Let’s Add Albums to Instagram

A Design Proposition

The other day I was out touring San Francisco with a friend. Normally in my outings, I only get one good photo for the entire day, which I then upload to Instagram. During this past trip, however, I snapped 5 photos that I really liked and wanted to post them all. But posting more than one photo at a time is, well, frowned upon in the Instagram community. So instead, I uploaded one picture per day and 5 days later, had all my favorite pictures from that day posted- but to me, it seemed to lose its significance.

How often do you hear people saying, “Which photo do you think is better to upload to Instagram? This one or this one?” People go on trips, attend parties, go on a night out. They take photos and want to share them without cluttering others’ newsfeeds.

This is where I came up with the idea for a new feature, which I’ve named ‘Instagram Collections’.

The feature would allow horizontal scrolling between multiple photos (with a limit of 5) posted by the same person. Each photo would still have its own location, likes, and comments, but would be condensed into one card.

Instagram already employs a version of this in its Sponsored Content, but this is not yet available to users.

By adding Collections to the newsfeed, however, I was presented with this design flaw. This is what the action bar under the photo would look like with the newly-added indicator dots.

The indicator dots and the 3-dot menu icon were confusing when appearing side-by-side. I looked at Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) to see the icon they use to signify menu. Facebook uses an downward-facing arrow, which would work well here. However, I tweaked its rotation, instead making it an upward-facing arrow (since Instagram’s menu appears from the bottom of the screen). The new action bar looks like this:

Adding Collections to the newsfeed would look something like this:

I refrained from adding a collection name on the first photo in keeping with the stripped down approach Instagram embodies. The photo location and likes/comments fade between each photo and users can comment on individual photos as they normally would.

The photo uploading process would remain similar to its current form but modified for multiple photos. Users would select multiple photos, edit each photo individually, then upload them together to a collection. Users would be able to add on to an existing collection (if they haven’t reached the 5 photo max) or simply make a new one.

This feature would allow Instagram to evolve from being a one-upload-at-a-time platform to one that allows users to create a timeline of an event.

Please make this happen, Instagram. Boomerang is cool, but I want to upload a collection of photos.

Would love to hear any comment or suggestions. You can also visit my other work here.