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Introduction

Social networking is currently a significant activity for many individuals and businesses (Ting et al., 2016). It helps people make new friends and connects them with other people; it also helps people search for and broadcast information. Leaders of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, have transformed communication methods making it possible for users to easily upload pictures, as well as share their views and experience for services and products with their networked peers (Edwards, 2011; Rasid et al., 2013). The evolution of technology allows mobile phone users to conveniently and regularly interact using social networking sites from their smartphones (Raacke and Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Bergstrom and Backman, 2013).  Consequently, social networking is now a significant part of living, and even a customary activity, that is predominant with youths.

Instagram, founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010, is one of the new social media platforms. Users mainly use the platform to share their photos with other users. The primary functions of the application are to facilitate the taking, sharing and storing photos via phones. It is easy to download Instagram on smartphones and tablets from the App store, and it is free. Instagram became well-known and reached millions in a short period because it became increasingly popular and was easy-to-use. App Inc awarded Instagram as the App of the year in 2011; this led to Mark Zuckerberg; the CEO of Facebook buying in 2012 (Goor, 2012).

Only a few research works have been conducted on user behaviour regarding the application, even though Instagram is a significant social phenomenon in modern society (Ting et al., 2015). The prevalent discussions from past literature have mostly been on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Aim and Objectives

This project aims to analyse the user experience of the Instagram mobile app for baby boomers to provide suggestions to improve the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of Instagram for this type of users.

The objectives of this project are:

• Objective 1: To identify user experience methods and theories that can be applied to suggest a practical design for the Instagram interface.
• Objective 2: To identify the approaches that can be used to gather information on user experience effectively.
• Objective 3: To analyse gathered user experience data to suggest an effective interface

Scope

The scope of this project only focusses on gathering user experiences as well as designing a sketch to improve the Instagram GUI. However, this project will not include a complete redesign of the GUI of Instagram nor implementation it. The Instagram application is designed, primarily to upload and share pictures and videos to with followers. The application was also designed to follow and explore the content that other account users upload. Therefore, the focus of this report will be on the interface features that are related to comment notifications, browsing and commenting on content as well as some direct messaging feature.

Rationale

According to statista (2018), only 6% of baby boomers are using Instagram (see figure 1). Baby boomers are people born in the year range of 1946 and 1964 (Santos et al., 2003). Therefore, the current design of Instagram does not focus on accommodating the user requirements from baby boomers. However, the use of social media, especially Instagram, is increasing drastically among baby boomers. Hence, the researcher interest to study the user experience of this category of users to suggest ways to redesign the Instagram interface to accommodate the requirements of baby boomers.

Figure 1: Instagram users grouped by age as of January 2018

Background 

Introduction

This chapter provides a background study about user experience and the laws that are associated with it.

User Experience (UX)

The definition for user experience, as stated by ISO 9241 -110:2010 (clause 2.15), is the perceptions of an individual, and reactions emanating from the use, or anticipated use of a product, service or system (to put clearly, the word “product” means products, services and systems). Other interpretations supplement this formal definition: User experience examines the feeling of an individual, regarding the use of a product, that is, the first-hand, meaningful, effective and valuable characteristics of using a product.

The general perception of the UX is that it should be inherently dynamic, because of the continually changing internal and emotional state of an individual and differences in the situations, while using and after using the product (Hassenzahl, 2008; Law et al., 2009). Nevertheless, it is not necessary to perceive UX only as something that can be evaluated by interaction only; it should also involve the experience before interaction with the object. Even though it is essential to evaluate the short-term experience as a result of differences in needs caused by contextual factors and user goals, the need to know why and how experiences change over time is also of paramount importance. Furthermore, the values of users impact their experiences with the products and services, and, therefore, it is necessary to take this relationship into account in the process of designing from the start (Kujala, and Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, 2009). From these points, it is evident that looking at the static aspects of UX is not enough; there is a need also to investigate the short-term aspects of UX – and the way it changes over a period [for example, Karapanos et al., 2010, Law et al., 2009]. The core of UX evaluation includes a complete understanding of UX, regardless of positivity or negativity that a product evokes (Hassenzahl, and Tractinsky, 2006).

Factors influencing the User Experience

UX’s core ensures that the users get value from products being provided to them. Peter Morville exemplifies this using his User Experience Honeycomb (Morville, 2005) (See figure 2).

