User Research Concept: Instagram Creator Portal
Role: User Researcher and Product Designer (3 months)
Overview & Problem: Like many instagram users, I enjoy posting and building my profile to engage with brands to influence one of their products and generate them revenue, all while building my own brand and generating my own revenue. What is this called? Influencing! In fact, this year Instagram has announced that it wants to change the app's focus to 4 main concepts, one of them being the 500,000 influencers on the platform.
However, reaching out to brands often leaves one ghosted, and when you do receive messages from some, how do we know it isn't a scam? I've received a number of messages from small brands but hesitate to reply because I don't want to give my personal information to a potential scammer.
Additionally, because there are so many influencers today, the fierce competition makes it difficult for these individuals to be scouted out by brands. I used to work at a startup called Sportshi and whenever we were looking for influencers to partner with, we would struggle immensely. We would simply DM random individuals, hear back from a small number of them, and conversations would be so disorganized & get lost inside the entirety of the Direct Messaging area.
Honing down & identifying the problem:
Starting hypothesis: Instagram influencers struggle to find brands who are authentic and safe, while brands struggle to find influencers in an organized and easy manner on the app. Letting these struggles continue to play out feed into loss of engagement and declining daily in-app interactions.
With this, I put my hypothesis to the test by observing the attitudes and behaviors of both brands and influencers on Instagram.
Research:
Research
Market research
Research
User research
Instead of going the survey/interview route like I have done on a previous project, I wanted to base my user research for this project on observational research as surveys/interviews are not always viable during real world company design projects (e.g startups)) and I wanted to try something new :)
Let's see how accurate my hypothesis is...
Research Objective: I want to observe influencers and brands attitudes towards their process of joining campaigns and find key pain points in their journey. I want to achieve this by monitoring online conversations regarding the subject.
Observations & Affinity Mapping:
Summarized Insights:
After my research I found out that my hypothesis lacked mention of building genuine relationships and how time-consuming the collaboration process was.
Let's build a solution!
Brainstorming:
Narrowing down using SWOT Analysis:
My Decision:
I decided to go with an in-app portal due to the time-saving and quick process that is offered to brands and influencers, and to encourage other instagram users to join the community of creating your own business/brand or becoming an influencer. Furthermore, the portal will match based on similar campaign interests and criteria to foster streamlined connections, and will require an application to sign on to offer authenticity & safety.
If my solution involved contracting, payment, etc - I would have designed this on the web-app since these more timely interactions might be desired on a bigger screen.
Lastly, a "messaging templates" learning module will be added to the already existing professional dashboard of the Instagram app.
Initial Approach & Sketching:
Design Decisions: Below are some iterations of interfaces I had to work through and narrow down through the use of intentional discussion. I’d be happy to explain all of my design decisions and insights into how I made them!
Wrapping up
Final Prototypes
Wrapping up
What I Learned
Align UX strategy with business goals.
Since this project was geared towards an already existing platform, I had to take into account their values and goals while structuring my ideas and wireframes. I don’t want to build a feature just to build one, but rather understand a business problem and figure out a UX and design strategy to solve it and make users happy. AKA, Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken :)
Constraints can actually be a good thing:
When deciding how I wanted my product to utilize a technical algorithm to “match” potential users, I kept in mind my previous CS background to think from a development standpoint. The constraints I learned from my own coding ability limited my design, IN A GOOD WAY. It prevented me from making an unattainable product and keep things simple and clean.
Helloooo, where’s my team?!:
After working alone on this project, I gained a new appreciation for working on a team LOL. Autonomy is great, but when I work with others our product’s success is optimized as teammates constantly challenge each other’s UX decisions.