.irl.
This project was born from a deep love of and longing for the way the internet used to be: slower, quieter, and an optional accessory to life, but not life itself.
Welcome to .irl., the app that puts the user back in control of their feed and time on social media.
UX Designer, User Researcher, UI copywriter, Branding.
Role
Timeline
100 hours / 5 weeks
Project background
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Project background |
Problem
Changing attitudes about social media, the decline in user posting behavior, user desire for more close-friends sharing experiences, as well as governmental push back from countries like France and Australia to ensure children’s well being on social media platforms offers a space in the market for innovation.
.irl. is an experimental social media app that:
relies on a chronological timeline
avoids ads and suggested posts
encourages users to take breaks from the app
and allows users to put friends into “Tiers” of closeness, thus allowing the user to prioritize content from those who matter most
Solution
No one wants to post anymore
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No one wants to post anymore //
Market research
A decade ago, young users stopped posting on Facebook.
The social network permanently lost its younger Millennial and Gen Z audience, who largely migrated to Instagram.
Younger Millennials’ and Gen Z’s posting behaviors are declining, causing business problems for social media companies like Instagram. An October 2023 report from data intelligence company Morning Star found that:
37% of Gen Z adults and 31% of Milennials are “posting less often on their favored social platform compared with last year”
“nearly 3 in 10 social media users said they’ve posted on their preferred social platform less in the past year,”
“27% of those posting less on social media cited mental health concerns as a reason for not sharing as much.”
There’s a “growing demand “for close friends-only sharing experiences”
User research
I posit that another reason for the decline in posting is the professionalization of platforms like Instagram.
Users I interviewed all noted that they used to post more when they were younger, but this behavior has decreased as they began to value their privacy.
This finding is backed by a Wall Street Journal article published in December of 2023, which cites that some of the reasons users are posting less is because:
Users don’t feel they can control the content they see
They are now “more protective about sharing their lives online”
Social media isn’t as fun as it used to be (partly due to ads and suggested posts)
Instagram, for a lot of users, became a place to post only one’s most polished, perfect life moments — the most popular grids are ones that are so one’s grid became less a messy, fun, honest place to share one’s life, and more a sleek, professional, edited portfolio to showcase only one’s best moments.
This leads to users posting less.
The design of .irl. aims to challenge how social media functions by offering the user more control, choice, intimacy, and privacy.
In order to limit my bias and challenge the solution I already had in mind, I asked five participants broad questions about their social media use:
the first social networks they used
how they feel social media affects society
how it affects them personally
what triggers them to pick up their phone to browse
questions regarding social media addiction*
*In hindsight, I should have more strictly defined “social media addiction.” It’s a phrase we colloquially throw around to joke about our dependence and need to check social media apps, yet a lot of users behaviors don’t necessarily point to “addiction” so much as “habit.”
I hear an echo
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I hear an echo //
“What’s next what’s next what’s next? At some point you have to cut yourself off.”
“What is next, what is next? There’s this need to see what’s the next thing. It’s just automatic.”
“What’s the next best thing? Maybe the next one will be funny.”
“Oh what’s next? Oh what’s next? Oh what’s next?”
-Direct quotes from my interview subjects
Defining the problem
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Defining the problem |
I created one persona to test the MVP.
For future iterations of this project, I would create two personas, based on my finding that some users felt guilty (Guilty Persona) while another group felt neutral (Neutral Persona) about the time they spent on social media.
How might we take social media from being:
transactional to engaging?
curated to spontaneous?
influential to personal?
professional to low fi?
sleek to maximalist?
stressful to fun again?
Designing a solution
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Designing a solution |
Branding
I chose the original 16-color palette that IBM used in its computers in the 1980s to draw a parallel between this app and older internet products.
The selected heading font is IBM Plex Mono, another choice that draws inspiration from the past. The font is paired with Montserrat for an element of modernity.
The future of the internet may look a lot like the past.
.irl.’s design is reminiscent of a bygone internet.
The low-fi design for .irl. encourages users to post imperfect content.
Low-fi design encourages low-fi posting behavior.
Lowering the stakes (or having no stakes at all!) of posting allows users to drop their guard and have fun with social media again.
The design aims to increase user posting and avoid a reliance on professional influencers to fill a user’s feed with content.
Interviewees noted that they have difficulty seeing posts from their friends because their feed is filled with content from accounts that post more regularly (such as restaurant, business, meme, or art inspiration accounts).
So I conceptualized Tiers to solve this problem.
Users are asked to place someone into a Tier when they Follow them.
Tiers also allows the user to share content to their feed to select groups of friends, rather than to everyone all at once.
The three Tiers are Close Friends, Friends, and Other (a category that the user can rename).
A friend would never be notified of the designation you gave them, but the designation does ensure that your feed prioritizes content from your closest friends first.
This feature aligns with research that shows a “growing demand for close friends-only sharing experiences” (Morning Consult, Oct 2023).
Clearly marked exits
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Clearly marked exits //
“A sane social network … would have no reason to keep us from ‘logging off.’ It would respect our need for solitude as much as the fact that we are humans with bodies that exist in physical space and must still encounter each other there.”
- How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
In other words, users must be afforded the space and time to make a decision, which the current algorithms and patterns of social media do not allow.
Her research resonated with me and my interest in humane design, which asserts that we should be designing for the dignity of users rather than solely trying to capitalize off them.
The design of .irl. is engaging yet has defined exit points that a user can take if they please. There’s pagination on feeds to avoid the infinite scroll and a post limit function that the user can set.
Usability testing
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Usability testing |
I conducted four usability tests that asked users to complete the following tasks:
Task 1: You’re a new user to this app. Can you walk me through how you would make a new account?
Task 2: You’re on the app! Can you walk me through how you would post something to the app?
Task 3: You’ve been on the app for a few months. You’re looking to get a new tattoo, and one of your friends recommended a tattoo artist named Luigi. Can you walk me through how you would find Luigi on this app and add him to your network?
Task 4: You just picked up your phone to take a break from work/mindlessly scroll for a bit. Can you walk me through this interaction with the app? What do you think about it, and why do you think it’s set up this way?
Testing revealed that my first hi-fidelity design fell short, visually and functionally. After four user tests, I compiled a list of 75 (major and minor) fixes that needed to be implemented, prioritized them using the Effort vs Impact matrix, and got to work.
The final, hi-fidelity wireframe implemented the majority of usability feedback, yet I was out of time for further testing and iterating. While I am proud of the final design, I do want to go back and test it on at least five users and do a final round of iterations.
Conclusion
.irl. is a much bigger and more joyful project than I could have anticipated.
Were I to have another 100 hours, I would continue iterating on my concept and add a notification bundling feature that allows users to decide when to get notifications each day. I would also dig deeper into the tenets of humane design.
The project could also use a round of surveys with quantitative questions about the time users spend on social media apps and the words they associate with these platforms.
I would also like to interview and observe a broader range of users (varied ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, etc) and learn how they interact with social media.
Finally, I would continue building up the pages and functions of this app and conduct a wider usability test to see how it would work, well, in real life!
in real life
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in real life //
Another (future) facet to this project is an interface that is designed to be viewed fully outdoors, in public, with other people present.
The app would be displayed on a public digital kiosk in key junctions around a city or town, with users allowed to read and contribute posts to a neighborhood-specific feed as well as read a city-wide feed.
This endless digital bulletin board would act as a community memory of the people that live there.