the photo manager
ibi
Key product features of ibi include
The process of implementing reactions on ibi was implemented quickly to hasten the launch of the product.
​
-
Automatically collect all of your favorite photos and videos from your phone, computer, USB drives, and popular cloud and social media accounts2
-
Invite your closest friends and family to a private space called the Inner Circle where you can all post photos and videos for each other to see
-
2 terabytes (TB)3 of space (capable of storing 500,000 photos* or 200 hours of video**)
-
Stream videos to TV with popular TV streaming devices
-
ibi is a great value for a one-time cost and no subscriptions. ibi can be a lower cost alternative to some cloud services offering the same amount of space for a monthly subscription fee.
THE PROBLEM
-
The current design of comments/likes looks clunky
-
ibi is designed for sharing, but not a huge # of eyeballs
-
Likes/comments are a method of direct communication between inner circle members, meant to bring them closer together
-
Violate basic alignment rules
-
Adds another text style to complicate the page
-
We would like gives users more delight when they like a photo for both the poster and viewer.
MY ROLE
I collaborated with a senior designer to explore different options to improve engagement through reactions in the app.
We did some competitive analysis of a few social media apps, to understand why social platforms use the buttons to connect people within platforms. I took screenshots from various apps, also read peer-reviewed articles and a book in the absence of research to gain a better understanding of the impact of creating connections on ibi through icons.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
2 week sprints
MAKE OF THE TEAM
lead designer and associate designer
KEY GOAL
Increase the engagement on the site and create delight with reactions
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
The ibi product is geared to family-oriented people in adulthood. Skewing towards women and men in their 30s who are not very tech savvy and worry about privacy and exposure.
For this specific project, we relied on preliminary research that focused on how people interacted in their inner circles. We wanted to improve interaction on the platform to increase engagement and make the user interface on par with its contemporaries in the social media app space. We did some preliminary research looking at peer-reviewed articles to understand how people prefer to interact with each other.
One of the articles I read was the article "Online intimacy and well-being in the digital age" coupled with research and technical findings from the book called the "The design way" and Reactions: Not everything in life is Likable.
The Article talks about intimacy and warmth achieved through remote communications. We understand the product focus of ibi to be more private than Facebook or Twitter, so we would like to fill the gaps by increasing warmth and intimacy through comments and reactions that display people
Creating the case for intimacy and warmth through likes
A peer-reviewed article, Online intimacy and well-being in the digital age postulates “Social networking also facilitates the maintenance of weak ties between acquaintances but does not typically increase the level of intimacy in these relationships (Ellison et al., 2007, Hsu et al., 2011.
Competitive Analysis
I examined reactions on multiple social media applications on desktop and mobile to observe the behavior of the design of comments and likes on platforms like Instagram, facebook and google photos.
.png)
A Like actions is represented by a red color fill and populated with the profile of like, with counts on the bottom.
The comment section blends with the poster entry point
​
The comment threads are
hidden
There are no counts in SIV for photos liked
The design way book cover
SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS
-
When a user reacts to a post they want to express themselves accurately.
-
Likes often imply that they approve of something ​
-
Commenting takes effort
​
-
We intended the reactions on ibi to be for intimately held moments shared amongst small groups of people like family members, very close friends who may be in the same space as the people they are interacting with.
-
Each of the platforms uses reactions to create engagement similarly
-
Facebook: Optimizes for huge engagement with distinct
-
emotionally categorized reactions
-
The user derives satisfaction from likes
-
Twitter, Tumbler, and Reddit optimizes for the rabbit hole
-
like thread sharing
-
The user derives satisfaction for reposts
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
We used Crazy 8s to explore different ways to position the react buttons
This exploration focused on the inner circle including the interaction of likes and comments on the single item view. This image explore icons hovering over the image and the icons that show the image of the person performing the like action on the target object.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
User Flow
.png)
Likes and reaction SIV
No like
1 like
1 too many likes including owner
Likes and reaction in the Inner Circle
OUTCOMES AND NEXTSTEP
This exploration phase would be followed with user research on how users view the inner circle, use the inner circle as well as follow up observational studies on how users interact with post, photos and videos on other social media platform