Interface Design and Social Media

Introduction

Originating from traditional online chat-rooms, blogs, and early forms of instant-messaging, social media platforms have fundamentally transformed society in terms of communication and the sharing of information. For an average of 135 minutes every day, users navigate between these numerous sites with ease (Aaknes, 2019). Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are just some of the most widely used platforms to date, and although they differ in terms of content, their goal of exchanging and sharing information amongst friends, family and the community remains the same (Aaknes, 2019). The popularity of these sites can be attributed to their well-executed and highly effective interface design, which ensures users remain engaged and genuinely enjoy using the platform. Interface design works to maximise the usability of social media sites, providing an intuitive map between user intentions and functions of the application (Panko, 2016). By remaining simplistic, calm and supportive colour-schemes, paired with visually appealing graphics, inspire the continued use and success of these platforms. The opinions of users can essentially make or break a platform, and the sheer volume of active participants open social media sites to increased scrutiny (Nielson, 2009). Over recent years interface design has become increasingly sophisticated, with established companies investing in quality design and regularly updating interfaces to ensure they meet user expectations and advancing trends (Panko, 2016). The association between successful interface design and the popularity of social media sites is vital to the understanding of user behaviour and successful business models. Specifically, key elements of usability and personalisation, combined with a simplistic, yet aesthetic design, an intuitive nature, and the ability to share and interact with content, are likely to determine the success of a platform. The research undertaken in this report aims to gain insight into the effectiveness of interface design to better understand the popularity of some social media sites in regard to others.

Literature Review

By analysing current trends and patterns in social media, the features which underpin successful interface designs, and hence popular social media sites, can be identified. Design professional Michael Cummings (2010) defines user experience as looking at the ‘bigger picture’ aspects of interfaces, stressing the importance of viewing it ‘as a unified whole’ that is ‘greater than the sum of its parts’. Cummings also highlights the necessity of recognising cultural differences, namely the ‘assumptions, beliefs, memes, and shared expectations that colour our personal experience while using an interactive system’. H. Almakky, R. Sahandi, and J. Taylor’s (2015) investigation into the preferences of Saudi Arabians on the Arabic version of Facebook’s user interface shared this notion of the appeal of incorporating cultural characteristics into design. The study found that a majority of users would be more satisfied if social media’s interfaces related to their culture, with 59 percent of its participants finding issues related to cultural incompatibility. Ultimately, these key aspects of cultural differences and preferences must be taken into consideration when creating interfaces designed to suit users internationally.

With new approaches to user interactions and the sharing of content, modern trends in interface design have become increasingly sophisticated. For example, the need to email a friend has been overtaken by Facebook, which allows users to send lengthy messages and attach files. Nafaa Jabeaur (2013), a computer science professor at University Laval, discussed these advancing trends as ‘interesting services and ways of engaging in social interaction and collaboration through mobile devices’. Interface developers now strive to include everything users need in one central location — this inclusion of easy-to-access features enhance users’ experience of the platform. In order to attract and retain users, designers must continuously stay on top of these trends and update the interfaces of social media.

Cheung, Chiu and Lee (2011) argue that ‘purposive value, self discovery, entertainment value, social enhancement and maintaining interpersonal connectivity are the key values that are widely adopted to determine the use of virtual communities’. Jackie R. Hayes (2014) also recognised three key aspects of successful interface design — enabling users to ‘like’ and share content and ‘have it instantly seen by hundreds of friends’, and the inclusion of a news feed for ‘continuous stream(ing) of updates’. These powerful design features bring together a range of values to users via communication or visual appeals to ‘help attract and retain users through their ability to stay updated on their friend’s adventures and show off (their) individual life’.

Computer scientist Eric Nilsson (2009) identified three problematic areas of interface design, including ‘utilising screen space, interaction mechanisms and the design at large’. Nilsson discussed numerous methods of maximising limited screen space, including creating groups and lists, horizontal scrolling, utilising portrait and landscape modes, and the ability to run applications on multiple screen sizes. As discussed earlier, Nilsson also stressed the importance of an interface design that ‘supports the brand, is aesthetic, is a solution for large amounts of data’ and includes an easy means to log in and out.

