The Instagram Update: How Adding a Shopping Bag Icon Changed an App’s Identity
Dylan Harriman
As if the world in 2020 wasn’t already chaotic and ever-changing enough, November saw Instagram decide to change the layout of its home page in a drastic way, which floored users of the app as they expressed their dislike of the new format. Here is what it looks like:
Okay, fine, so the changes might not look all that drastic initially, but take a closer look at the toolbar at the bottom of the Instagram homepage. What are those things? We’re all familiar with the home icon, the search icon, and the profile icon, but what are these movie/video symbols and a shopping bag icon doing there?
Taking a page from the wildly successful TikTok, the movie/video symbol is actually Instagram’s new feed page for what they call “reels.” Just like the format of TikTok, reels are a collection of short videos organized into a continuous scrolling feed. It’s not just an uncanny resemblance; videos in the reel section are mostly just reposted TikTok videos.
The shopping bag finalizes a feature Instagram has been playing with for a while: a market place! After you click on the shopping bag you are taken to an Amazon-like page of materials and goodies (mostly clothes) that you don’t really need, organized according to the brands you follow or interact with and according to other indicators of your preferences.
You might be saying “sure, this is all well and good, but who asked for this?” Interestingly enough, several of my own Instagram followers are asking the exact same question.
I personally didn’t think much of the changes until I witnessed the uproar they caused on other social media sites like Twitter. Some people said they hated the new update, others said they loved it. Plenty of people however agreed that these new changes were making Instagram . . . “unusable.” This caught my interest. How can adding new and innovative features that weren’t there before cause something to stop functioning properly, to the point where it can’t be used? This outrage led me to establish three questions for myself in researching this topic:
- Do a “majority” of people really not like the update?
- What are some key reasons why so many people don’t like the new update?
-What are some ways my followers would suggest “fixing” Instagram?
By answering these questions we can better understand what it means to design, and be a product of design, in the new techno-social era. Authors like Jesse James Garret (The Elements of User Experience) can help us contextualize exactly what design means when it comes to social media, and the role of the user in that design process, and how Instagram may have strayed from that idea in its recent update.
To answer my first question, I polled my Instagram followers to try and get a sense of what a random group of college aged 20-somethings would feel about the new Instagram update, or more specifically if a majority of them would not like it. I posted a series of questions, ironically on Instagram, through the poll, question box, and quiz functions in the shareable story section of the app. All of my followers have access to these stories and questions, so I was trying to get the maximum amount of engagement possible. At the end of the polling day, less than 300ish people viewed all my stories, and about half or less of those people actually answered and engaged with my questions. Let’s take a look at my questions and how they were answered.
The First Question I asked was:
Answers:
General Consensus: Instagram
When asked to identify their favorite social media website/app, a majority of my followers indicated that Instagram was their top choice. This indicates that most of my followers are invested and engaged with Instagram either as their primary, or one of their main, social media apps.
Next Question:
Answer:
General Consensus: Don’t like it.
When given the option to give their general opinion on the new Instagram user interface update, a majority of my followers indicated that they “don’t like it.” This indicates that, for an app they seem to prefer over the others, they dislike the recent changes to its user interface.
Next Question:
Answer:
General Consensus: I don’t like the new update.
When given the option to give their specific opinion on the new Instagram user interface update, a majority of my followers indicated “I don’t like the new update.” This is similar to the sliding-barr question above, but indicates specifically that there are far more people who don’t like the update than people who specifically like it. The next highest response category is simply people who have no opinion on it or have no negative or positive indications about the new user interface.
Based on the answers to these questions it seems pretty clear: the small sample size of my followers who answered these polls and questions believe Instagram to be their favorite social media app, while also answering that they do not like the new update. I can confidently assign a big “yes” answer to our first question; a technical majority of people (composed of my Instagram followers who engaged with my polls) do not like the update.
For my second question, “what are some key reasons people don’t like the update,” I decided I needed to clarify their responses by asking both what their initial thoughts were on the update, and what they would do to “fix” Instagram. I left that second question intentionally vague to see what kind of fixes people had in mind according to what they thought of the update.
My First Question:
The general consensus in answer to this question is kind of hard to pin down, but some consistent phrases and keywords included, “usability poor,” “profit-oriented,” “money-grabbing,” and especially “confused.” Out of the 39 written responses to this question, eight of the responses included the word “confusing” or “confused.” So, to a group of people who claim Instagram as their favorite social media app, this new update left them “confused,” or feeling as though Instagram was trying to reach for their pockets instead of focusing on content.
It is important to address how the systems of design plays into my research. Jesse James Garret, a user experience designer based in San Francisco, identifies the five separate levels of interface in every website and app in his work, The Elements of User Experience. These five different levels dictate how a website is composed and organized visually, from the idea that forms its creation, the code that creates its structure, to the buttons you click on as the user. The five different planes are as follows: the surface plane, the skeleton plane, the structure plane, the scope plane, and the strategy plane. When we talk about user experience, these are the planes we talk about when discussing a website or an app.
