Shahvir Sarkary

Instagram Case Study

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2022

Instagram
Instagram

A lightweight solution for impromptu hangouts with friends on Instagram. The winning project in NYC design competition.

Personal Case Study

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CONTEXT

Current Landscape

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Image of coffee being poured into a mug
Image of coffee being poured into a mug

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Make Instagram, Instagram Again.

This shift has caused backlash and started a wave of petitions to make IG a place where we originally connected with our friends..

Area of Opportunity

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Image of coffee being poured into a mug
Challenge Brief

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Make Instagram, Instagram Again.

This shift has caused backlash and started a wave of petitions to make IG a place where we originally connected with our friends.

Challenge Brief
Challenge Brief
Challenge Brief

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Long Term Vision with an Area of Opportunity

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INSIGHTS

Impromptu Meetups as a Way to Foster Deeper In-person Connections

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Current way of planning impromptu meetups

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PAIN POINTS

Pain points of the host

→ Choosing the right people is an art

→ Risk feeling rejected if plans fall out

→ Having to engage in lots of back and forth to coordinate the group

Pain points of Attendees

→ People feel obligated to attend when the host adds them into a group chat

→ Group chats are messy and make it difficult to follow important updates

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3 Challenges to Solve

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Design Principles

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PROCESS & TRAJECTORY

Picking the Right Surface

We wanted to fit solution into an existing system - stickers compared to other features:

  1. Have a low touch interactions that feels casual

  2. Are lightweight and easy to create

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Designing a lightweight solution

After picking Stories and Stickers as the entry point, our first step was to learn the visual language that existed for stickers

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Explorations

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Image of coffee being poured into a mug

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Lowering the Social Pressure

Manually picking people takes time..

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Gathering Interest from the right audience

With impromptu hangouts, we wanted to give greater flexibility on who could see your audience beyond just the binary of close friends or everyone. Within the custom option, we wanted to reduce the friction in picking people that are both close to you personally as well as physically and have done so by thinking through the suggestion algorithm.

Gathering Interest from the right audience

With impromptu hangouts, we wanted to give greater flexibility on who could see your audience beyond just the binary of close friends or everyone. Within the custom option, we wanted to reduce the friction in picking people that are both close to you personally as well as physically and have done so by thinking through the suggestion algorithm.

Gathering Interest from the right audience

With impromptu hangouts, we wanted to give greater flexibility on who could see your audience beyond just the binary of close friends or everyone. Within the custom option, we wanted to reduce the friction in picking people that are both close to you personally as well as physically and have done so by thinking through the suggestion algorithm.

Image of coffee being poured into a mug

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Image of coffee being poured into a mug
Image of coffee being poured into a mug
Image of coffee being poured into a mug

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Rethinking RSVPs

Inviting people, especially to a last-minute hangout, comes with a lot of social anxiety. We decided to frame hangouts more as gathering interest than a formal invite and it's apparent from the design of the sticker to the wording on the CTA.

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Clear communication for messy events

Pain Points of Group Chats Today

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Pinning What’s Important (Final Design)

Pinning the most important messages help users to navigate through the usual cluttered and spammed group chat.

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Some Explorations

As we explored the DM space we found several areas of opportunity to make the experience feel more impromptu.

Image of coffee being poured into a mug

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Image of coffee being poured into a mug

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Image of coffee being poured into a mug

FINAL SOLUTION

Creation, Curation & Communication

CONCLUSION

Success Metrics

Our North Star metric is the impact on user behavior.
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We are looking at whether the new sticker feature is changing user behavior of planning and hosting more in-person events on Instagram.


Additional sucess metrics to consider:

  1. Adoption rate: The percentage of users who are willing to try the new feature. Hitting our goal to build a high-adoption feature that feels lightweight and easy to use.

  2. Engagement rate: The amount of time that users spend using the feature.

  3. User feedback: We are sharing this with our network to collect and analyze user feedback to understand how users feel about the new feature.

  4. Impact on business metrics: Finally, we are also considering how the new sticker feature is impacting business metrics such as ad revenue or user acquisition. If the feature is driving more engagement and usage, it could lead to increased monetization opportunities.

Shahvir Sarkary

© 2023

Shahvir Sarkary

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