Designing for Control: Enhancing the Instagram Feed
Why Instagram? Why tackle this problem?
Why is this a problem?
If Instagram users dislike their feed too much, it will lead to a negative user experience and this is core to Instagram’s appeal.
Instagram’s algorithm increasingly prioritizes posts from non-followed accounts and suggested content. As a result, users become frustrated and engagement declines.
Where did I go from here?
Bringing it to life
Polishing screens
Usability testing
Final prototype
Sole designer · Feb 2025 — Mar 2025
PROBLEM
The current Instagram feed is too busy, with excessive pop ups and irrelevant posts on users’ feeds.
I chose Instagram because it’s an application I use on a regular basis. I felt it would be interesting to dive deeper within the platform and get others’ thoughts through user research.
I tackled this problem after gathering valuable insights from the user research. As it seemed to be an issue that led some users to even close out the application altogether, I decided that improving the user feed will improve overall satisfaction. That is always the goal!
After identifying the problem through the results of user research, I designed personas. Personas represent the distinct motivations, pain points, goals, etc. of the potential users.
Parvati and Karla helped me figure out what my end goal should be: de-clutter...
At this point, it became easier to start thinking about ways to de-clutter the feed based on what already exists.
Enter the user flow...
The user flow allowed me to visualize how people like Parvati and Karla would move through an added feature like this, at a high level.
Defining the hypothetical pages and user actions/results gave me direction for the wire-framing process.
Through building the low-fidelity wireframes, I was able to bring all of my ideas to life. I created the new tabs, “Close Friends” and “Verified”. My intention behind this was to separate the Instagram feed so that users can have more control over what they see.
“Close Friends” is already a feature Instagram has implemented, but I made it more prominent by allowing users quick and easy access to their closest friends’ photos and videos.
“Verified” serves the purposes of recommending verified content to users. This way, they can view those recommended posts if they wish to without it cluttering their main feed where they’d expect to see content of only the accounts they follow.
Designing for high-fidelity allowed me to add some color and change up the typography in my wireframes. What appeared bland before was now starting to look quite realistic. Especially since Instagram is an existing app, I had to ensure all of the additions I was making aligned with the app UI.
In order to achieve the closest UI to Instagram, I made sure to keep the Instagram UI screens next to the screen I was designing. This helped remind me of the typography, color palette, and smaller details.
This was a valuable project as I got to work on an already existing platform which requires extra precision.
Testing my wireframes with potential users was critical in reminding me that this is not for me, as the designer, this about the users and how they feel.
The feedback which stood out the most was the confusion within the title of a tab (“All). This was important to find out because otherwise, if this change was implemented, users would feel even more confused further decreasing user satisfaction.
Feel free to walk through the prototype for this case study! I hope you enjoy the experience!
Meet Parvati
Meet Karla
“I use Instagram to see photos of my friends and family members...I also post photos for them to see. I don’t like seeing content I’m not interested in from both people I happen to follow and those I don’t, such as verified accounts”.
“I enjoy using Instagram to post major life moments. I don’t like to open the app and see several posts of people who I never engage with. I wish there was a way for Instagram to improve its organization, particularly on the home page”.
