Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Albert Choi

A designer’s concept that can help boost engagement and revenue.

Brief summary of Snapchat this year:

Just this year alone, Snapchat went through a whirlwind of events. Starting off with a new feature called “Our Story” in February which allowed users to group stories together to share with their audience. Then in April, Snap Inc. went public. Initially it’s IPO seemed like a success in the first 24 hours. Then the prices continued to fall, followed by a continuous battle with Facebook as it replicated it’s “story” feature on not only on the Facebook app, but also on Instagram and Whatsapp. Then in June, Snap acquired a social mapping startup “Zenly” for roughly in the $250 million to $350 million dollar range according to TechCrunch. Using Zenly’s platform, Snapchat debuted a feature called “Snap Map”, it allows users to use a map to view stories in specific areas of the world. Even with these new features, Snap appears to be struggling as it’s shares are hovering lower than it’s IPO pricing.

My Experience

Personally I am not a heavy Snapchat user. I don’t snap too much (I don’t know what the average is but I snapped 2–3 times a day) but I do look at majority of the stories that are posted. However when Snapchat releases their updates, I get excited. Being a user experience/product designer, it is always interesting to find out new features and its purpose. When “Our Story” rolled out, I was intrigued. It was a feature that I had envisioned before, however I never really got around to use it. When “Snap Map” rolled out, I originally saw it on the web first and thought it was a cool concept. But then I forgot about it. I remember Snapchat sending me a messaging debuting the feature but I skipped it over. It was probably at a time where I was uninterested. I figured that I could play around with it later when it shows up but there wasn’t even a button for that feature. I forgot that feature existed until a friend showed it to me his phone by pinching the screen while on the camera mode. At first I thought it was interesting but was also very confused at the same time. I asked the question why couldn’t you swipe to access that feature like the others on Snapchat. Regardless when I checked out the feature, it was amazing! The fact that I could click on a part of the map and view what is going on was an extremely powerful experience. That was a wow factor for me for sure. Even with that, it bothered me why such feature was hidden. It seemed like the only way to find out that feature ever existed was if you watched that message that Snapchat sent you, maybe if you read it on the web, or by word of mouth. Personally what got to me was pinching the screen. My experience with Snapchat has always been with one hand, swiping left, right, up, and down. Pinching the screen on Snapchat to access a feature was extremely unnatural to me.

With the previous experience in mind, I decided to build something that might be a little more user friendly.

“Our Story” Feature

Here’s how I would recreate the feature:

Rename “Our Story”: I would rename the feature from “Our Story” to “Shared Story”. This gives a better explanation on what the feature does. “Shared” gives the idea that it’s collaborative that may seem more engaging to some users. Also “Our Story” and “My Story” seems to similar visually.

Redesigning the “Stories” interface: “Shared Story” will be visible at all times. Users may be more inclined to use it and will seem no different then the original view.

Shared Story Feature

Explanation: With “Shared Story” users can combine stories with their friends. For example, say you’re at a concert with your friends and instead of having the same exact story as those who you went with, you can combine them. This provides a collective memory that you can save just like any other story, but gives your audience a new viewing experience and perspective by capturing moments at different angles and times. This also allows users to add friends who are mutual friends!

Shared Story

The first screenshot shows a brief summary of the feature when using it for the first time. I added some design work to better explain it, hopefully it is straight forward. The second screenshot is what you’ll see when clicking “Shared Story”. This is where you would invite your friends to the “Shared Story” group. You can also add friends afterwards by clicking the 3 dot icon on the right side. Finally the third screenshot will show after the invitation and when ready to post. You can also send the post privately as you would normally.

Privacy is also taken very seriously and will only be visible to those who are mutually aquatinted.

Invitation

This screenshot shows when a user is invited to a shared story.

Viewing a “Shared Story”: Here users will see a noticeable difference between an normal story and a “Shared Story”

Shared Story View

For “Shared stories” there are two connecting purple rings on the right side. Users will see also 2 thumbnail previews instead than one. In the second screenshot, when viewing the story, user highlighted in purple is the poster at the top. When starting a conversation, all users will receive the message if sent to a “shared story”. Now you potentially wont have to see the same snap shared by multiple people on your friends list, it’ll all be in one if they’re together!

Monetization: This is probably the most important part. How can this be an effective way to make revenue? Snapchat excels with their screen real estate. Snapchat sells ads without any other distractions as it fills the entire screen.

Shared Story Concept

For example, I had the NBA partner with the players to deliver an exciting in-depth experience. Lots of potential on how athletes can interact with their fans. In the first screenshot, you’ll see LeBron James warm up from court side preparing for their game against the Golden State Warriors that is posted by NBA. At the top you’ll see the upcoming posts from other users from the “Shared Story”. A post from the Cleveland Cavaliers account is up next. Users may come across a yellow dot. That yellow dot will signal an ad is coming up. In the second screenshot, I used Nike Basketball along with Finals MVP Kevin Durant to highlight Nike’s ad. In the ad, Durant shows off some new athletic wear for Nike. The yellow bar at the top shows the duration of the ad. Users can swipe up on the ad to learn more about the ad. This allows Snapchat to be in better position to sell ads that are relevant to the posts. Currently it seems like Snapchat ads are random. My understanding is that there are no real data besides account information that Snapchat can work with. This way, they can target ads using specific followers as interests. Now the third screenshot shows Draymond Green. Here is an example of someone who I don’t follow that is suggested based on the accounts from the “Shared Story” I follow.

In conclusion, I believe this would benefit all users in some way. This just provides another experience for users to share and view content!

Snap Map

Just a simple redesign should help the engagement of the feature.

Swipe not pinch: Swiping seems like a better experience on Snapchat. It’s simple and it just works so I decided to make some small adjustments.

Snap Map Concept

First screenshot is not much too different than the original, just moved the “Memories” feature (smaller circle) above the capture button. You would just click the little circle to access “Memories”. To get to “Snap Map” all you would need to do is swipe down and you will be able to access the feature at ease. I added the locations icon below to help guide first time users so that it isn’t hidden. The second screenshot is just from my phone. Same experience, nothing needs to change. “Snap Map” is an incredibly powerful feature that should not go unnoticed.

Snapchat Updates

A new way to communicate with it’s users!

I’m not very sold on the private messages/snaps that Snapchat sends you when there is a new update. I feel more eager to skip them rather than watch them. So I decided to mix it up a little bit.

Updates from Snapchat

Here Snapchat get it’s own pinned story! Users can view and replay the posts that Snapchat posts. If you don’t want it, just hide it until the next update. Snapchat should take advantage of the main “story” page as it should provide more clarity in it’s future updates.

Conclusion

This blog post was not made to discredit or negatively impact Snapchat in any way. This is based solely on my experience on using the app and my thoughts around it. I’m a fan of Snapchat, I have tremendous respect for Evan and his team for building a company that is admired around the world. Despite Snapchat’s recent struggles in the market, it still has massive potential based on their platform and active users. Finally, I myself is an aspiring product designer. Think of this as just a creative exercise and would appreciate any feedback.

If you read this all the way through, I appreciate your time and hope you enjoyed it.

Thank You,

Albert

Why Snapchat still has a lot potential! was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why Snapchat still has a lot potential!

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