I Redesigned the ENTIRE Instagram UI… But is that enough?

Instagram needs to remember its roots: a simple, user-friendly layout that prioritizes connections over clutter.

If you're watching this, there's a good chance you're an Instagram user. Why? Because there's almost 1.2 billion people on this planet using it. That's more than TikTok and Reddit combined. It's a heavily visual platform that started out strong back in 2010 and kept on improving and redesigning year after year.

But what if you're one of those who don't use Instagram? What if you're thinking of leaving it? Surely there's something they can do to keep you in the party. What is it you want? TikTok, Twitter, Telegram, or Pinterest? Just name it. Do you want the homepage to stop showing you irrelevant content?

You see, Instagram, we had a good thing. We had photos of our family, friends, artists, and creators, along with occasional stories from people we really care about. We had a good layout, an activity and explore page, and everything was where it needed to be. It was simple. But no, you just had to blow it up with your reels, your shop, and your meta integrations. If you had just built the new features while keeping the old layout and notified us of the new features through official Instagram stories like you used to, I would be fine right now. But it's okay; it can still be fixed.

Let's start from the applications—yes, plural. But I don't mean layout or threads; I'm talking about the Android and iOS versions. These apps have so many differences, and I'm not just talking about the first impression of the layout or different choices of icons. For example, why are there three taps for DMs on the Android version but not on iOS? I wish this was a device difference, but why are designs inconsistent across different accounts on the same device? When I tap on a reel, why does it pause on some accounts and mute on others? Do they roll out features inconsistently, or are they just testing your patience?

Besides, there are too many updates without proper testing, announcements, or education. Like, aren't we going to talk about how IGTV got replaced by reels or what the hell notes even are? It's time we made it clear what we really want. So, here's my review and redesign of Instagram. Let me know what you think about it in the comments.

Instagram started with a navigation layout that worked. You had profiles, activities, a camera icon, an explore page, and home. We all got used to this because of its superior UX—how it was super thumb-friendly and everything was where you needed it to be. But since Instagram introduced reels, it moved things around a lot. This was met with a lot of backlash, so they moved reels where activity should have been—a change that they have not reverted to this day. This change forces you to get out of your comfy one-handed zone and reach to the top of the screen to see your notifications, all just so once in a blue moon someone presses on the reels tab.

I can't just assume people don't want Instagram to be TikTok; I'm a designer, and I need numbers. All the discussions and public polls on the internet are not enough. I needed to run a survey, even if very small, and the participants had to be people from all sorts of backgrounds. So, I ran a quick survey among a small number of people, and most of them said they never, rarely, or only sometimes click on the reels tab. So, reels, I regret to inform you that you're out of the chosen five, and activity will regain your honorary position down here.

But wait, if activities are important to access easily, then shouldn't messages also be easily accessible? We tend to use that a lot too. Maybe if it's positioned better, you'll finally watch the 15,000 posts your friend sent you. But we can't just add it as a new tab down here; that would break the layout. Maybe we could have activities and messages both in one tap called inbox, and inside that tap, we could swipe left or right to access either of them. This is from Instagram's own design system, and I'm surprised they forgot about it.

We still have a problem, though—a place just for reels. I want to pretend like I respect the marketing goals, but the truth is everyone has preferences. You might want to browse cool photos while someone else prefers watching reels all day. I won't judge, but there must be a way to present both options without spoiling either. Again, we could swipe between them as two different tabs and have the search icon right here with a simple interaction.

Now, about this icon—what does everyone call this page again? The explore page, right? That part where you connect with the world and see what they have to share beyond the people you follow. So why is there a search icon? Is that all there is to do—search? Let's give it a more comprehensive icon and move on to the next part.

The homepage used to be the place where we connected with friends and family or caught up on the latest from creators that we explicitly followed. Now, it's a place where Instagram forces a little bit of other stuff that you might or might not be interested in. So most of the time, you're missing out on a lot of the posts from people you actually care about. But of course, Instagram gives you the ability to choose what you want to see on your homepage through a context menu. Let's even ignore that this is not a good UX choice. Still, when you click on it, it takes you to a whole new page just to show you the content you follow. What's crazier is that even on the current reels...

=> 00:05:30

Instagram's design choices prioritize engagement over user experience, leaving you to sift through unwanted content while missing what truly matters.

