More Stories. More Memories. Together.
Collaboration & shared moments.
- Role
- Product Designer. UI/UX design, user research, visual design
- Timeline
- January 2025 – February 2025
- Scope
- Mobile interaction design, competitive analysis, 3-stage iterative prototyping
- Tools
- Figma
Problem
Instagram Highlights has no way to create together.
Highlights lets people keep stories beyond 24 hours as curated collections on their profile. But engagement has declined among younger audiences who want shared, interactive experiences, and Highlights has no collaborative features.
The result is high social hesitation when sharing candid, everyday moments to broad public feeds, paired with friction when collecting shared memories from friends.
Goals
- Enable seamless collaboration
- Foster community and collaboration
- Enhance engagement through a fun re-design
Solution
Group Highlights: curate stories together.
A Group Highlight feature that lets friends and family curate stories together. It simplifies sharing, reduces story clutter and builds connection through shared memories, designed to sit seamlessly inside Instagram's existing interface.
- Co-curated story canvas with multi-author avatar indicators
- 1-tap contributor invitation tray
- Iterative usability testing across 3 cycles (wireframe to hi-fi)
Shared moments in the feed
Friends comment on the same candid post, easing hesitation about broadcasting to a public feed.
Invite contributors in one tap
A searchable tray of friends with a single Invite to Group Story button.
Share to Your Story or Group Story
After capturing, the same bar lets you post to your own story or the shared one.
Stories with more than one author
A co-curated story canvas with multi-author avatar indicators shows who contributed.
Curate a highlight together
One screen to pick shared photos and name the highlight, answering the friction of collecting memories from friends.
A highlight everyone appears in
Contributors are listed on the highlight itself. 76% wanted shared story and collaborative highlight features.
Process
How I got there.
were interested in the idea of a shared story
often use Instagram Highlights
post pictures of family and friends to stories
respondents in the Highlights survey
- .01
Research
A 25-respondent survey on how people use Highlights and whether they would want collaboration. Three pain points came out of it.
- Fear of oversharing: users hesitate to post often and worry about seeming annoying on the story feed
- Cluttered highlights: many forget to use them, or find them too time-consuming to organize
- Inefficient story navigation: scrolling through everyone's stories is a hassle
“I still feel slightly reluctant to post sometimes because I'm like oh I'm being annoying on the story feed again.”
“It's a cool feature, but can sometimes be a hassle to scroll through everyone's story.”
“I feel like there are times I forget about using highlights or they get cluttered and im too lazy to edit them.”
- .02
Ideation
Crazy 8s produced eight directions to add to Highlights:
- 1An Add to Group Highlight button on the landing page
- 2A stamped envelope with Instagram's logo that invites friends to join
- 3Sections for group highlights, like travel and food
- 4A story feed versus a personal feed
- 5Posting to the group highlight posts it to everyone's stories
- 6A Group Highlight page
- 7A Group Highlight account
- 8Concert group highlights made by the artist
- .03
Competitive analysis
Snapchat, TikTok and Facebook, compared on purpose, collaboration, interface, usability and audience, to define requirements for shared stories.
- Snapchat Stories: private stories with selected friends, intuitive swipe interaction, younger audiences
- TikTok Collections: organizes favorites into themed collections, no collaboration
- Facebook Stories: shared stories for groups, simple but outdated interface, older users and communities
- .04
Wireframes and testing
Wireframes explored the camera page and a new group highlight page. I tested rough hi-fis with my roommate Ashton, which led to three changes across 3 testing cycles, wireframe to hi-fi.
- Replaced the envelope with “people” icons, since the envelope doesn't follow Instagram's brand guidelines
- Used more Instagram-centric features on the combined story page, like the three numbers at the top
- Added an icon to the landing page so you can add to collaboration stories from two places
Next project
Farmers Market Kiosk →