Instagram UI Evolution - Going beyond photographs

Overview and History

Instagram is an app that has invariably seeped into our lives in a very short span of time to establish itself as one of the biggest social media applications today. The way a simple idea of sharing photos with friends and family has expanded and blown up into an application with a user base of nearly a billion people is absolutely admirable. It has easily become such a crucial part of our lives making our everyday routine unimaginable without its presence.

Regarding the history of Instagram, in 2009, Kevin Systrom, a 27-year-old Stanford University graduate who had no formal training in coding built a web app called Burbn. This app allowed its users to share photos, check-in and post their plans. The photo sharing feature of the app was quite unique for its time. After acquiring funding, Systrom collaborated with Mike Krieger, an engineer and user experience designer to reassess and redesign Burbn. They studied leading apps in the photography category and decided to create the app primarily focused on clicking exquisite photographs and sharing them without overcomplicating it with extra features.

After renaming it from Burbn to Instagram (Instant plus Telegram), the iOS app was launched in 2010 and it instantly racked up 25000 users in one day. With its rapid increase in the user base to nearly 27 million users in 2012, the app also released its android version which was an instant hit. In April 2012, Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock but the key provision was that it would still be independently managed. Since then, the application has continued to grow and explode with it being the one of the biggest social media app today.

UI Evolution

The user interface (UI) evolution of Instagram has been quite interesting over the span of ten years. Though there have been some major changes, the overall look and feel of the app has been maintained. In the initial years when the app was launched i.e. from 2010 to 2016, the basic interface was somewhat similar to what it is today, albeit with certain stark differences. Firstly, the colour palette until 2016 was dark grey, blue and white. The navigation bar was in a jarring dark grey shade making it distinctly stand out from the rest of the feed. Though there was fairly limited usage of colour, the bold shades of blue and grey still veered away the attention and focus from the vividly coloured photographs being posted.

In the previous version of the app, there were also vast differences in the iconography being used. The icons used in the navigation bar changed nearly every year in order to make way for simpler and more understandable icons which resonated better with people’s mental models. It is intriguing to observe how the heart icon in the navigation bar suggested the popular tab in 2010-11 to the likes, comments and follows tab 2016 onward.

The interface has also incurred changes to its logo and letterhead. The evolution of the Instagram logo from a conventional old school camera to the current modern vibrant visual is quite drastic. Furthermore, there have been slight alterations in the font used for the ‘Instagram’ letterhead.

Current UI

In 2016, Instagram underwent a major revision in its user interface to release a version which was incredibly minimalistic, understated and clean. The application radically reduced the usage of colours and maintained an immaculate white aesthetic to draw all the attention to the photographs. Usage of simple line iconography and subtly placed text added on to the simplistic design.

Another major UI change that occurred was the conversion of the central camera icon to a plus icon in the navigation bar. Though this slight modification may seem trivial, it could perhaps suggest a much larger change in the overall ideology behind the application. While Instagram has mainly focused on the task of exchanging photographs since its genesis, some recent addition of features extend the application beyond its primary function. Incorporation of elements like stories, Igtv videos, live videos and much more have definitely transformed it into a full-fledged social media platform.

While one may debate that the inclusion of a plethora of features can make the app chaotic, the beauty is in the way the user interface has engulfed the novel features in a clutter free manner. The feed, similar to the way it looked a decade ago, still radiates the idea of celebration of immortalized moments, whether it be from a polished photograph or an embarrassing candid story.