Why I think Snapchat new UI works!
I am a fan of Snapchat and there’s no doubt whenever I suggest someone to use Snapchat, the first thing I hear is “oh I dont know how to use it!” After a week or two no one leaves Snapchat! Thats how addictive and fun it becomes if used with a group of friends who are comfortable sharing their life and maintaining streaks.
New Update : Now Snapchat has tabs under Friends section where you can swipe to check for Stories and groups 😃
With the recent update the world got mad! I also took sometime to get used to the new update but I was shocked to see so many users going and signing the petition!
1.2 million people signed and it made Snapchat to publish an answer which is here : https://www.change.org/p/snap-inc-remove-the-new-snapchat-update/responses/40722
This is my thought, observations and judgement as a user and product person on why the new snapchat update happened and why it behave like this! Recently we had a discussion in Hackathon Hackers (https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackers) and I feel writing a blog is the right wat to do this :)
In my couple of years of small experience, I am fortunate enough to work on different social products or at least study them as much as I can in terms of why a feature exist, why is it done in that particular way and TBH Snapchat is always an edge case! Even after having an odd UX it still works!
Snapchat introduced Stories! Stories was a new concept and user require to understand and learn what it is! Snapchat cracked stories! They invented and rocked it!
If you by any chance have read the book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” you will be able to understand the point I am trying to make.
Snapchat needed a specific screen for stories where user can go and click and understand how Stories work! Users can focus on what their friends and people they follow are posting. With time Snapchat added featured content and there’s no doubt it got cluttered.
If you have read Hooked, Snapchat require a hook model. Snaps are fun and so do stories and so they had them segregated as users require a learning curve. Thanks to Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram copying up stories and now the learning curve is not required. Stories are so common that users get them at a glance and know the click to action to what will happen!
Now talking of the new UI and why I loved it!
The new UI is perfect. “I know a lot of people are going to laugh 🙈 at the word perfect 😜”
Why I say its perfect is The Discover tab is less cluttery! It now has a single purpose ie. to show content and add discoverability to local creators, hit stories, famous snapchatters and the content snapchat create with brands.
The Profile page is so much better! Showing everything at a single place because everyone end of the day wants to know how many users watched the story they created. I am glad there are no likes to stories 😂🙏🏻
If you are a user who sends a snap to 4 or 5 friends together this update is 10x better! The top 8 friends come in a stack and then you can scroll around the list. Selecting common friends is so much quicker and better!
With the updated Bitmojis the new UI in the friends section looks good. I liked the streaks on the right though 😛
The UX is hard but for a new user its much better from the previous update in the sense that they know on the right you get famous stories, on the left its all about your friends and the conversations you make and center is camera!
So why all this hassle? Why Snapchat is not rolling back and why Snapchat says that the new update is working? As a product person I will try my best to put my thoughts on this :
Having a conversation or initiating one is tough. There is a lot of friction. Look at your Facebook friends. You probably have hundreds of friends and see how many you talk to? That what Snapchat is trying to improve here.
Take this scenario : You get a snap, you open it and most of the time you will instantly reply back but same never happens with Stories as we generally dont feel like texting back on stories thats the friction Snapchat is trying to remove as they instanly now take you to the message box!
Every friend is present on the Friends panel (left end) and as you watch a story you move to the user index and that is what I think is impressive as now you can instantly text them back and as per my own personal usage it happened!
Snapchat are also making the friends section smarter. They are predicting based on your usage pattern who you are probably going to text by reordering the friends you talked to!
Going to the discover tab it open an opportunity to so many snapchat creators/celebrities and to snapchat itself as now they can show the content well and as you scroll since the stories have space they play if that interest you, you end up watching then which is a big plus for me at least!
The new UI added a bit of hassle but as a person who looks at the product and the future plan I feel the new update is better. As the users get used to they will feel more hooked, The conversation will start happening and you will enjoy the crazy real life content snapchat makes people to add as its all real time!
I know its not the best piece of writing but I just tried explaining what I think 😃 Looking forward to see if my thinking and observations are correct. Very open to talk about it and correcting errors and learning about if I missed any detail 😄
I am also building my new app which is a game and a chat app is under design phase which is also meant to improve conversations (Okay not much details right now)
If you are interested here is what the game is about : Launching very soon. The game is a simple concept and is meant to spread happiness ❤️
Clap for it, if you find my observations right 🙈 . Do share your views in the comments and share if you feel someone will like to read this 😋
I am in my final semester and would love to work as a product innovator or as an iOS Developer in case you have a job 😊 or you can refer me I will be grateful 😍😘
