"Hashtagging isn't hard, it just takes time away from actual content creation. I always have to do a little bit of research and spend time finding "good" hashtags. I wish IG could help me find trendy hashtags."
Designing a new hashtagging feature for Instagram
(IG) creators to efficiently hashtag their posts and save time.
TIMELINE
One month
MY ROLE
UX Designer
UX Researcher
PLATFORM
Responsive
Mobile App
Introduction
Hashtags on Instagram (IG) are keywords that organize and spread awareness of a user’s content while giving them the opportunity to get discovered by new audiences. In short, they help recommendation/suggestion algorithms bring similar content together that start conversations and grow audiences.
Problem
While not difficult, hashtagging is a tedious process that takes away precious time from creators and small business owners who are looking to grow their brand efficiently.
Currently, creators spend time making lists of hashtag groups that they copy and paste into IG. Others resort to third-party apps/websites to generate relevant hashtags for them. Both tactics require the creator to spend additional time curating their hashtags.
How Might We
How might we help Instagram (IG) creators efficiently hashtag their posts and save time?
Solution
Core hashtags: Most content creators have a few hashtags that they always use for each post and want to be associated with. They typically identify the creator, their content, and interests. Creators will input up to 30 hashtags that will automatically appear in each post and serve as the baseline for the recommendation tool to generate hashtags from.
Tagged Profiles List: Creators can select up to 30 favorite creators that are in their niche and tag their profile. For these 30 tagged profiles, an AI-algorithm will find the commonalities among them and analyze the most used hashtags with the highest number of impressions and followers and generate a common shared hashtag list. This list will be what the recommendation tool uses and all other related hashtags to automatically recommend creators hashtags based on their favorite creators who share the same target audience.
Hashtag Recommendation Tool: In order to reduce time spent researching trendy hashtags or what hashtags popular creators use, this AI-powered recommendation algorithm will give users groups of relevant hashtags based on frequently used hashtags among the creators in the tagged profiles list and the user’s core hashtags. To help users diversify their hashtags, the generated hashtag groups will be separated into three different competition levels: popular (1M+), medium (500k+), and niche (200k and below). The tool will only present hashtags that have not been banned by IG.
Process Overview
Research Goals
-
Identify pain points and unmet needs in the current user experience of hashtagging.
-
Determine what users like and dislike about hashtagging.
-
Understand what hashtagging options are available to users.
Empathize - Secondary Research
What is the current landscape of Instagram & social media? What are the general hashtagging behaviors?
Findings:
-
Instagram has more than TWO billion users using the app every month.
-
More than 50% of IG accounts use “Explore” to discover new content and new accounts to follow. "Explore" algorithm relies on hashtags.
-
Business accounts post an average of 1.71 feed posts a day
-
Posts with more than 11 hashtags on average have 79% more interaction than posts with no hashtags.
-
Longer hashtags typically between 21-24 characters do better than shorter hashtags. However, longer hashtags are harder to think of.
-
Posts with at least one hashtag get about 12.5% higher engagement.
-
Read the full report here
Empathize - Competitive Analysis pt. 1
Key Takeways:
1) All competitors use hashtags to show relevant content to users interests
2) All have an analytics tool to understand what hashtags are frequently mentioned/clicked on for a user
3) All competitors do not have in-app support for hashtagging--they all use a google-search like predictive list of hashtags that are revealed as the user types in a hashtag with the number of times the hashtags has been used.
Empathize - Competitive Analysis pt. 2
Key Takeways:
1) Most are still desktop based and if it’s mobile, they tend to make users pay. For example, hashtag expert makes users pay $90/year.
2) Even if there are mobile hashtagging apps, users still have to copy and paste into IG and make adjustments accordingly since some of the hashtags are too generic or not relevant to the post content.
3) For the desktop version, users still have to manually input the hashtags into IG if they’re posting from their phone which they most likely are.
Empathize - User Interviews
Participants: 10
Background: Active content creators with some using IG as their main marketing tool for their small businesses.
Age: 23-40
User interviews were conducted via Google Meet/UserTesting for a week to understand what the Instagram creators' needs, motivations, and frustrations are.
Questions asked:
-
On a scale of 1-5 with 1 being extremely easy, how would you rate the hashtagging process?
-
On a scale of 1-5 with 5 being extremely important to you, how would you rate the importance of hashtagging?
-
Can you describe and walk me through your hashtagging process please? (ie: 1. Research hashtags 2. Look at my photo and see what content is in there 3. Think of relevant hashtags 4. Look at other creator’s hashtags and see which i can adopt 5. Copy and paste my hashtag group etc.)
-
If there was an ideal way to hashtag, what would that look like?
General Findings
Key Takeways:
● Even casual creators did some prior research before posting, such as looking at their favorite creators’ most used hashtags.
