UX Research
Services
UX Research
Location
HerNdon | 2024
Summary
Familiar Yet Misplaced
Reclaiming ease in the overlooked interface. While the mobile app evolved, the desktop verson stood still – fragmented, inconsistent, and missing the soul that once made Instagram delightful. This project sought ot bring clarity, warmth, and intuition back to the way users experience Instagram on a larger screen
The Vision
A Graceful Realignment
We weren’t aiming for novelty. We were aiming for inevitability.
A vision took shape: A version of Instagram that didn’t try to prove anything —
It simply offered what you needed, exactly where you expected it to be.
A product that trusted its users enough to stop dazzling them.
The desktop experience wasn’t the main stage. But it deserved to feel like it belonged to the same play.
Graceful. Thoughtful. Effortless. Like a good host you barely notice —
until you realize how calm you feel in their home.
Research
Looking past usability into emotion
We conducted one-on-one moderated usability tests
with five participants between 18–34 —
a mix of creators, researchers, casual scrollers, and nostalgic returners.
They were asked to complete ten tasks on the Instagram desktop site:
from editing their bios to saving an image into a collection. Some were fast. Some fumbled.
All revealed the same truth:
The platform worked. But the experience didn’t land. It lacked emotional logic —
the rhythm that makes an interface feel like it’s meeting you where you are,
instead of waiting for you to catch up.
Opportunity
When the familiar starts feeling foreign
On mobile, Instagram feels fluid. Tactile. Thought-through.
On desktop? Not quite.
Users came with small, reasonable expectations:
update a profile, check a post, save something for later.
But instead of quick tasks, they met slow decisions.
Too many clicks. Unclear hierarchies. Misleading labels.
The problem wasn’t failure — it was fatigue.
The kind that builds slowly. Quietly.
Until a platform you once loved starts to feel like a task.
This project asked:
Can we make the desktop feel less like a translation…
and more like a conversation?
Key Findings
Small missteps that had a cumulative cost
Likes were misfiled.
Nearly every user assumed their liked posts were under their profile.
Instead, they were buried under “Your Activity.”
One user said: “It’s not hidden. But it’s not findable either.”
Mute felt uncertain.
Mute. Restrict. Block.
Different intentions. Nearly identical flows.
The visual and verbal hierarchy blurred the emotional line between soft boundaries and hard ones.
UI cues were visually passive.
Call-to-actions faded into the background.
Users missed key features simply because they weren’t visually invited to see them.
“I didn’t even know that button was clickable,” one said.
Flow broke under repetition.
Small tasks — editing bios, creating saved folders, changing settings —
required too many steps.
The experience felt less like a tool and more like a maze with polite signs.
Closing Thought
Functioning vs Flowing
Instagram didn’t need more features.
It needed more presence.
This case study stopped short of redesign — intentionally.
Because insight itself is a form of design.
And what we uncovered was this:
Sometimes the best thing you can give a user isn’t a new interface.
It’s their trust back.
That trust lives in the details —
in finding the “Likes” where you expected them,
in knowing what “Mute” really means,
in clicking a button not because it shouts…
but because it feels right to.
In the end, that’s what elegance in UX looks like.
Not loud.
Just lasting.