The homepage of Instagram has undergone significant changes over time. It used to be the place where we connected with friends and family or caught up on the latest from creators that we explicitly followed. Now, however, it's a place where Instagram forces a little bit of other stuff that you might or might not be interested in. As a result, most of the time, you're missing out on a lot of the posts from people you actually care about. Of course, Instagram gives you the ability to choose what you want to see on your homepage through a context menu. Let's even ignore that this is not a good UX choice. Still, when you click on it, it takes you to a whole new page just to show you the content you follow.

What's even crazier is that even on the current Reels tab, you have to go to a new page to see the Reels from the people you follow. If only they could just show you both posts and Reels from your followings on the homepage, but they're not doing that. You might ask why this is the case. This is one of those features that users have been reporting to Instagram over the years, and Instagram is fully aware of it. So, they do hear you; they just don't care.

You might also wonder why they would ignore what people want. There are three possible reasons for this. Firstly, when Reels came out, Instagram was desperately trying to promote this new form of content. To the extent that, for a short period, they replaced the iconic middle icon with Reels. Yes, they did that despite all the UX problems, but they reverted that soon after and instead just promoted them on your homepage. Secondly, sometimes you might be done watching all the content you follow. Naturally, you would stop reloading or scrolling and leave the app to continue your normal life as a healthy person. But what about all the new content and Reels that you're missing out on? If discovering that sort of content is a purely manual process where you have to press on the Explore page, then that means the odds of discovering something new are way lower. Instagram can combat that by shoving new content in your face just as you're about to leave the app or, worse, just when you're entering it. You watch one, you're hooked in, and before you know it, you've been watching Instagram the entire afternoon.

The last reason is that they want to compete with TikTok. You see, when you go on TikTok, you immediately jump on the doom-scrolling trend unconsciously. However, actions and preferences are much more conscious on Instagram. As a designer, I was looking for a simple way to both achieve the marketing goals and make users happier. But, oh my god, did Instagram have the most obnoxious solution to this. Have you ever heard of favorites? Basically, you can add up to 50 accounts to a list and have their content show up on your feed with a higher priority. I don't even know what to say. Why not just tell people they've watched all the content they follow and that they can discover new content if they'd like by pressing on a button that will take them to the Explore page?

Photo and video posts are not the only types of content you can see on the homepage; there are stories as well. You might not have any problems with them, but we can still improve them. First of all, it feels like every spot in the story bar means only one story, while there might be more. Why not show how many by simply dividing the story rank? Once you view one of them, it won't be highlighted anymore. Plus, sometimes I might have tons of accounts stacked up in my story feed, so I'd have to scroll horizontally for a while to understand how many there are or just watch the ones I like. This is a good spot to add a button for expanding the story feed so we can have a better outlook, and once we're done, we'll just close it.

Ah yes, the iconic Instagram post layout. It's a good layout, and I have no problems with it, just a few minor tweaks. The hitboxes on this app are unreal. You go for the comments, you hit the caption instead; you go for more, and you open comments instead. Let's say it was some headache and separate these sections as much as possible, starting by bringing the date up here. But that's not enough. I can see top comments and an input field for me to comment something. It's even giving me the option to like or interact with the top comments, and if I mistakenly click on them, it takes me to that specific comment. Engage, interact—can you stop? I just want to read the comments. I already have a button for commenting, so there's no need for that.

Let's wrap it all in a little box and make sure clicking anywhere in it will just take me to the comment section. This section comes with its own headaches. First of all, let's make "reply" a simple icon, and to ensure everyone understands who's replying to whom without following the usernames, let's make comments look more like threads that you can expand and follow along.

The Instagram DMs used to feel very incomplete for a long time. You couldn't reply to a message or even search, so they partnered with Meta's Messenger and introduced a couple of new features to it. These updates came along with the Messenger icon for DMs, but the real problems are on the DM itself. The swiping feature is good, but it's inconsistent. For example, if you want to reply to someone else's message, you have to swipe right, but if it's your own message, you swipe left. What naturally would you do?

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Instagram needs to remember its roots: it's about capturing and sharing moments, not just competing with every other app out there.

Let's wrap it all in a little box and make sure clicking anywhere in it will just take me to the comment section. This section comes with its own headaches. First of all, let's make reply a simple icon. To ensure everyone understands who's replying to who without following the usernames, let's make comments look more like threads that you can expand and follow.

