Case Study: Instagram — Add a feature
Individual project at Ironhack, W3
The Problem 😮
As soon as we were authorized to start with Instagram, we found our first stopper:
What new functionality can we implement on Instagram?
And yes, that was just the topic of that week but when we asked ourselves that question having our chosen app it was a great abyss. Mainly because on Instagram there is a great team that is dedicated precisely to looking for new functionalities, so, although a little lost we began to work on the bases, UX Research.
UX Research 🔍
We started our UX Research, generating a first Lean Survey Canvas to obtain more information about the apps that are used and the functionalities they provide:
We also generate a Lean UX Canvas to better focus the investigation and prepare a script with the objective of conducting interviews:
After 78 surveys and 12 interviews we saw that 87% of people casually use social media, and the content they upload is almost private to themselves, like a highlights archive.
We made our user persona, Sara Sánchez:
We generate a study of both functionality and aesthetics in different social networks as a competitive analysis:
In addition to using a SWOT to better understand the context of the app:
The Define Problem 🤔
After all the information that we have collected in the UX Research we saw that Instagram already covers the scanning part of casual users with its functionalities, however, the way in which they upload their content and it is offered is not completely useful for important trips, vacations or social events.
In this way, we do a quick brainstorming to project all the ideas we have:
In this way, we do a quick brainstorming to project all the ideas we have:
· Customizable filter for the home timeline
· A new format called Remix, located in the profile
Low-Fi & Mid-Fi 📝
The first thing we decide to do is a crazy 8 to quickly visualize the way in which we come up with different ways of structuring the new content within Instagram:
One of the advantages that we have when working in an existing app is that the brand identity, its colors and its style guide, so we limit ourselves to collecting that information to reflect it in a Style Tile that serves as a guide. when designing the new features:
After that we divided the work to move forward efficiently, one doing the Low-Fi and the other recreating the Hi-Fi interface since we had to emulate that of Instagram:
UI & HI-FI PROTOTYPE 🎨
Because we only have 1 week of time limit, there were tools that we did not use and it was interesting to make decisions as a team to face what we do use and what we do not use.
With the clear structure and current visuals of Instagram we generated the prototype:
Next Steps 👣
The next thing we had in mind was to be able to edit the timeline filters and the Remix covers in a more accessible way.
Learnings 📚
In this project we find several clear Stoppers:
-Enter an already created ecosystem and work with existing design principles
-Create new features in a live app that continually has updates where features are added
-The time limit and the organization required by the team to meet the deadlines
And, I believe, that we overcome each one of them well thanks to the internal collaboration of the team and the fluid communication both in ideas and in organization and distribution of tasks.
Thanks to the colleagues with whom I talked about different approaches to the product, to teachers who advised me when I felt lost and to all the people who guided me with the interviews, surveys and tests and especially thanks to Melissa that she knows as I do how challenging this project was for us that a priori we thought would be easier and it was by being inside that we began to find problems and solutions!
Finally, thank you for taking the time to read this case study.
Feel free to leave me a comment with feedback here or talk to me on LinkedIn.
