Doom-scrolling to mood-scrolling
CLIENT
Self initiated
CLIENT TYPE
Social media platform
PROJECT TYPE
UI/UX, mobile app, design audit
YEAR
2025
PROJECT ROLE
Product & visual designer
PROJECT CONTRIBUTION
Stakeholder analysis
Wireframing
User flow mapping
App layout
Rapid prototyping
Branding & visual design
TOOLS
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
COLLABORATORS
Sanya Gupta,
Product & visual designer
Context
Instagram’s Explore feed uses AI to recommend content based on past interactions, viewing time, & content popularity.
However, it treats all engagement signals as equally meaningful & long-term.
Problem
While effective for discovery, the Explore feed struggles to differentiate between user's session based intents.
01
Have you found yourself in these situations?
“I want to see different content at work & at home”
In private or professional contexts, you want different content - but Explore doesn’t adapt. What’s engaging at home can be distracting or awkward at work.
“I want to find something quick”
You open Instagram with a clear intent, but Explore is noisy, search is rigid, & you lose momentum before finding what you came for.
You're not alone
61%
of social media users turn to Instagram for productive discovery.
90%
of Instagram usage now comes from discovery-led feeds.
Instagram usage is highly session-based, but the product treats it as long-term preference.
02
The problem
Users don’t want to re-train their Explore feed algorithm. They are still interested in the same topics, just at different times.
Brief engagement with situational content can displace users’ core interests, causes unintended genre shifts, & reduces predictability, control, & overall satisfaction.
Instagram today doesn’t understand why a user opened the app at that moment.
03
The tools available today
Explore Feed
Too distracting
& varied.
Not easy to search
with an agenda.
How might we help users quickly align their Explore feed with their current intent - without reducing overall engagement?
Here's how we did it in 03 points
02
Idea bank
Lo-Fi prototypes
Mid-Fi Prototypes
Privacy driven approach:
Incognito mode, Guilty toggle
Intent driven approach:
Search filters, Keyword search
02
User flow
We chose a control-driven approach which offered the fastest, least disruptive path to intent-based tuning.
Algorithm as an ally
Today, users influence the algorithm indirectly - through behavior & guesswork.
Tweaks work with the algorithm to showcase keywords that best describe the current feed.
This acts as a shared language between users & the algorithm, making intent explicit, temporary, & reversible.
03
Introducing Instagram Tweaks
An Explore feed add-on that lets users instantly jump to the type of content they want at that moment.
Unlike search, which is narrow & effortful, Tweaks surface curated content using existing algorithmic understanding, helping users express intent clearly without retraining their feed unintentionally.
How it works
Tap on a Tweak to filter your feed.
Tap on another Tweak to surface that content instead.
Tap on the same Tweak to show you your original feed.
Want to see more of a topic?
Long press on a Tweak to pull up options.
Select interested.
Popup confirmation:
we'll show you more posts
like this for the next 30 days.
Not interested in a topic?
Select not interested.
Tell Instagram why to:
1.Show less of the same topic.
Stop showing that topic for the next 30 days or if searched for manually.
Never shows that topic unless user manually removes tweak from
content preferences settings.