● Everyone used their notes app to copy and paste hashtag groups to expedite the hashtagging process, no participant manually typed in all 30 hashtags individually.
● I noticed that the small business owners I interviewed tended to use at least one third-party hashtag generator websites/apps.
● The sentiments around hashtagging ranged from annoyed and frustrated to neutral with an average “Easy” score of 3.3 - neither hard nor easy.
● Everyone agreed that hashtagging is very important with the average score of 4.2 - Very Important (5 was explained as “Extremely Important”).
● The creators I interviewed stated that they take 2-3 minutes to finish hashtagging a post after doing some research. However, my observations revealed that they take 5-8 minutes from checking spelling, deleting accidental duplicates, and editing some hashtags to make them more relevant to the post.
View the full user interview report here
Empathize - Empathy Map
Key Takeways:
-
Says and Feels: They all felt that hashtagging is important but were annoyed, frustrated, and sometimes lost on what hashtags to use to reach their target audience. All of the participants want IG to have some type of suggestion/recommendation tool that can assist them in thinking of relevant and/or trendy hashtags. Some wanted to be able to select hashtags from different popularity/competition levels (ie: popular, mid-popular, nice) to have more variety in their posts and others wanted IG to scan their post’s content and generate all the hashtags for them.
-
Thinks and Does: Takes more time than expected to finish researching and inputting hashtags and thinks there should be a simple, fast, and easy way to hashtag.
Empathize - User Persona
I created this persona (Santi Madrigal) to reflect the small business creator who prioritizes time and wants effective outcomes. Santi is using Instagram to promote his dance academy (that doubles as an art studio) in hopes of gaining sponsors/brand deals that will help him gain both financial freedom and be able to give back to the village youth. He connects to the audience I spoke to because he's a creative trying to grow his business and uses IG as his main marketing tool.
Define -
Sketches
Because the information architecture is already laid out in IG, I created some sketches to ensure that my feature will integrate well within IG.
I originally considered putting the tagged profiles list (used to be called "Shared Hashtag List") in settings under account but that required too many clicks to get to. I felt that it was too hidden from the user. I later discovered IG's "Favorites" list and modeled it off of that. Users would already be familiar with the layout and flow of adding creators to this new "Tagged Profiles" list. My job then would be to educate users on how this list differs from the current "Favorites" list.
But wait... more
research!
As mentioned above, I discovered the "Favorites" list and went back to my users in the user interviews to ask them if they used the "Favorites" list and if so, how? To first understand these lists, I did a bit more secondary research.
Last march of 2022, IG created a following and favorites list to give users more control over their feed. These two feeds don’t have suggested posts or ads and places content in chronological order, much like the way it used to back then.
Favorites: star up to 50 accounts so their posts show up higher in the main default feed. These posts have their own “favorites feed” starting with the most recent post.
Findings
-
4 interviewees said that they use “favorites” for close friends, celebrities they like, and favorite creators.
-
Of the 7 interviewees who do use “favorites”, when asked if they would be interested in a, “Third feed for creators whose hashtags they want to borrow from", 5 said that they would be interested.
-
Of the 4 business accounts, a half said that they don’t care about having a third feed since they already have two separate, personal and business, IG accounts. The other half said that since they have one IG for both personal and business purposes, it would be nice to have different lists to separate the personal and business feeds.
Ideate
A task flow analyzed the user's interaction with Instagram upon starting on the home screen and traced how users would proceed to add creators to their tagged profiles list. These three ways mimicked how users can add creators to their favorites list.
From the home screen, the user has two ways to add creators to the list, via the three dots located right next to the account name, or via the tagged profiles list. The last way is to go to the creator's profile and add them from there.
Ideate - Task Flow 1
Task flow 1: As a small business owner, Santi wants to tag other (favorite) small business owners in his niche to follow their content and frequently used hashtags.
Ideate - Task Flow 2 & 3
Task flow 2: As a content creator, Santi wants to use a set of “core hashtags” that he repeatedly uses specific to his brand and niche and that he wants to be associated with.
Task flow 3: As a busy, small business owner, Santi wants to decrease the time it take for him to complete the hashtagging process so that he can spend more time on actual content creation.
Ideate - Wireframes
After the user selects their recommended hashtags, the caption will now have both their core hashtags (in grey to signify that they're not editable) and the recommended hashtags (in black).
UI Design Highlights
Here, the tagged profiles list is placed with the other feeds and is denoted by a purple diamond.
Diamonds usually represent wealth, faithfulness, and purity. Users add creators they look up to in this list. Combined with purple, a color that symbolizes ambition and wisdom, this icon hopes to signify to the user a dedicated list that they can draw inspiration and ideas from to help them achieve their goals.
To make this feature easily accessible, I placed it in the “Edit profile” screen much like how a user would edit the text in their “Bio”. This flow mimics the “Bio” flow.
