Fierce Mode

What I Learned By Photographing 100 Beautiful Women For UX Research

Before Kim K got married to Kanye I was working at an e-commerce site that sold a product that I care very little about. They used social media heavily to promote their products since one of the company’s key people was very popular on Instagram, and they very much leveraged his reach. I was merely hired to do tweaks to the checkout experience, but I paid attention from a distance what was happening on the Instagram space.

While in art school I had the simple goal that after graduation I was going to get an art director job. So I took all the classes that I had to take to graduate. I also made a point to surround myself with artists and designer that were way better than me. Motion graphics, photography and video editing were things I added to my resume to become more employable on the market. I’ve would never think people would make money by just posting their artwork online.

A realization moment

Kim published the photo of her wedding May 27, 2014, and made Conor McDonnell, the then 22-year-old unknown photographer, an overnight Instagram success. Kim made news with this move because Annie Leibovitz was scheduled to be her photographer, but who knows what happened there. When I started designing apps I used to read countless articles about content first design, but I didn’t really understand what that meant. I used to design everything with “Lorem Ipsum” and squares with big exes in the middle, and not pay too much attention to what photos I used on my prototypes. But this celebrity moment, which was insignificant in my life made me understand how social traffic moves online and what the meant for content creators on that platform.

I used to design everything with “Lorem Ipsum” and squares with big exes in the middle

Research Mode

I sort of had a vague idea that Instagram traffic was the topic I wanted my research to be focused on, but I needed to find a niche area that could easily evolve later into sales, my answer was fashion lifestyle photography. I wanted to see how long it would take me to grow a new Instagram account without any lame tactics nor without the help of any of my artist friends, just pure social organic growth. My additional goal was to understand the world of the small boutiques in Miami and see if I could create value for them.

In order to grow an account quickly, I knew I had to create value for Instagram to get pushed up on the explore page. There are many theories on this topic, but posting daily seems to be the most straightforward. Because you create a reason for users to come back often to the app. So, I embarked myself on a crazy mission to do a photo shoot every day for 30 days. I was kinda crazy at the time since I had a regular day job, and I would do the shoots after that. But that’s when I saw the most growth.

Follow my photography account Instagram

Booking subjects through Instagram is a lot like buying groceries without a cart, it’s insane maintaining order. Keep in mind that this was a world before the DM (Direct Message) was popular, and Instagram was not designed to handle scouting communications. One of the constant pain-points was talent being late, and this was consistent across the board. Parallel to this, I had a 10 question survey for those who wanted to do a photoshoot with me, and one of those questions was their mode of transportation.

Prototyping a better booking experience

There were two user-flows that I really wanted to work on. Talent setting their calendar and the client choosing from those available slots. If you live in Miami “people being late” seems so common and inevitable. But I think if we change how we ask people to add things to their calendars, and how we remind them of those things we can really increase punctuality.

I’d like to attribute subjects being late to a combination of two things, a miscalculation of Miami traffic and poor time management skills. Based on the survey that I took only 12% of subjects actually use the calendar on their phones. For some reason asking them to grab information from their texts messages into their calendar apps proved to be too much friction. And it’s not only them, I sometimes forget to add things to my calendar too.

You see the dialogue for booking a photo shoot usually starts with “When are you free?” –when it really should be: “What does your schedule look like?” Now, this might feel like a small difference but it makes you think of “ free time” in a different way. It’s easier for people to tell you when they are occupied with work and school. Now back in our prototype if we add things to the schedule right when the booking is happening, and combine that with traffic data from an API, we can send much more relevant reminders. On the survey, I asked every single subject questions that I would ask user testers. Having a constant flow of subjects also allow me to let them use the prototypes and see how they reacted and changes things.

Afterthoughts

When I started doing these shoots my basic mission was to understand what women like, but I would’ve never thought I would reach over 100 photo shoots. I also learned so much about social media and the struggles of young women have to face with this addictive drug hidden in their phones. I met a lot of interesting people, completely changed my approach how I see free time and ended up with an interesting prototype for my UX portfolio. Now that I’m focusing almost exclusively on video content, this Instagram account gives a pool of talent and an audience who I can share content to, and maybe user test other things.

For a more detailed view of this study feel free to check out my site.

Fantasia and I during selfie mode

Luis Ricardo La Torre is a content-driven UX designer based in Miami Beach. He also does digital media research on YouTube and Instagram. Feel free to say hello on Twitter.