Finally, the literature found that a strategic approach to updating interface design is essential. Hayes (2014) stressed ‘design and branding must remain comfortable and consistent throughout different upgrades’ as exposure to new interfaces ‘can be overwhelming as users are accustomed to certain elements in certain places’. This was demonstrated by the 2018 update of the social media platform Snapchat, in which the application’s layout changed dramatically. With the goal of separating the ‘social’ from the ‘media’, the update fundamentally altered the means users communicated via the site. Users were now required to put in more effort and manually scroll to find content they were interested in. This lack of functionality hindered people’s experience of Snapchat significantly, with over one million discontent users signing a petition to revert the update to its previous version (Aaknes, 2019).

Current Study

Furthermore, previous research attributes a variety of factors including the convenience, functionality, comfortability, and aesthetic value of interface design to the success, and subsequent popularity, of social media platforms. However, the lack of corresponding data to support these explanations makes it difficult to conclude which features have the most impact. Therefore, the current study aims to collect a range of quantitative and qualitative data regarding this topic, and expand existing knowledge regarding interface design and social media. Additionally, this investigation seeks to gain a better understanding of user behaviour and the business models of social media platforms, ultimately determining the association between successful interface design and the popularity of certain sites.

The following questions, targeted towards young people aged between 14 and 24, are investigated in the research:

- What are their most frequently used social media sites?

- How long do they spend on their most frequently used social media site on a daily basis?

- What social media sites do they find the most convenient to use, and what sites do they find difficult to use?

- What do they value most when using a social media site?

- What content do they prefer to consume?

Method

Participants

People versed in the use of social media platforms, namely young people between the ages of 14 and 24, formed the target group of this pilot survey. Therefore, 12 respondents, with the mean age of 18.7, participated in the pilot. Questions regarding gender were not assessed as they held no relevance to the study. Participants’ cultural backgrounds were predominantly Australian, but also included Australian-Chinese and Vietnamese-Malaysian. All participants used social media on a daily basis for an average of 2 hours and 9 minutes.

Measures

The pilot survey commenced with two socio-demographic questions regarding age and cultural background. The utilisation of screen space was then assessed by asking

participants to select which device(s) (desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or other) they used to access social media platforms. Participants were then asked to rank their top five most frequently-used sites (1 = most frequently-used, 5 = least frequently-used) to establish the most popular social media platforms. These sites included Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Drawing on the previous question, participants were asked to nominate how long, per day, they spent on their most frequently-used site. To investigate the appeal of certain social media sites over others, the survey then asked respondents to rank their five most preferred aspects when deciding which platform to use (1 = prefer most, 5 = prefer least). These features included: convenience; lack of an alternative; importance to job/career; popularity amongst friends/family/peers; aesthetic appeal; ability to interact (upload, share, like, comment) with content; and personalisation.

In order to gather information regarding user values of social media platforms, participants were asked to rank which sites they perceived as being the most convenient to use (1 = most convenient, 5 = least convenient). Similarly, users were also asked to rank the social media platforms they found to be the most difficult/frustrating to use (1 = most difficult/frustrating, 5 = least difficult/frustrating). The same sites mentioned earlier were used in both of these ranking questions. Finally, to gauge the relevance and popularity of content-specific sites, participants were asked to nominate what they preferred to consume whilst on social media. Content included primarily: words; images; audio; short videos (less than 5 minutes); long videos (more than 5 minutes); live events; and other.

Procedure

The researcher recruited participants for the pilot survey through social networks. Invitations with a brief description of the investigation, and a link to the survey itself, were sent via text message to potential respondents aged between 14 and 24. The survey was completed on both mobile devices and laptops. Participants were encouraged to complete the survey to assist in expanding knowledge regarding the relationship between interface design and the popularity of social media. Respondents were assured that the minimal personal details collected would remain confidential. An information sheet detailing the purpose of the study, as well as the lack of consequences that would ensue if participants chose to withdraw at any point from the survey, provided a means of informed consent. As the questions revolved around personal social media use and interface perceptions, and the identity of participants’ responses remained confidential, the content of the survey was perceived as low risk.

After completing the survey online, respondents were administered a secondary ‘debriefing’ survey by the researcher. The following five questions were asked: Did you find the survey generally clear and easy to understand?; Did you find anything to be inconvenient/frustrating about the survey?; Do you have any suggestions in regards to the addition or deletion of questions, the clarification of instructions or general improvements?; Did you find any questions to be invasive/too personal in the survey?; Did you come across any typos/grammatical errors in the survey? Due to extraordinary circumstances, this debriefing was unable to be conducted in a face-to-face method, which is the preference of the researcher.

