Instagram Notes “Likes”
Creating the first lightweight feedback system for Instagram Notes and how this improved engagement and developed an entirely new interaction pattern for our design system.
On Instagram, the fastest growing teen sharing format is called "Notes". It is a status update feature that allows users to share short thoughts, comments, quotes, music, polls, and more with their followers. However, we noticed in 2024 that interaction with notes tended to be consistently low (in fact, 77% of notes had no engagement at all).
How might we encourage users to engage more frequently and positively with notes?
While many users say they share notes without the expectation of a conversation, we know most of them are more retained when they receive some sort of feedback. I believed that giving Notes consumers a way to share feedback in a lightweight way without sending a DM will relieve the pressure of messaging, drive note engagement, and therefore encourage notes producers to create more notes.
During testing, this hypothesis was confirmed and I learned that users were looking for a “casual and spontaneous” way to engage with each other.
From wireframes to prototypes, I explored a breadth of design solutions and flows that utilized our existing design system components to create a familiar, simple, and yet entirely new set of interaction patterns.
The flow of this new reaction experience also needed to be thought through, since users may need guidance to know that 1. it exists and 2. how to use it. So, I conceptualized a set of onboarding features such as a tooltip system and a NUX for first time users as well as a notification system that synced with the user’s OS in real time. This way users could easily return to Instagram to respond to the reactions on their Notes, creating a positive feedback loop.
Regarding the motion design, I focused on creating a dynamic range of animation, leaning into color and delight, repurposing existing emojis and our brand gradient to add a more branded, custom feeling to the experience.
Careful choreography made each animation unique to match the specificity of the action taken, such as a heavier stamping action for a double tap like on a Note, versus the fluttery stream of hearts a user sees when their Note receives a like, mimicking the liveliness and immediacy of reactions on livestreams or videos.
I also wanted to consider how this would impact the larger ecosystem of Instagram such as what likes and reactions would look like when shown with Notes on a user’s profile, and how that particular user flow would differ from the one in the messages tray. I used and repurposed the new components I designed to create a tailor fit experience for user profiles that maintains the integrity of the original experience on Notes, maintaining simplicity, craft, and parity.
The success of this launch allowed me to explore additional reaction styles and treatments such as a custom version I created for birthdays and other major life events and holidays. We’re testing new features like Candid Stories so you can capture what you’re doing in the moment, Group Profiles so people can share posts and stories in a dedicated, shared profile and more.
This feature shipped and went live in mid-2024 and has since driven the most metric gains out of all other optimizations made on Notes. It improved not only how much teens were engaging with notes - by a massive 67% increase - but also how often they were returning to the app after and creating new notes - by a 10% increase.