Insta Saved

Christina Zeng
7 min readMay 8, 2021

You’re scrolling through Instagram. You see the perfect restaurant to go to on your next night out. You save the post.

Five days later, it’s the weekend. You and your friends are deciding where to eat, but it’s not a problem. You already have many options lined up in your Instagram, saved under the collection “Places To Eat.”

*Freeze Frame*

That didn’t happen. You forgot about the restaurant from the post you saved. You and your friend spend the next two hours scouring through the internet to find your destination.

The Instagram app is practical for discovering new people and keeping in touch with the old. But the platform is not limited to social functions — it is used to explore new content too, such as memes, crafts, or even politics.

How is that information used in the rush of everyday life? I asked a few Instagram users to find out.

At This Instant

In its current state — assuming users actually remember the feature exists — It takes 7 steps to find a post they saved:

  1. Opening Instagram
  2. Clicking on the user’s profile
  3. Opening the hamburger menu
  4. Selecting “Saved”
  5. Opening a collection
  6. Scrolling through the posts within a collection
  7. Clicking into the desired post

Instagrammers’ Stories

At first, I thought that the majority of people scroll through Instagram as a time filler. Hence, they come across useful information at an inconvenient time, resulting in their inability to write down an idea or location.

When I asked Instagrammers to walk me through their experience with the save feature, they responded with:

“A lot of times I save posts, or I like posts, and then I can’t find them anymore because they just get lost.”

“To be honest. I’m pretty bad at [checking through saved posts]. It’s usually better for me to screenshot it than save it.”

“When you go on Instagram [the save feature] is not the first thing you see all the time so it’s easy to forget and check.”

What I consistently heard was:

Users do not think saving information on Instagram will positively impact their lives because even if they save useful content, they don’t remember to check their saved posts.

My Derived People Problem:

Instagram users want to make use of information that they saved on the platform, but they can’t do that well because

  1. they often forget what they saved so the collections simply go to waste;
  2. the collections are presented in an overwhelming way so information is hard to revisit.

Not so Instant Ideation

I recruited my friends Alyssa Ma and Sophia Teng to help me brainstorm some solutions to the question:

How might we increase user interaction with content they want to apply to their lives?

Feature 1: Shared Collections

This feature would allow users to share saved collections with their friends and followers. Because users primarily use Instagram to keep in touch with friends, it can be inferred that users often check their DMs. Incorporating saved posts into user DMs would remind users of posts they have saved through a feature they already frequently interact with.

Feature 2: Reminders

This feature takes or a simpler approach. It reminds users of the specific posts they have saved by redirecting to their saved collections.

Feature 3: Sorting Saved

In this feature, users would have access to a sorting function within each of their personal collections. The post order would change based on various criteria such as “date added”, “date posted”, or “most popular.”

Assessing the pros and cons of each feature I concluded that “Shared Collections” was more unique to Instagram’s focus as a social media app. But, its success relied too heavily on multiple followers interacting with the feature.

I decided on a combination of “Suggested Saved” and “Sorting Saved.” A combination of the two reminds users of the collections they already have. Additionally, it creates stronger accessibility preventing user frustration.

Looking for FEEDback

Interaction Design

Entry Points

My initial user research found that those who are scrolling through Instagram expect to spend an extended time on the platform. This insight eliminated entry point 3 from the activity screen.

After conducting further user testing on entry point 1 and 2 all three users unanimously preferred entry point 2 with the horizontal scroll for these reasons:

  • In All Caught Up: having “View Older Posts” and “View Unopened Saved Posts” felt like too many options
  • 2 is more accessible you have to scroll through all of the posts to get to the all caught up section
  • They typically scroll past “All Caught Up” without reading it

Ultimately, I decided on the horizontal scroll or entry point 2. This entry point reminds users of their saved posts when they have enough time to re-explore these posts. Furthermore, users stated that this entry was the most accessible and visually engaging.

Organization Flows

Flow 1: Unopened Collection

This flow requires the creation of a new automatic collection of an unopened saved post. Unopened saved posts can be defined as posts that have been saved but have not been opened in the collection.

Users testing concerns:

“If someone see [a post] in the unopened collection, but after opening it the post is removed from unopened saved posts how would they find it again?

“ People might find it hard to remember which collection it is saved to if the horizontal scroll takes user to unrelated collection (unopened saved posts collection)”

Flow 2: Edit Collection

This flow avoids the creation of a new icon by directing users to the ellipsis button. From there users can choose a filter to sort by or personally rearrange the order of the post.

User testing concerns:

It was not obvious there was a new feature.

It was kind of annoying to click through so many steps to sort the order once.

Flow 3: Rearrange

This flow utilizes the filter icon to give users options on sorting the order of their posts. Similar to Flow 2 users can personally rearrange the order of the post. In this flow, the bottom menu slides out of frame when users are rearranging their order.

User testing concerns:

Suggested Saved could just show you a bunch of posts you aren’t interested in at the moment.

After talking to users and looking into the pros and cons of each I decided that Flow 3: Rearranging gave users the most visual cue and feedback.

Picture Perfect

The next step was to make everything as ~aesthetic~ as possible.

First I created a UI kit to simplify the process of making my feature and the Instagram app coherent.

The UI Kit

Visual Design

After deciding on the interaction design I created a few visual iterations.

Entry Points

Image Courtesy of Jessica Elliott

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I decided on Entry Point Visual Iteration 3, the least eyecatching and least interrupting design. This design worked most cohesively with Instagram’s existing Suggested Reels (picture to the left). To make the design more eyecatching I decided to Increase the size of the posts in the final design.

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Sorting and Organization

First I eliminated Sort By Bar 1, though many companies with similar characteristics featured a drop-down menu of sorts, this iteration did not match with how Instagram currently displays options. Analyzing the remaining variations, I chose Sort By Bar 2. Relative to Sort By Bar 1 the chosen iteration matched the layout featured by the existing Save feature such as the one pictured to the left.

The Final Post

Ultimately, this feature :

  1. Reminds users what they saved so the collections don’t go to waste
  2. Let users personalize how collections are presented so the information is easier to revisit

Closing Thoughts

While the Suggested Saved feature does solve my original people problem there are plenty of areas for improvement. I would have liked to work on differentiating Instagram from the current social media platforms. One idea would have been to create a way to share curated collections on stories. This feature could’ve promoted user interaction while avoiding reliance on follower interaction.

This was my first interaction with a case study and the design process. A big thank you to Maggie Ying, Ryun Shim, everyone in my crit group, and everyone on the course staff for helping through this journey and pushing me to be a better designer! I hope to continue growing as a designer and I’m very grateful for such a great introduction to the world of UX :)

This case study is for my Introduction to Digital Product Design class. I am in no way affiliated with Instagram.

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