An Instagram Feature People Don’t Follow
Posting multiple photos with differing aspect ratios in an album.
The most frustrating thing about capturing photos on my phone is trying to decide whether to capture my photos/videos in portrait or landscape. I like to post all my photos from a trip or event in the same album, but instagram requires your photos to be at an aspect ratio of 4:5 and will crop them accordingly (cutting out a big chunk of your photo.)
Goal: “Erase user frustration and ease user experience by allowing users to upload both portrait and landscape images to an album without cropping or altering the ratio.
The current “Solution”: involves using some third party app (like VSCO, Kapwing, and Later to name a few) to add a padding to the photos so the transition can be smooth between slides.
My Solution: involves making posting photos with different aspect ratios possible within the Instagram app.
Mapping/Sketching
I spent a lot of time diving into the current process of posting an album/slideshow. The internet is littered with articles and forums from frustrated Instagram users trying to find ways to navigate this feature limitation. When I asked my friends, their responses were all along the lines of “ugh, it’s so annoying.” Why Instagram would want to limit its users in this way? I came to the conclusion that allowing for differing dimensions in photos could risk losing the smooth and consistent look of the interface. In brainstorming different solutions, I was sure to keep the design principle of consistency as a main focus of my design. I also wanted to be sure to incorporate the design principle of simplicity, to reduce user frustration.
My initial mapping and sketching produced several viable solutions (and several unusable ones.) I took the solutions I found to be the most promising and delved further into what these solutions might look like. Some of these solutions include:
- Rotate: when encountering a landscape photo or photo with an aspect ratio of 1.91:1, viewers are prompted to rotate their phones to view the entire photo. Caveat: takes user out of natural flow of swiping and sliding, violating the design principle of consistency.
- Hard Press: When encountering a photo that has been cropped by Instagram, the viewer is prompted to hard press the photo to view the entire photo. The photo is expanded as it is clicked and returns to normal size when released. Caveat: also disrupts the natural process and disturbs the consistency. Additionally, it may not be very likely that people would actually take the time to view the entire photo.
- Add Padding Within the App: This solution includes the option to maintain the original photo dimension size by simply adding the white padding around photos with a “pinch” motion. No third party app would be necessary, everything would take place within the app. Caveat: does this violate the design principle of consistency?
I decided to run with my last solution and flush out concerns with prototyping.
The concerns did present themselves, the main issue was that even though this solution solved for the issue of simplicity and ease of use, it violated the principle of consistency. If photo editors were able to decide how much white padding to add to each photo, the slideshow would certainly not look consistent. The solution to this would need to be an all or nothing, cropped photo or full original size with padding.
Testing
I polished my prototype and began my testing. I ran into a problem pretty early on with testing and this was that not all of my testers were heavy Instagram users.
To solve this problem I had my users walk through the current Instagram album feature in a fake account created for this project. This test helped them compare the original experience to my new and improved solution. It also helped them see what the issue was, as all of them struggled to try and make their entire photo visible to no avail.
I built my prototype in adobe XD and tested it on my mobile device. I tried to keep the experience as close to current experience as possible to help my testers get through the prototype smoothly. I kept my questions open-ended and received some valuable feedback.
Q: What are your initial thought about this solution?
A. I think this is an effective solution.
Q: Do you feel this solution is user friendly?
A. I think it’s user friendly but I don’t think the “maintain original photo dimensions” button is easy to find and see. It doesn’t look like the other functions of the app.
Q: What suggestions would you make to improve this proposed solution?
A: I would put the button to keep the photo the same by the other buttons in the app.
— Brent, age 30, Male, iPhone User, Instagram User
One user helped me see that the button I implemented wasn’t as discoverable as I thought because it didn’t look like the other functions in the app. Other feedback included:
The button kind of blocks the photo so I would put it somewhere else. I would also include a way to change the padding colors because depending on the pictures people are using, they may want an option other than white.
Based on this feedback, and the feedback from others tested, I boiled things down to four big takeaways, including:
- Not discoverable, needs to be placed with other feature options in bottom section of uploads.
- Wording is too technical, needs to be more understandable to the average user or they won’t bother reading it.
3. Padding color options to cater to with different preferences of users.
4. Button is too big, needs to be an icon next to “multiple photos” icon.
A new feature involves a bit of training on the users part. I looked at how Instagram trained its users when it first introduced the album feature. I noticed that they included a brief explanation each time until the user no longer needed the prompt.
I added similar features to keep the consistency of the app and help users know how to navigate this new added feature. I created an icon that I felt gave the user a good idea for its purpose and changed the language to be less technical.
I feel the final product offers the user a clean, simple, and consistent experience. It removes the frustration of having to incorporate a third party app and the posted photos don’t disrupt the views natural swiping flow. It also gives the Instagram user creative power and control over their content without violating the design principles of consistency and simplicity.
