Idea: One-tap on Stories view to turn off Stories autoplay for 24 hours, or turn off autoplay in Settings (#110)

Purpose is to make easy to turn off autoplay if wanted either until changed or for 24 hours so still enables person to use autoplay later.

Start on the Stories view. Tap on “Autoplay On” which causes to “Autoplay Off for 24h.” Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

Snapchat today:

• Autoplay was implemented.
• I had suggested autoplay as an idea on January 7, 2016: https://medium.com/@djsherrets/idea-view-snapchat-stories-on-app-open-defaulting-to-ranked-stories-swipe-side-skips-to-next-9b84a72bd0fd. And as my #2 idea in my TechCrunch posted on February 13, 2016: http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/imagining-snapchats-future/.
• Some people have given feedback in Snapchat App Store reviews about not wanting autoplay for a number of reasons.

Proposed idea:

1. Start on the Stories view. Note there is text that says “Autoplay On” under the text “Stories.” Tap to make “Autoplay Off for 24h.” Off means tapping to view Person 1’s Story only plays that story and when done returns you to the Stories view.

Comments:

• Opportunity is to provide an option at the top of the Stories view to turn on or off autoplay. And if turned off, then autoplay could turn on the next day in the morning as a default, with the option in the settings page to turn off autoplay permanently.
• Alternatively, no option on the Stories page and only a setting to turn off autoplay that could be in the settings area.
• A reason to not do this is that autoplay is a useful feature for people to easily watch Stories.
• A reason to implement this is to try to solve for reasons why people choose to not autoplay.
• A reason to not implement this is that in general there’s a high level decision for Snapchat to make about what kind of product it is and how to serve its users, and perhaps providing a setting may complicate the question of the balance of the product design and implications for how people choose to use the product. This is a complicated question that is part of the considerations for why to implement autoplay anyway. For example, perhaps there’s some balance of a feeling of intimacy and control that requires having the ability to turn off autoplay.
• A reason to not implement is that more targeted options may make sense, such as in my idea I posted on January 7, 2016, included the ability to select specific people who you do not want to view their Stories in automatic playing.

Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

© 2016 D.J. Sherrets