Project: Instapaper

The Instapaper app is a mobile application that allows users to download and save articles, videos, and even emails onto the app to view later. The articles are formatted in an optimized view for reading on your phone by eliminating advertisements and large images.

Instapaper does not currently allow for social engagement between Instapaper users. Articles can be posted on social media and emailed, but there is no direct sharing or chat component. For this project, my design team set out to make UI enhancements and add social features that would allow users to better organize their content and engage with their social circles about what they are reading.

Mobile App Redesign

Add Social Features

Material Design

Role: research, rapid ideation, UI design

See the Final Design

Research

The goal of this design project is to add a social feature to Instapaper. So, what does Instapaper currently offer for social engagement?

While accessing one of your saved articles within Instapaper, the share button allows article sharing via text message, and a link to social apps you have downloaded onto your phone.

There is no direct share option to communicate with other users of the app from within the app.

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Competitive Analysis: What do other article saving and playlist style apps offer?

Our team conducted competitive analysis across other content saving apps including reading lists, music playlists, and lifestyle apps like Pinterest.

Other apps generally offer more ability to follow friends, share user profiles, personalize recommendations, and direct message that Instapaper does not allow. This gave us insight to feature ideation that required further research in user interviews.

Journey Map of the Current Instapaper Experience

The journey map was created to demonstrate a user's experience with Instapaper and other platforms prior to our redesign.

It helped our team to understand the frustrations a user is facing so that we could problem-solve a better flow and feature list for the app. Feature opportunities are outlined for each phase of the user's experience.

User Interviews

These are a few of the interview questions we asked to find out about social and sharing motivators and behaviors when reading.

User Interview Synthesis: Affinity Mapping "I Statements"

Social Elements

I care about the way specific groups of people view me
I want to share articles with groups and individuals
When I share, I like to share positive topics
I value discussion about articles

Logistic elements

I forget to read my saved articles
I want to flexibly organize my articles
I value convenient ways to access my articles
I read for work and for pleasure

User Personas

Ideation

Michael’s lifestyle means he is away from friends for long periods of time. He wants to stay connected while he travels.

Problem Statement:

Michael is in and out of service while traveling, and sometimes feels lonely or far away from friends during travels. He needs a better way to efficiently keep up with what his friends are reading and share articles.

Sylvia enjoys group discussions about articles and would like to be able to quickly share to a specific group so that an article can be discussed at work the next day to spark innovation on her team.

Problem Statement:

Sylvia likes to discuss articles with coworkers, but currently gets frustrated from taking time to switch platforms and forgetting which one she used to discuss an article. Sometimes it's email, sometimes it's Slack, sometimes LinkedIn.

Redesigned Instapaper App Map

We chose to design Instapaper using material design to broaden our design scope. My team spent a lot of time discussing how we wanted to prioritize information on the home page.

Stacks was a new feature we developed that are basically like playlists on Spotify, but instead they are stacks of articles saved into categories. We liked the idea of having stacks accessible with a quick click at the top. We changed the format from separating groups by specific feeds to having a designated "groups" layer.