From my research, I learned that the repeat hashtags creators use were most likely hashtags that described their identity, their brand (ie: niche of photography, product category, etc.), and were generally keywords they wanted to become associated with. To strengthen this tie to a creator’s identity, I placed this group of repetitive hashtags in the creator’s “Edit profile”.
UI Design Changes
There were a number of changes I made that were different from the original wireframes, including the information icon and the text above the recommended hashtags.
IG doesn't use the information icon. Thus, the text inside of the icon was transferred to the description in the prototype.
After the user selects their recommended hashtags, the caption will now have both their core hashtags (in grey to signify that they're not editable) and the recommended hashtags (in black).
Originally the text above the recommended hashtags said, "At least 75% of your tagged accounts frequently use the following hashtags." However, during the first few usability tests, it became clear that users were still confused on where their recommended hashtags came from.
Thus, the text was changed to, "At least 75% of the creators in your tagged profiles list frequently use the following hashtags."
Prototype
User tasks:
1) Add creators to a Tagged Profiles List
2) Add core hashtags
3) Create a post with the hashtag recommendation tool
Usability Testing
Objectives:
-
Once UI was finished, it was time to put the design and three task flows to the test. I aimed to observe how users reacted to the new features, how they navigated, what their frustrations/points of confusion were, and identify areas of improvement.
-
View the usability testing plan here
Participants: 10
Background: Active content creators with some using IG as their main marketing tool for their small businesses.
Age: 23 - 40
Questions asked:
-
At what point(s) of this process (ie: navigating to tagged profiles, tagging a profile, etc.) needs clarification or support?
-
What do you like or dislike about this process? Ie: tagging profiles, inputting core hashtags, etc.
-
On a scale of 1-5 with 5 being extremely difficult, how would you rate your experience of using the hashtag recommendation tool?
-
On a scale of 1-5 with 5 being extremely difficult, how would you rate your overall experience using these new hashtagging features? May I ask you to elaborate on your rating, please?
Usability Testing Findings
Affinity Map
In general, the features were received positively with 100% of the interviewees stating that they would definitely use these hashtagging features if IG rolled them out tomorrow. One interviewee repeatedly asked if I could tweet this prototype to IG because he really wants to use the hashtag recommendation tool. Although the design was easy to follow, had clear iconography, and the UI was considered consistent with IG's UI, it was evident that there are many improvements to be made especially with the text.
However, the "Recommended hashtags" text was still confusing to the majority of users and by the time they selected recommended hashtags, they were still unsure of where the hashtags came from. Although the users noted that by stating directly how the recommended hashtags can help them ("reach your target audience and connect with likeminded creators"), the connection between the "Tagged Profiles" list and the recommended hashtags was still unclear. One interviewee noted that the text doesn't matter altogether since IG is a visually-driven app so it's best to have visual connections instead of relying on text.
Next Steps
1. Make adjustments
Implement wording and design adjustments from user feedback. This includes: clarifying text, improving placement of core hashtags/how to add creator to tagged profiles list when on the creator’s profile.
2. Feature clarity
Clarify and strengthen the connection between the tagged profiles list and the recommendation tool. Clarify the function and features of the tagged profiles list so that users do not need to read about it to understand it or see how it’s different from the favorites list.
3. Data
Add more metrics in hashtag audience, reach, and effectiveness. Expand capabilities of the hashtag recommendation tool to include location and caption. Also, explore options for creators to use multilingual hashtags to target users from different countries they are interested in reaching/growing a following in.
4. Test
With the edits, conduct more usability tests and gather feedback for further improvements.
What I Learned
1. The design process, including research, is NON-LINEAR.
After preliminary secondary research, I discovered more about Instagram's uses and features ("Favorites" list). I had to go back to my users to ask them how they used their "Favorites" list, which taught me how non-linear the research process actually is.
2. Conducting unbiased research is hard, but CRUCIAL.
I learned to be more careful when conducting UX research to avoid confirmation bias or ask (unintentional) leading questions. I made a number of assumptions, especially with the texts relating to the hashtag recommendation tool. This project taught me how crucial proper, unbiased research is in discovering what users truly want as well as how important clear, concise writing is. Especially when creating a new feature they've never thought of yet for a product they regularly use, there were a lot of considerations to account for such as the users' background, defaults, motivations, and what role the product played in their life. To my surprise, the feature that received the most satisfaction and validation was the core hashtags (even more than the hashtag recommendation tool).
3. Seemingly "simple" features require a lot of research and testing to get right.
It was eye-opening to observe the various processes users have when hashtagging a post as well as how many feelings there were surrounding hashtagging. Even something as seemingly small as hashtagging turned into a larger project with multiple considerations that affected content creators ranging from casual to more professional users.
All in all, I strengthened my UX research skills and I'm eager to continue growing! 💪