The Information Architecture of Instagram

True to its company statement, Instagram is ‘bringing you closer to the people and things you love.’ It seems so simple or loosely structured just by looking at the interface provided for its users.

But behind the scenes, Instagram is a complex, but well-thought-out data structure of knowledge management, design in data and usability in shaping its users’ overall experience. Future technologies will be modeling after it because of its huge success and influence.

CREATING and ORGANIZING CONTENT

To successfully navigate through the process of creating a post, users create content throughout the body of the screen, be it thru mobile or desktop, but the top right is reserved for the navigation to go through the next steps of posting content until the user is sent to the last step before the post is made public.

Users see different windows as they go through the steps in how to create post. These windows create a sequence that inform the user where to start, where to go next, and what actions are involved in each steps. There are other external links for options at the beginning (whether to post a picture or a reel) and at the end (accessibility options, posts automatically go to the Facebook account, etc.) too. This gives the user additional information about their posts.

While its users are thinking they are creating captions for their posts, they are actually producing the metadata to add on to Instagram’s architecture. Add on the hashtag symbol at the beginning of the words they use, and the level of granularity of data classification has increased. Through hashtagging, users have further assisted in organizing and labeling these contents into specific categories and creating the navigation links that will take other users to their content. These links make the content easy to find for others to view and these users are then further inspired to create more related content, thus growing the volume of data.

This inter-dependent way of letting its users create and organize content on the front end to create dynamic streams of information, and programming Instagram to be adaptive and dynamically growing on the back end, made Instagram win the race for the photo-sharing app platforms.

SEARCHING

Users post their own data and can find it easily also. But, when searching, people don’t always know what they want. The tool with the magnifying glass gives them the option to start their search, and let them poke around and explore which are the most recent posts and which are the most recent popular hashtags. During this process, users’ search criteria might change or they may learn new information.

The hashtags allow users to find content that are similar to each other. Functioning as contextual labels, they allow users to find content quickly and efficiently. However, one error of this type of categorizing for this app is that all users are assuming the correct hashtags are used to the text it matches. There are occasions where users simply use a random text, and the next user that follows this hashtag would feel manipulated to follow this hashtag, because it might turn out to be a trap and it has nothing to do with what they are searching about.

NAVIGATION

Instagram allows users to move easily from browsing to searching, and back and forth. Its users can search using the toolbar at the very top, or they can easily browse using the magnifying glass as shown at the bottom of the screen, one of only five navigation options shown.

The very narrow amount of options allow users to be clearer about their goals and will get to their goals faster, and will have a quicker time understanding its architecture.

Instagram is even more minimalist features in its navigation. There is neither a bread crumb trail nor a global navigation bar as a one-click feature for a user to ‘start over’ in their search. Users are only given the less-than icon to go back a page, and they keep pressing those until the users’ are taken back to their pages.

HOWEVER …

Despite all these great things I have been mentioning about Instagram, there is one huge problem for me. In the posts I’ve selected as likes, the necessary steps to refer back to these items are confounding.

Option 1:

My profile pic at the lower right icon of the screen >> SAVED by the folders I’ve created (same location at the desktop version)

VERSUS

Option 2:

My profile pic at the lower right icon of the screen >> the hamburger menu at the top right >> settings >> Account >> Posts You’ve Liked (which, weirdly, is NOT available at the desktop version)

I cannot figure out why there would be a huge difference in their locations even though these are a users’ favorites.

Not as problematic, but still a head scratcher. I also find their use of icons to be inconsistent. In the app’s first page, the icons are used as labels. What do the icons mean to anyone? A user would have to click on each icon to know what they mean, and they will understand them through repeated exposure. Additional menus within the app, like in the Settings folder, are simply texts.

And the black heart at the front page of the desktop version is confusing, as it shows activity between the users and their followers, not about posts the user has liked. It doesn’t provide any other context for the potential confusion it causes users and renders these icons ineffective. Use of the heart icons is not consistent.

Throughout its changes, Instagram assisted its users to learn and unlearn its new designs. No two users will understand it the same way, but they will both arrive at its destination. Even with so many iterations, Instagram retained its loyal following, and its expectations of how such an environment should function has also evolved. Additionally, users bring learned behaviors from the numerous social media platforms and easily transition them when using Instagram.

Much of the work by Instagram is invisible and it has already taken great care of its architecture. Its users are immediately focused on tasks, finish it, and then move on. Its team of information architects designed their product for scalability, which made it easy for its users as its popularity grew. This is the key to its success.