Figure 2: User Experience Honeycomb (Morville, 2005)

• Useful: It is necessary for the content of a product to be unique and to satisfy a need
• Desirable: Emotions and appreciation are stirred up using the brand, identity, image, and other design elements
• Usable: The site must be user-friendly.
• Findable: Users should be able to navigate and locate content onsite and offsite
• Credible: Users must trust and believe information about a product.
• Accessible: Disabled people must be able to access the content.

Laws of User Experience (UX)

Several laws have been introduced in the study of the user experience for an interactive system. Table 1 discusses some of the laws.  

Table 1: Tasks of User Experience (Lawsofux.com, 2018)

Law of User Experience	Explanation
Aesthetic-Usability Effect	Most times, users see designs that are aesthetically pleasing as better designs.
Doherty Threshold	A computer’s interaction with its user at a particular place (<400ms), increases productivity. What it implies is that either of them does not need to wait on the other.
Fitts’s Law	The function of distance to in respect to target size is the time taken to acquire a target
Hick’s Law	The number and complexity of preferences increase with the time taken for decision-making.
Jakob’s Law	Most times, users spend much time on other sites. It implies that users will want the site to function similarly to what they are used to on other sites.
Law of Common Region	Elements can be considered to be in groups if they are sharing an aspect that has a well-defined boundary.
Law of Pragnanz	Individuals will see and simplistically understand vague or complex images since this needs little cognitive effort.
Law of Proximity	Close or nearby objects may be grouped.
Law of Similarity	The human eye can see identical components in design as a complete shape, picture, or category, even when those components are unconnected.
Law of Uniform Connectedness	Visually related elements are considered to be more connected, as opposed to elements that are not related.
Miller’s Law	It is only 7 (plus or minus) items that an average person can keep in his/her working memory.
Occam’s Razor	Out of all competing hypotheses that predict very well, it is only the one that has the least assumptions that should be chosen.
Pareto Principle	According to the Pareto principle, when many events are considered, approximately 80% of the effects is as a result of 20% of the causes.
Parkinson’s Law	The task will continue to increase unless the available time is finished.
Postel’s Law	Individuals should be open-minded about what they accept and be cautious about what they send.
Serial Position Effect	Users tend to remember the first and last items in a sequence.
Tesler’s Law	Another name for Tesler's Law is The Law of Conservation of Complexity. According to the law, every system has a certain amount of complexity that is impossible to reduce.
Von Restorff Effect	Another name for the Von Restorff effect is the Isolation Effect. It predicts that in the presence of multiple similar objects, it is most likely that the one that differs from the rest will be remembered.
Zeigarnik Effect	People remember interrupted or uncompleted tasks well than finished tasks

Summary

In summary, it was identified that there is no specific journal that addresses Instagram user experience for baby boomers; this identified gap was addressed in this research.

Methods

Introduction

This chapter provides the approaches used to gather the user experience for the Instagram mobile application. The URL for the online survey is provided below:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6_4_4ZXyIBuRpAJdOwrsYjyZztJHBLlUnV532uNdXpmxn7Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

Steps involved in the methodology

The steps involved in this project are provided below:

• Step 1: Identify suitable methods and techniques to gather user experience from baby boomers for the Instagram mobile application (See Section 3.3)
• Step 2: Conduct user experiences and gather the data.
• Step 3: Identify the methods and techniques to analyse the gathered data from baby boomers (See Section 3.4).
• Step 4: Provide recommendation to improve the Instagram Graphical User Interface.

Methods and techniques adopted to gather User experience

The mixed methodology is used to gather the user experience of the interface from baby boomers. Mixed methods research refers to a research methodology that is made up of the collection, analyses and integration of quantitative (for example surveys, experiments) and qualitative (for example interviews, focus groups) research (Johnstone, 2004). This research method is used in situations where the combination of both techniques makes it possible for the research problem to be easily understood, whereas, ordinarily, the use of only one of the methods will not be able to provide such understanding.

• Quantitative data comprises close-ended information that can measure attitudes (for example, rating scales), behaviours (for example, checklists, observation) and performance instruments. This kind of data analysis includes analysing scores that are gathered statistically on instruments (for example questionnaires) or checklists that provide answers to the question regarding the research or hypotheses (Creswell, and Creswell, 2017).
• Qualitative data include open-ended information, in which the investigator typically collects using methods such as interviews, observations and focus groups. Usually, qualitative data analysis (for example, behaviours, words, text) are combined into groups of information. They are also used to present the different perceptions in the process of collecting data.