The Instagram DMs used to feel very incomplete for a long time; you couldn't reply to a message or even search. So, they partnered with Meta's Messenger and introduced a couple of new features to it. These updates came along with the Messenger icon for DMs, but the real problems are on the DM itself. The swiping feature is good, but it's inconsistent. For example, if you want to reply to someone else's message, you have to swipe right, but if it's your own message, you swipe left. Naturally, you would expect this behavior to be consistent for every message, so users wouldn't have to measure the outcome every time they want to take an action. If they mistakenly swipe right on their own message, then they would leave that DM, and that's a UX catastrophe.

So, why not just make swiping left a general trigger to reply to any sort of message? Well, that's because swiping left only on other people's messages will just reveal the time that message was posted. If you just show the date under each message, we could swipe left to reply and swipe right to leave the DM. Plus, we wouldn't have to move a finger just to see the time. Oops, didn't mean to add that reaction; let me remove it. Wait, what? How am I supposed to remove it? I guess tap on this. Even if there were 4,000 reactions on a message, I should still be able to add or remove my own reactions with a simple tap.

But this is only me and my friend; this is just extra. Down here, you have four options on the message box, but this is not because you're getting any more features. No, you have this extra camera icon that is kind of bolder than the other options, but what's the difference between this and this? I mean, yes, it does have a disappearing mode for one-time messages, but no, for real, what makes it so different that you couldn't just merge them together? Allow users to either share an image or a video or capture it live—that's it. Now, put it in an order that would be more responsive to message inputs.

On our way out, let's get rid of this camera icon next to DMs and instead have more options like going to someone's profile, muting them, blocking them, and so on. The explore page still has a problem with the suggested content gone from the homepage. You want to make sure everyone can still discover the content they like in certain categories. For example, I shouldn't have to watch 20,000 cat videos just to make sure I discover all the cat content out there. I should have options related to me up here to quickly take me to a new feed filled with that content, like art, games, and so on.

Now, let's swipe to Reels, where the hitbox problem still follows this around. If I press more on captions, I could trigger location or music, and if I want to move back and forth in the video, I might press on another tab. It's a problem, but nothing a little repositioning can fix. All right, now I can like, comment, or share this video, but where is that other bookmarking option? I have to open another menu for it. Wow, way to go promoting Reels as a superior video format! You know I'm going to need this quite often, so why don't you just put it here? Anyway, I'm going to save this for later and visit this creator's profile.

Hmm, good, good, not bad. Oh wait, you almost got me—the link hitboxes are too small. The profile layout is fine overall, and I can see all the content in a grid, but I wish I could kind of see the oldest post without having to scroll for several minutes. Giving users more options without breaking the design wouldn't hurt. We could just tap on the grid icon while we're on it and, through a bottom sheet, choose a view or sorting option and comfortably continue browsing.

Wait, we have a notification; let's go to activities. Um, why is everything so text-based? "That user liked your comment," "This user mentioned you in a comment." Like, you expect me to read every single one of them to figure out what type of activity it is? Why can't we categorize them using icons so it's easier to get a general idea at the very first glance? Plus, we could clean up the layout a little bit, but well, I hear clean is not your biggest personality trait, Instagram.

You know what? I have to show you a video. Um, where are my saved videos? On my profile settings? Where? Oh, here I have two simultaneous options to post something, but I have to dig through the app to find the content I saved for myself. Nope, let's move the saves out here. Anyway, here's that video I was talking about.

Okay, listen, I know you've been trying to compete with Twitter by making an Instagram twin, and you're spamming me with its notifications on Instagram. If you really like the idea of threads, you could just make it into an Instagram post with the same UI. You could show it as a tap on profiles and let us post them like any other content, repost them, or comment on them. You want to compete with every other application out there; I get it, but this is not it. You're forgetting what made Instagram Instagram: capture and share the world's moments. That was your slogan; it was all about moments, not days on end. People are getting addicted to short, fast-paced content, yes, but you don't have to compete with anybody to secure that you can be better.

You're giving us the choice to see an outlook of everything happening in the world in one collage so we could choose what to watch instead of mindlessly scrolling through thousands of random videos just to occasionally find one of them interesting. But hey, you're a part of Meta now, and you've probably planned years ahead to integrate every single part of the app with Meta. Still, I like to hope for the best. We could open Instagram, catch up with the latest stories from our friends, scroll through new posts from our favorite artists, discover great new people from the explore page, share some videos with our friends, and chat about how silly cats are, making the app more wholesome one post at a time.

But no, we still have privacy issues that need fixing. Anyway, that's all for this video. If you liked it, make sure you do your magic down there, and see you on the next one!