Idea: 1 second interstitial showing name of person when autoplaying Snapchat Stories, or swipe left to next person or swipe down to see Stories list 4.7.2016 (#105)

Purpose is to help people see who the person is who is posting for the next story, as well as to enable the person to swipe left for next person or swipe down to close without viewing the Story at that time. Waiting one second (or however long the time is set for such as maybe 0.75 second) on the interstitial causes the Story to autoplay, or tap to skip the interstitial.

Start on Stories list, tap to view Person 2’s Story, tap to advance to Person 3’s interstitial then Person 3’s Story loads, then tap to advance to Person 4’s interstitial then swipe to Person 5 then swipe to Person 6 then tap to pass the interstitial to go to Person 6’s Story #1 then tap to #2, then swipe to Person 7’s interstitial then swipe down to close back to the Stories list. Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

Snapchat today:

• Snapchat launched autoplay of Stories with the ability to swipe left to go to the next person’s Story.
• With autoplay today on Snapchat, a story that hasn’t loaded yet shows the person’s name in the middle with a loading animation above that. A similar design could be used as an interstitial such as replacing the loading animation with the circular Story thumbnail.
• I posted my design for automatically playing Stories with swipe left to go to the next person’s Story on January 7, 2016, at https://medium.com/@djsherrets/idea-view-snapchat-stories-on-app-open-defaulting-to-ranked-stories-swipe-side-skips-to-next-9b84a72bd0fd and as the #2 design idea I included in my TechCrunch post on February 13, 2016, at http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/imagining-snapchats-future/.
• My design also included a setting to select people who would not have a person’s Story play automatically. That is an alternative that could be considered to implement.
• Note that there has been feedback in App Store reviews asking that Snapchat allow to turn off the automatically playing.
• Reasons for not wanting automatically playing include not wanting to show as having viewed certain people’s Stories. Reasons stated include not wanting to view that person’s Story at all, and not wanting to be one of the first people to view that person’s Story such as if there is a recent Story.
• Some feedback on the App Store has been that the autoplay goes to the next person so fast such that people don’t notice that the next Story has opened, and that looking to the upper left corner to see who posted the Story can cause to miss part of what the person posted such as a video.

Proposed idea:

1. Start on the Stories list. Tap on Person 2 to view Person 2’s Story.
2. Tap to advance which autoplays Person 3’s interstitial which includes the thumbnail of the last Story post by Person 3 as well as when that was posted and how many Stories were posted by that person, and after the designated time then the interstitial automatically goes away to show Person 3’s Story #1 of #1.
3. Then Person 4’s interstitial loads automatically because Person 3’s Story fully played. But you don’t want to view Person 4’s Story, so swipe left to go to Person 5’s interstitial, then swipe left to go to Person 6’s interstitial.
4. Then tap on Person 6’s interstitial to show Person 6’s Story #1 of #2.
5. Then tap to see Person 6’s Story #2 of #2.
6. Then tap which automatically plays Person 7’s interstitial. You don’t want to view Person 7’s interstitial, so swipe down to return to the Stories list. Note that the Stories you fully viewed show “Chat” and “Double tap to reply.”

Comments:

• Opportunity is to help people understand who posted the autoplaying Story.
• Each interstitial includes the thumbnail of the last posted Story to help the person viewing decide whether to view that Story or not.
• Reason for putting the person’s name on the interstitial towards the middle and a bit above that is to try to make the person’s name quickly visible given the person may be looking at the top or bottom or middle of the photo/video before the interstitial. The name is aligned so that the name starts from a consistent part of the interstitial so the person viewing knows where to look to see who posted.
• Tap to skip the interstitial could be a problem if the person accidentally taps too late and so skips the first story. So I would suggest no tap to skip the interstitial and instead focus on making the interstitial as brief as necessary.
• Alternatively, don’t show the number of posts in the Story on the interstitial. Purpose of including in the design is partly to be clear about how many Stories are available such as when autoplay goes to the next person’s Story interstitial.
• If there is a tap to skip interstitial, then perhaps that is because the time allowed for the interstitial is long enough that some people want to skip.
• Or if there is no tap to skip interstitial, then perhaps that is because the time allowed for the interstitial is brief enough that there isn’t time to skip.
• Provide a setting to turn on or off interstitial. Default is no interstitial, but there’s an ability to turn on for people such as who want to control which posts they see.

Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

© 2016 D.J. Sherrets