This project used a mixed methodology for the following reasons (Tashakkori et al., 1998):

• Its advantages balance the disadvantages of both quantitative and qualitative research
• It gives a better perception of the research problem in a way that neither the quantitative or qualitative methods alone can give.
• It is a methodology that can help develop a better and more context-centric instrument.
• It can interpret causal processes and explain findings

This research project mainly focuses on the interview, focus group and online survey, which are known as self-reported methods. Additionally, recorded task observation was done, which comes under the behavioural data collection method.

The number of participants for the methods and techniques is provided in Table 2.

Table 2: The number of participants for the methods and techniques

Methods	Number of Participants
Interview	3
Focus Group	5
Online Survey	10
Recorded task observation	2

Methods and techniques adopted to analyse the data

The different methods and techniques adopted in the analysis of the gathered data from the different approaches are discussed below:

The method of analysing the interview and focus group data collected is via the usage of reactions during the reaction gatherings. The responses obtained from it will be developed accordingly:

· Step 1: Summarisation

· Step 2: Grouping

· Step 3: Structuring

The steps involved in the quantitative data received from the online survey are provided below:

• Step 1: Validation of Data

Data is validated to confirm that the collection of data was done according to specification and without any bias.

• Step 2: Editing of Data

Editing the raw research data to identify and clear out any data points that may hamper the accuracy of the results.

• Step 3: Coding the data

It is the grouping and assigning of values to responses from the survey.

• Step 4: Visual Representation

Represent the data in visual formats such as charts, tables, and graphs

The steps involved in analysing the recorded task observation are provided below:

• Step 1: Write down the steps and time taken to perform the task by the users.
• Step 2: Compare the results

Ethical Principles

The Ethical considerations are provided below:

• No personal or sensitive data of the participants are collected.
• The participants have to provide consent before they can participate in the experiment explicitly.
• The complete information about the experiment is provided before the start of the experiment.
• The responses of the participants are stored anonymously.
• The data obtained will be used for this project only.
• The collected data can be assessed only by the researcher and his supervisor.

Summary

In summary, the mixed methodology was used to gather the user experience.

Analysis and Recommendations

Introduction

This chapter mainly focuses on providing information regarding the analysis and the recommendation derived from the analysis.

Analysis

All significant user interface problems identified from the gathered data regarding the Instagram design are discussed below:

Problem 1: More than 85% of the people mentioned that it is hard for them to identify the sign-up link on the initial screen of Instagram because it was at the bottom and also small where many did not expect to find it. It was also discussed in the focus group that when a participant clicks on the sign-up link and then decide to go back, there is no form of back swipe and it takes several seconds for them to figure out that they need to click on the “sign-in” to go back to the initial Instagram sign-in screen. Overall, the experience of starting to use Instagram is frustrating for baby boomers.

Figure 3: Problem 1

Problem 2: Participants mentioned that notification is a good feature on Instagram. However, when a notification is received regarding somebody mentioning his or her name in the comment of a specific picture and when the user clicks on the notification, the system is not taking the user to the comment directly. The current approach allows the participant to navigate through the comment to find out where their name is mentioned, which sometimes take as much as 1 to 3 minutes depending on the number of comments.

Problem 3: There are many tags on Instagram, and the participants have difficulty in identifying a suitable tag to select. Some participants even mentioned that most of the time, they need to type the entire tag before finding it on the suggestion.

Figure 4: Problem 3

Problem 4: Identifying and clicking icons such as like, share and comments are challenging for most of the users. It was observed from the recorded tasks that the participants were clicking the wrong icon by mistake because they are just a plain black colour outline (See figure 5); as well as being so near that it is confusing for them to identify it.

Figure 5: Problem 4

Problem 5: Too many pictures in the stories archive section that makes many participants find it challenging to identify the picture that is of interest to them. From the observation of the recorded tasks, there were users who spend as much as 3 minutes to find a specific picture.