When discussing the recent changes to Instagram’s interface, one might be inclined to think that moving and adding icons is simply aesthetic, and are subject to the surface plane level. The surface plane is defined by Garret as being the images and text the website is composed of. In actuality, the changes to this app’s interface would be more connected to the next plane, the app’s skeleton. The skeleton plane, as defined by Garret, relegates the placement of buttons, controls, and blocks of text. With the movement and addition of old and new icons and buttons to Instagram’s home page, this is the most logical plane connected to the changes.
This isn’t where the story ends though. Garret also mentions that each plane is inherently affected by the changes to the plane below it (Garret 22). In our case, the skeleton plane cannot be changed without altering the surface plane. This is true; with the addition of new reels and shopping buttons in the skeleton plane, there must also be icons and space to accompany these functions in the surface plane. This seems all well and good, right? My analysis can end here, Instagram has gone through a change to its skeletal plane, and the planes above it changed accordingly. People don’t like it, so what’s the big deal?
Here’s the big deal: what if I told you this conspiracy goes all the way to the top. Or bottom, in this case. To the bottom of the planes. That’s right, I’m talking strategy level plane stuff here. Also, there is no conspiracy, just more to uncover in this discussion on just how much Instagram changed its design with the inclusion of these icons, and not just on a surface level. I’ll let my Instagram poll respondents start us off with this one.
The next question I asked was:
Of course there were multiple and varied suggestions, but what was consistent is that my respondents didn’t just have aesthetic changes they wanted to make to the app. Most of the answers to the kinds of improvements my followers would make to Instagram’s layout revolved around: “reverting” the page back to normal, “removing” the new icons. People were furious about Instagram trying to be a “marketplace,” so much so that they would fix the app by focusing on prioritizing content posted by friends, and, as one respondent put it, “Get rid of the fuckin store tab.” With this information in hand, my three initial questions have been answered. But the answers to this question points back to the deeper question in defining just how much Instagram has changed with this update in hand.
The only reason I find these answers interesting is because of their incoherence with the question I asked. I simply asked what changes they would make aesthetically to the home screen and the basic interface. Removing an entire new section of the app isn’t so much of an aesthetic change as a removal of a newly founded “core” piece of the app’s identity. Do you see where the significance lies in this realization? If my Instagram poll respondents can’t fix what they dislike about the new update on an aesthetic level, the update must follow the rules of the five planes of user experience; it’s origin lies in a plane far beyond an aesthetic level. The new update doesn’t just affect how the Instagram home screen looks. It’s an update to the app’s identity completely. Here’s my final question of the Instagram polls to show you just what I mean about my poll respondents seeing this update as something far beyond an aesthetic change.
My final question:
Answer:
General Consensus: App is Non Social
Here, we can see that my poll respondents, and a majority of them I might add, put the nail in the coffin of Instagram’s newfound identity after the update. My poll respondents don’t see Instagram as an app primarily for social interaction based on how it has changed with the update compared to what it used to be. If an apps’ entire identity changes with an update, the changes made by the update must specifically go beyond just an aesthetic level. In this case, they do. By including a shopping bag icon and a TikTok clone, Instagram’s changes take place in what Garret defines as the fundamental aspects of user interface and experience. Instagram has altered itself within the strategy plane. The strategy plane is defined by Garret as being the plane that incorporates and represents what the people running the site want to get out of its existence. This plane is where the identity and purpose of the app is defined by those who make it. My poll respondents believe that the creators and owners of the app no longer see its mission in people’s lives as something to connect them with their social counterparts in an online setting, specifically with photos. What does it seem like the owners and creators of Instagram want to “get out of its existence” now? An Amazon-like marketplace structure that will enable users to buy more partnered products, so Instagram can start to make more money.
At least, that’s what my poll respondents would tell you. My poll respondents might also be inclined to remind Instagram of another aspect of what is defined in the strategy plane that they forgot to address: “the strategy incorporates not only what people running the site want to get out of it but what users want to get out of the site as well” (Garret 21). Here, Garret defines the user as being just as vital in the design process of the app entirely. The user should be kept in mind throughout the building of the app, most importantly in the strategy plane. Some of my poll respondents might say that by forcing users to navigate around a newly implemented icon they don’t want present on the app, they are no longer being included in the design process of user-interface, but are now just subjects of an app changing its identity to copy other rising social media apps, and to find ways to make more money.
In a year that has given the world as a whole more change than it has consistency, for better and for worse, should the change of a social media’s home-screen interface really matter all that much? Who’s to say? In an age where most of us are home more than we are out, our phones, and especially social media, have been our main source of entertainment and interaction. It’s impossible to say if a change like this might have garnered a similar kind of reaction in a non-COVID-19 version of the world. But with more people paying attention to Instagram, more people seemed to notice it start to shift away from being primarily a social media forum. With this recent update providing changes to Instagram’s core identity in the strategy plane, and with a majority of polled Instagram users having an unfavorable view of those same changes, it’s safe to say that the recent drama surrounding this update can be instructive. It provides us a glimpse into just what questions we might need to ask when faced with new updates as users who should be included in the decision-making process of the design of the user interface.
