Collaborate, curate, and relive your favorite moments—together.

My Role: UI/UX Designer | User Research | Visual Design

Timeline:

January 2025 - February 2025

What are Instagram Highlights?

Instagram Highlights allows users to extend the life of their stories beyond the typical 24-hour limit, creating curated collections that live permanently on their profiles. With customizable covers and themed collections, Highlights help users and brands craft a cohesive narrative and make their most important content easily accessible. Instagram Highlights offer a unique way to connect with followers and keep them engaged long after the Story disappears.

Despite its popularity however, Instagram Highlights has seen a decline in user engagement, especially among younger audiences who crave shared and interactive experiences. It lacks collaborative features that resonate with community-driven users, limiting user engagement and the potential for deeper social connections on the platform.

This led me to the problem...

Defining the Problem

I saw an opportunity to improve Instagram Highlights’ user engagement by addressing a key gap: the lack of collaborative features. As user behavior shifts towards shared and interactive content, Highlights have struggled to keep pace, leading to decreased usage. This underutilized tool limits its potential to foster connections and keep users engaged, making it a clear problem to solve.

How can we create a dynamic, collaborative experience that boosts engagement and social interaction within Instagram Highlights, inspiring users to share stories in more meaningful and connected ways?

The Goal

Enable Seamless Collaboration

Foster Community and Collaboration

Enhance Engagenment Through A Fun Re-Design

Ideation

I had a lot of ideas as to what I could add to the already exisiting idea of highlights, so using the Crazy 8s method, I got some ideas!

1. An Add to Group Highlight button on the Landing Page

2. A stamped envelope with Instagram's logo on it

that invites friends to join a group highlight

3. Sections for group highlight, such as travel, food, etc.

4. A story feed versus a personal feed

5. Posting to the group highlight individually posts it to everyone's stories

6. A Group Highlight Page

7. A Group Highlight Account

8. Concert Group highlights made by the artist

Competitive Analysis + SWOT Analysis

I turned the insights into a structured market research table, refining ideas to create an innovative, user-centric design for Instagram Highlights

Feature	Snapchat Stories	TikTok Collections	Facebook Stories
Purpose	Share time-limited content through your day	Organize and group favorite TikToks into themed collections	Share short-loved, personal content with friends
Key features	24-hour disappearing stories, filters, Bitmoji	Pinning content to page, saved videos	24-hour stories, reactions, comments
Collaboration	Private stories where you can add select friends	N/A	Shared stories for groups
User Interface	Dynamic filters and interactive elements	Minimalist	Simple but outdated
Usability	High --- intuitive, swipe-based interaction	Moderate, swipe-based interaction	Moderate, basic but functional
Demographic of Users	Younger audiences/Gen Z, closer-knit circles	Gen Z, content creators and consumers	Older users, parents and family, local communities

User Research

My user research survey consisted of 25 respondents from users to gauge their experience with Instagram Highlights and to see if they would be interested in collaboration features.

The users had spoken...

80%

of users often use Instagram Highlights

80%

of users post pictures of family and friends to stories

76%

of users were interested in the idea of a shared story

Quotes from users...

"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."

3 main pain points

Fear of Oversharing — Users feel hesitant to post frequently, worrying they might overwhelm their followers or appear annoying on the story feed.
Cluttered Highlights — Many users forget to use Highlights or find them disorganized and too time-consuming to edit and maintain.
Inefficient Story Navigation — Browsing through multiple stories can be frustrating, with users mentioning that scrolling through everyone’s content feels like a hassle.

The Solution!

I decided to dive into designing a Group Highlight feature that lets users collaboratively curate stories with friends and family. This simplifies sharing, reduces story clutter, and fosters connection through shared memories. I wanted to integrate it seamlessly into Instagram’s UI, so that it could offer an intuitive way to co-create content, boosting engagement and making Highlights more dynamic and meaningful.

Development

Step 1: Wireframing

Different ideas I had for the camera page and how the collaboration feature would be added.

Some ideas that I had for the posting feature and how it would look as a new page on a user's feed.

Step 2: Rough Hifis and User Testing

This is my roommate Ashton! He tested out my initial high fidelity wireframes and mapped out what he liked and didn't like. From there I knew I needed to change some things...

Changes !

Change the envelope to "people" icons, as the envelope does not follow Instagram's brand guidelines
Have the combined story page use more Instagram-centric features like the 3 numbers at the top and such
Add an icon to the landing page so you can add to collaboration stories from two places.