to 3 designs which I chose to move forward with.
The first of these was most similar to the current Instagram re-share flow and allowed users to select multiple re-sharing options at once, a valuable but often under-appreciated feature.
The second design I chose to move forward with took inspiration from the Facebook re-share feature. This design is beneficial because it separates sharing options in a clear way, allows users to select multiple re-sharing options simultaneously, and has a larger text box to encourage users to add their own caption. However, one significant drawback about this design is that it doesn’t draw as much attention towards our new feature for reposting to the explore page because the option is somewhat hidden initially.
The third, and final, design I chose to move forward with is one which took significant inspiration from the Twitter retweet feature. Some major upsides of this design are that our new feature is clearly displayed in the second screen of our user flow, and the repost preview (seen in the 3rd and 4th screen) provides a much more immersive experience for users and will make them more inclined to add their own caption to a re-shared post. However, the primary drawbacks are that this design is significantly different from the current Instagram sharing layout, and this design does not allow for users to select multiple sharing options at once.
High Fidelity Mockups
After designing my medium fidelity mockups, I created a UI kit to include specific styles and design guidelines for my high fidelity mockup. In doing this I had to analyze the current Instagram app design and use their design specifications so that my final mockups would fit well within the current Instagram design framework. Using the style guidelines of my UI kit, I was able to redesign the 3 previous mockups into high-fidelity mockups.]
Prototyping and User Testing
Upon completing the high fidelity mockups for my new feature, the next step was to create prototypes that demonstrates how users would interact with the different flows. The goal of this is to identify user behavioral trends, determine which flow is most effective, and add/modify our final mockup to best suit the user.
I wrote a User Testing Protocol and gathered 3 peers of mine to test my 3 different flows and provide feedback for me based on their user experience. From this I gathered 4 main key findings:
- Users are more likely to add a caption when using prototype 2 or 3: Users are more likely to forget to add a caption when using prototype 1 because the text box is significantly smaller, only appears after they have selected a sharing option, and is not central on the screen.
- Users are most inclined to share a post to explore and with friends (via DM) simultaneously when using prototype 2: When sharing a post to the explore page, users are more likely to consider also adding friends to share with directly when the different types of selection options are presented distinctly from each other.
- Sharing process takes longest when users use prototype 2 or 3: Users are most familiar with the layout in prototype 1, so they are intuitively able to figure out how to use the new feature the easiest.
- Users sometimes don’t initially find the option for sharing a post to explore/story when using prototype 2: The tab for this selection is relatively small, and it is not initially clear what it is used for.
Final Changes and Additions
Using these key findings, I redesigned all 3 flows to account for the various issues raised.
I redesigned the first prototype by moving the text box to the top of the sharing sub-menu and made it bigger so that it is more clearly noticeable to the user in order to ensure that they don’t forget to add a caption simply because they didn’t notice the option.
I modified the second prototype by removing the text box from the sharing menu until a user selects sharing options for the post. This is intended to draw more attention to the two tabs used for selection of sharing options in order to ensure that the user can find all sharing options and eliminate confusion.
For the third prototype, I modified the flow by replacing the screen for selecting a sharing option with two separate tabs that present the different types of selection options distinctly from each other. This is intended to encourage the user to consider sharing a post directly with friends simultaneously with sharing to the explore page.
In the end, I chose to use Modified Prototype 3 for my proposed solution to the people problem. Of the key findings I found from my user testing, I felt that this prototype best caters towards natural user behavior. This design provides a post preview when adding a caption which gives users a more immersive feel for what their repost will look like, making them more inclined to want to add a message or caption. Furthermore, this design improves upon the original prototype by allowing users to re-share posts publicly and privately with friends simultaneously while presenting the options for doing so in a distinct manner. Finally, this design does not present any confusion in finding the different sharing options because the initial screen in the sharing sub-menu only shows the tabs for sharing selection making it clear where the user needs to click first.