Results

Participants generally found the survey to be clear and easy to understand. Overall feedback in regards to the effectiveness of the survey is presented in Table 1. It should be noted that only 8 of the 12 respondents partook in the debriefing survey, possibly due to the separation (two separate links were provided) of both elements of the investigation. Table 1 demonstrates that inconvenient/frustrating features of the survey were one of the most notable downfalls. This namely centred around the numerous ranking questions. Respondents felt the ranking of responses was tedious, and rather difficult to do on a mobile device. As the survey was designed on a laptop, the reduced screen size of a mobile device effected the layout, and hence convenience, of the survey. Respondents also raised the issue that ranking social media sites would not be effective if participants did not necessarily have a preference in order. For example, one participant did not find any social media platforms to be ‘frustrating’ to use. A respondent offered, in the following question that regarded overall suggestions, that adding an option such as ‘none of the above apply’ in the ranking questions would solve this problem. Additionally, it was also suggested that elements of the survey could be more specific. For example, a respondent was unsure what the survey was implying by the term ‘frustrating’ and asked for further clarification. Upon analysis of participants’ responses to the original survey, no further issues were identified than those generated by the debriefing process.

Table 1. Feedback raised by participants from survey debrief

Feedback from Participants

Responses

Survey was clear and easy to understand

8/8 agreed

Elements of the survey were inconvenient/frustrating

3/8 agreed

Suggestions regarding the addition or deletion of questions, the clarification of instructions, or general improvements

2/8 offered suggestions

Questions were too personal/invasive

8/8 disagreed

The survey had typos/grammatical errors

8/8 disagreed

In order to rectify participant feedback in regards to the pilot survey, several alterations to the original questions will be made. The ‘tedious and frustrating’ process of ranking social media sites across multiple questions can be altered to ask participants to simply select which platforms apply. Rather than choosing responses in order of preference, and spending unnecessary time weighing options, participants can just select the social media sites that are relevant to them. Problems in the translation of the survey from a laptop to a mobile device can be amended by recommending that participants use a laptop or desktop computer to complete the survey. Additionally, before the survey is made available, it should be ensured that it is able to be completed on a range of devices, including the reduced screen size of a smartphone. To address the issue of a lack of preference in regard to social media sites and certain questions, it is recommended that a ‘non-applicable’ response option should be added. Finally, the lack of clarity in certain questions can be amended by ensuring the wording is specific and explanatory. Examples can also be provided to further clarify what the question is asking of participants. For example, the question, ‘what social media platforms do you find difficult/frustrating to use’ can be followed by a series of potential scenarios participants might find when accessing the listed sites. These may include: difficulty navigating between pages; sluggish response times; poor layout; completing simple tasks is time consuming; etc.

References

Aaknes, Kate. (2019). Influence of User Interface Design in Social Media. Seamgen. Retrieved from https://www.seamgen.com/blog/user-interface-design-social-media/

Almakky, H., Sahandi, R. & Taylor, J. (2015). The Effect of Culture on User Interface Design of Social Media — A Case Study on Preferences of Saudi Arabians on the Arabic User Interface of Facebook. International Journal of Social, Behavioural, Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering 9(1), 107–111. Retrieved fromhttp://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/23776/

Cheung, C., Chiu, P. & Lee, M. (2011). Online social networks: Why do students use facebook? Social and Humanistic Computing for the Knowledge Society 27(4), 1337–1343.. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563210002244

Cummings, Michael. (2010). User Design Defined. User Experience, UX Design. Retrieved from http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined

Hayes, Jackie. (2014). User Interface Design for Online Social Media. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6824/ae53a40276bf842aa04ecc2318b32c3e3ca6.pdf

Jabeaur, Nafaa. (2013). Mobile social networking applications. Communications of the ACM 56(3). Retrieved fromhttps://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2428556.2428573

Nielson, Jakob. (2009). Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience. Nielson Norman Group. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/powers-of-10-time-scales-in-ux/

Nilsson, Eric. (2009). Design patterns for user interface for mobile applications. Advances in Engineering Software 40(12). Retrieved from https://www.sintef.no/upload/nilsson%20-%20%20final%20short%20paper%20cadui%20ui%20patterns%20for%20mobile%20a%20pplications.pdf

Panko, Riley. (2016). Constructing the Online Experience: How Do Everyday Internet Users Understand UX? 2016 User Experience Consumer Survey. Retrieved from https://clutch.co/agencies/ui-ux/resources/ux-consumer-survey