App Sustainability: BeReal Feature Implementation
Written by: Soha Khan, Product Manager, and Steven Wang, Product Designer at TribalScale
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What Are Fads?
A fad is “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object’s qualities; a craze”.
Fads (in terms of app development) can often be distinguished based on the minimal change/adjustments made to the app. The apps hold very minimal functionality/variability that makes the user experience of an application predictable. The predictability of the application is what lets an app fizzle out; only to be remembered as a forgotten app “we used to use a few years ago”.
What Makes Fads Fun for Users
We are all inherently users of something and that’s what makes understanding why someone uses anything interesting. We ask ourselves questions such as: “Would I ever use something like this?”, “Why would anyone use this app?” or thinking about how incredibly useful/useless it is.
Users are often drawn to fad apps due to a variety of different factors such as simplicity, novelty, trends and more. Apps such as BeReal hold their appeal due to how quick and easy they are to use. BeReal in particular leverages their main demographic of Gen Z and their addiction to social media removing the in-your face monetization of the application. BeReal brings back a sense of community where the app is just photo sharing to its core, meant to capture raw moments in people’s lives; which is something that personally drew me to the app as well.
These apps can be addictive in nature but the lack of innovation is what makes it fall short of successful applications such as social media apps like Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, etc., or gaming applications like Pokemon Go and Clash of Clans. The key distinction between these type of applications and fad apps are the changing nature of them. Staying up to date with user needs and reflecting those changes in the UX is what keeps bringing users back, withstanding the test of time. This sheds light on an ongoing issue where apps that users love to use simple put, become boring and this is what we’ll be diving deeper into.
BeReal Feature Implementation
As a user of BeReal I wanted to better understand this product space and find a way to improve it. Through this case study I’ll walk you through the feature implementation that was done and the process behind it.
User Research
Secondary Research: User Groups
Through research conducted it was found that BeReal’s users were mostly restricted to 16–25. This influenced me in my research in understanding what other demographics may enjoy an app such as BeReal to grow the application’s inherent need in our society.
Data shows that 9% open BeReal daily whereas apps like tiktok are at 39% of daily activity—Sensor Tower.
Primary Research: User Interviews
We conducted user interviews with users from the ages 16–25 to understand the appeal of the app and what may be lacking, a few problems were found:
Lack of community
“I cannot look back at my friends BeReal’s if I was in them, or want to look back at a comment or reaction”
“No linking factor between friends and myself”
Redundant
“There is nothing exciting that draws me to the app, sometimes I take the same photo of myself in my room for a few days”
“I can’t meaningfully engage with the people I’m friends with if there’s nothing enticing in the photo”
“I don’t open the app that often anymore”
Technical Issues
“Lots of internet or connectivity issues”
“Can’t see what I am taking a photo of from both the front and back camera”
Problem Definition
1. Users of BeReal find it difficult to engage with their peers in a meaningful way and connect with them.
2. Users stray away from opening the app.
Brainstorming
We came up with a few ideas after some back and forth and initial white boarding:
BeReal Groups
Users can create groups to share extra BeReals to create a more tight knit community.
Use case: Organization/Companies leaning more into social media to appeal to younger workers and cultivate a stronger employee bond in a predominantly work from home (WFH) environment. Brands like Elf, Rare Beauty and Chipotle have been seen to rely more on BeReal for engagement and marketing as well.
Video Sharing
Users will have the option to share videos instead of photos as their BeReal.
Use case: With vlogs growing in popularity and BeReal thriving on the authenticity of a user, this feature will allow users to share much more intimately what’s going on in their lives.
User Profiles
Users would now be able to set up a profile within the application and chose to have their old BeReals be permanently visible to their community.
Use Case: Like other forms of social media, a user profile allows users to carve out their own identity. Permanent sharing BeReals will also allow users to constantly interact with one another.
A RICE matrix (found here) was used to help select which of these solutions to go with. Often used for prioritizing features, we thought it would be cool to explore it in this context to give our answer a quantitative push!
Solution
Introducing: BeReal Groups
BeReal groups will act as a way to create a tight knit community in a world where technology surrounds us. This feature will allow users to share more intimate BeReals with their groups that follow a special prompt. This will incentivize users to be more creative and fun with these extra BeReals, you’ll also get to vote for your favourite in the group!
