The more opinionated an app is about how it should be used, the easier it is for users to act without fear of rejection. Why do some consumer social products finally make it big after a series of misses? Part of the magic often hides within UX details that help people make fewer decisions and take fewer risks.
Video didn’t kill the video star (UX did).
TikTok’s breakthrough UX approach transformed a category with multiple previous failures- short-form looping video-to create one of the largest successes of all time.
- Vine’s UX placed an enormous amount of decision-making baggage upon users, while TikTok gave users just one easy option: open the app and watch entertaining videos.
The winner (doesn’t) take it all
Marketing can make otherwise successful product formulas more visible, but it won’t independently drive success
- Products need engines which propel them forward independently
- UX details matter
- The fact that there have been failed products that share your high-level idea does not mean your product will fail too
Ideas that sound similar at the surface can have highly differentiated UXs that create room for multiple successes
Snap and Instagram: both are “social photos” apps, but their UX differences support entirely different behaviors
- Taking a photo with Snap takes one tap: open the app and press the big, central button.
- Instagram is designed for opening a consumption feed to discover beautiful things.
When Tinder launched in 2012, Skout (2008), the Match.com app (2009), Hotnornot.com (2000), and other dating products had already launched with moderate success, others in the boneyard.
TikTok integrated the explore-exploit process into one tab. You never had to decide which tab to view-you just had to swipe to the next video when you were done with the current one.
- Creators with no followers could still reap rewards for videos that were funny and understandable by anyone.
If you’re building a consumer social product, by now, you understand that your product’s success depends on making the right UX choices
At each step of onboarding and consumption, ask yourself: am I asking the user to make a choice? Is that cognitive load necessary?
- Throughout the process, am I building guardrails to protect them from a fear of rejection?
BeReal is a photo-sharing app for friends that launched in 2020
It shares the same media format as the once-popular FrontBack, but doesn’t change its core UX enough to create a corresponding new behavior
- BeReal’s UX prompts you to take a photo once daily at a random time, which creates a less staged experience
- You have plausible deniability for why your photos are crappy, real-time, and unpolished