Figure 6: Problem 5

Recommendation

The recommendations for the identified problems are discussed below:

Suggestion for Problem 1: Applying the Fitt’s and Jacob’s law, the size of the sign-up and login in button should be large and moved up on the screen to ensure that it is accessible and visible to users. Additionally, applying Jakob’s Law, the back navigation to move to the initial Instagram page should be added so that there is consistency with many mobile applications. Figure 7 provides a suggestion on how to include this feature to provide clear visibility and accessibility to the users as specified in Fitt’s Law.

Figure 7: Suggestion for Problem 1

Suggestion for Problem 2: Zeigarnik Effect indicates that a user tends to remember the abandoned task. Therefore, if it is challenging for users to locate the comment that has his or her name tagged, they are most likely to abandon it and not try some other time. A suggestion is that the Instagram app should direct users to the comment where their name was mentioned when they click on the notification. It will help the user save time and reduce the stress of going through the comments. For example, some images have thousands of comments, and it is challenging and frustrating for the user to locate the comment where their name is mentioned.

Suggestion for Problem 3: Applying Tesler’s Law, the tag suggestions cannot be simplified, because some essential complexity cannot be reduced. If the number of suggestion tags is reduced, then it can trigger another challenge that the system is not flexible enough to provide all the required information. Users need to take this complexity positively. If a user is looking for a specific tag, Instagram provides several options which can describe and assist the user in finding the appropriate hashtag for their requirement.

Suggestion for Problem 4: Applying the Von Restorff Effect, the icons should be different in order to ensure that the user can remember the icons. A suggestion is that the icons can have attractive colours which satisfy the Aesthetic-Usability Effect that states that attractive design is considered usable.

Figure 8: Suggestion for Problem 4

Suggestion for Problem 5: Applying the Miller’s Law, people can only remember approximately seven pictures at a time. Therefore, the stories archive section should display less than ten pictures at a time on the screen, so the user can quickly identify the picture on the screen.

Figure 9: Suggestion for Problem 5

Summary

According to the Zeigarnik Effect, people remember uncompleted tasks rather than the completed tasks; therefore, Instagram needs to consider this recommendation that can improve the application’s interface design and reduce abandoned task, especially for baby boomers.

Conclusion

The use of Instagram is increasing among baby boomers. However, the user experience for baby boomers has not been addressed in any research. Therefore, this research project focused on performing user experience testing for the Instagram mobile application, especially for baby boomers. The methods adopted to gather the user experience are via interviews, online survey, focus group, as well as the observation of the recording of the task. The problems identified from the Instagram mobile application includes navigation between sign-up and the sign-in page being difficult, difficulty in finding comments where a user’s name is mentioned, tag suggestions not being helpful to users. Also, the identification and clicking of icons such as like, share and comments are challenging for users. In addition, it was challenging for users to find a picture from the displayed pictures in the stories archives section of the app.

The suggestions for the identified problems was by the application of the user experience theories, and they include:

• The size of the sign-up and sign-in buttons are larger as well as placing it centrally on the screen to ensure it is visible and easily accessible to users.
• The application should direct the users to the comment where their name was mentioned when they click on the notification.
• The icons should be more prominent with colours in order to ensure that users can remember the icons.
• and the screen should display less than 10 pictures.

The suggested future works for this project are listed below:

• Future work 1: More data should be collected from more participants in order to get a more accurate result.
• Future work 2: The user experience of the Instagram website for baby boomers should be evaluated as well.
• Future work 3: A low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototype for the design recommendation should be created to display the suggestions in a more visually attractive way. 

References

Bergström, T. and Bäckman, L., 2013. Marketing and PR in Social Media: How the utilization of Instagram builds and maintains customer relationships.

Creswell, J.W. and Creswell, J.D., 2017. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.

DIS, I., 2010. 9241-210 2010. Ergonomics of human system interaction-part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems. Standard. International Organization for Standardization, Tech. rep. International.

Edwards, S.M., 2011. A social media mindset. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), pp.1-3.

Goor, M. (2012). Instamarketing: A Content Analysis into Marketing on Instagram. Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Hassenzahl, M. and Tractinsky, N., 2006. User experience-a research agenda. Behaviour & information technology, 25(2), pp.91-97.

Hassenzahl, M., 2008, September. User experience (UX): towards an experiential perspective on product quality. In Proceedings of the 20th Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine (pp. 11-15). ACM.

Last updated: Dec 02, 2021 01:21 PM

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