Search empty state
Empty states are valuable real estate on Instagram's surfaces. We can use them to suggest helpful actions, in context.
Why don't users join?
How content helped
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Co-designed new Live entry points in IG Lite to help users find Live quicker when ”UXR showed users had trouble accessing Live in EMs. This resulted in early retention wins of +0.27% normalized WAU@14 and +0.75% DAU@8. We also see +0.81% DAP and +1.42% Time Spent increases. [diff] [figma] [post] [post] [data]
Our hypothesis
To test our hypothesis, I collaborated tightly with research and designers to develop a logged-out experience to test on Instagram Lite with intent to launch on Instagram core.
I crafted a series of value propositions through a bottom sheet to place between reels in a logged-out state and gathered user sentiment from teens and young adults in our South African market. These upsells are meant to encourage users to engage with Instagram and teach them how to use it before creating an account.
While attending an user research field study in Johannesburg, South Africa, we learned a lot about who our users are. For example, multiple Zulu youths mentioned they felt unheard in their oppressed society, so I leaned into that with our content to encourage people to share their voice with the world on a stage that they own.
I crafted a series of upsell interstitials designed to encourage logged out users to create an account. The language here takes advantage of Instagram's new voice and tone guidelines and the courageous creator.
We also gathered user sentiment in South Africa showing each of these feature upsells. These display when a user interacts with a reel in the logged-out experience. It was important to take into consideration the content thresholds and decide how much content is too much and how much is too little?
The results
Surprise! Among many things, one important lesson we learned was that if you give users something for free, they will happily take it. People enjoyed the logged-out experience so much that it actually hurt logins.
People seem to prefer to remain anonymous and not log in as they continue scrolling through their new reels experience. Though we expected this could happen, we also expected more people would create an Instagram account in emerging markets where net -new Instagram users are fewer. The team put a hold on further experimentation and we've moved on to the next big thing!
Sharing
Visitors can share posts with their friends through the overflow menu.
Hiding content
While our Reels ranking model takes into account integrity thresholds, we will support the ability for people to hide content that they don’t want to see.
