How the UX and UI of Social Media Apps Are Designed to Engage… And Be Addictive Designers bear a heavy burden. Design is ubiquitous but frequently disregarded. Consider the chair you most recently sat in. Did you think, “This is going to collapse from underneath me when I sit in it?” before you sat down? No, because chairs are made to be comfortable, sturdy, and able to support our weight. Where are you going with this? The article is about social media apps, and since a design works, we frequently don’t consider what goes into it. And maybe a bit too well in the case of social media apps. The attention economy is a relatively recent idea. It basically explains how someone’s attention is supplied and demanded. The majority of social media apps are designed to keep users’ attention. As the saying goes, “If the product is free, you’re the product.”. Eyes on advertisements = attention. You are familiar with the routine. Returning to design, then.
TikTokLet’s start with the ‘new kid on the block’. However, the extent to which we call TikTok the new kid is relative only to the age of other social media platforms. Piggy-backing off lockdown boredom and people’s need for connection during the Covid-19 pandemic, TikTok shot to 1 billion users faster than any social platform has done before.
TikTok is designed with recommendations at its core. Short and snappy videos seamlessly feed into the next via an endless scrolling user experience. The bottomless scroll certainly works, with data suggesting that a UK user can spend up to 60 minutes per day on the app.
Using similar design patterns to YouTube (we’ll cover this later), TikTok has had its fair share of criticism. Addictive behaviour is promoted by the endless scrollability of videos. TikTok displays a video in full-screen, played at a maximum of 3 minutes – recently increased from the 15/30/60 seconds format. All while the algorithm serves video after video— easily navigated with the swipe of a finger.
Not only does TikTok make it so easy to consume video content, but it also uses a very strong and engaging visual UI pattern to allow creators to produce content faster. Guiding you through each step with the use of colour and conveniently placed primary calls-to-action.
TikTok are community champions
The algorithm and hashtag system is designed to take advantage of the simple content creation features. Trends or popular activities demand participation, each one gaining popularity as users put their spin on them as the trend grows.
Unlike Twitter, which surrounds its hashtags around discussion, news and current events, TikTok has designed hashtags to actively perpetuate content and trends in a much more colossal way. Hashtags and trends snowball, accumulating thousand of videos behind a particular sound for example – with some trends easily side-stepping common barriers like language.
In fact, TikTok completely removes typical barriers to entry. With Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you start by following nobody. Without connecting with others, you cannot fully experience the platform. TikTok is geared to hook you from video one, becoming consistently more adapted to YOU. Once a user’s behaviour is learned, its ‘For you’ page begins to populate with videos that reflect the content you like to consume.