Features
Organization implementation—Allows for organizations like TribalScale for example to have groups within BeReal. Adds a level of community that was missing from BeReal originally. It incentivizes users to jump onto the app with their colleagues and connect them in ways that were missing during remote work!
Prompts—Prompts will now push users to explore their creative sides and differentiate group BeReals from normal ones! A prompt will appear on the main screen of the group section of the app. Users will then be able to take additional BeReals, alongside their original BeReal; outside groups with no prompt!
Voting (Not demonstrated in prototype)—This will allow users to view all the BeReals in the group and vote on their favourite BeReal pushing users to be more creative!
The prototyped designed by Steven Wang a (extremely talented) Product Designer at TribalScale can be found here!
Success Metrics
These metrics are important to outline for an MVP to measure success initially. These metrics were chosen to help influence further product decisions as development continues. Quantitative metrics were outlined to help dissect the who, what, where and when; followed by Qualitative metrics to answer the why.
Quantitative
Engagement—It will be important to track the amount of group BeReals taken alongside regular BeReals, groups created, users in groups etc.
Retention—Determine the amount of users that are coming back to the app daily as compared to before the feature dropped.
Adoption—Measure how the product adoption rate holds up to the previous rate; i.e how many new users are coming onto the app within a given time period.
Qualitative
User Feedback—Through app reviews and social media, we would want to gather the immediate feedback on the features rolled out. Any new feature on such a simple app will cause some sort of feedback.
Creation
We toggled between a few different ideas including video sharing, photo editing, question prompts etc., however we wanted to maintain the integrity of the app and the true essence of it! We mapped out the user flow to understand where an addition to the application can be made.
This was followed by creating low-fi designs and going through design critiques to see where any improvements could be made. Hi-fi designs with a prototype were followed after this.
Business Expansion
Usability Testing
Usability testing was done to see where we could improve when continuing to work on this feature! These tests were designed with the goals of ensuring proper accessibility and usability within the designs. The core fundamentals of BeReal are that it is easy to use so we wanted to maintain that integrity!
Through a series of interviews with 5 current users of BeReal, a prototype was demonstrated to them with minimal context followed by a few questions on the experience! The goals of these tests was:
- Learnability: Are users able to easily navigate through this new feature and take photos with little-to-no guidance on the application
- Satisfaction: Are users able to receive a sense of community on this platform, developing a new found interest in using BeReal.
Say Hi to some of our users: Eddie and Purva!
Findings:
A) Updating UI: make it more user friendly such as centring components, more aesthetic design.
B) Updating UX: more instructions to depict the new feature, tutorial flow.
C) Features: keep the prompts as simple as possible, group leads set time for notification to go off.
These changes were important to note in iterations to come as the feature continued to be worked on by myself and Steven!
Expansion
Below are 2 strategies for BeReal to continue to grow and position itself away from being another Fad app but rather an app with long-term growth potential:
- New Users—BeReal exists as primarily an application for Gen Z but with this feature implementation and use case of businesses utilizing it, it is worthwhile to explore attracting new demographics. Finding new ways to integrate those above 25 onto the app to create a stronger need for BeReal as an application.
- Product Development—BeReal has such a strong presence on social media and does a great job in marketing. It will be important to continuously collect user feedback and develop features with caution as to not bombard users.
Reflection
Soha Khan, Product Manager—This started off as just a written piece about Fad apps and using BeReal as a use case, but slowly funnelled into something much more. Doing research, conducting testing sessions, developing strategy and more are all aspects of Product I love and look forward to doing more of.
Steven Wang, Product Designer—From this case study we are able to examine the app that we are using daily from a product perspective. We are using this opportunity to learn and practice considering app sustainability as an important step for a product to grow after short term successes and maintain the momentum to move forward. We managed to learn how to break the norm with support from user insights data, and make responsible innovation people love.
We hope you enjoyed reading this case study, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or feedback at sohakn22@gmail.com!
Soha is a Product Manager at TribalScale, where she helps drive key projects and scoping exercises, which has been a blast. Her passion lies in user experience and finding creative ways to solve problems as well as photography and fashion!
Steven is a Product Designer at TribalScale, where he focuses on tackling client projects alongside the rest of the design team. He is passionate about pottery and tarot cards in his spare time.
TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!
