To make your social apps intuitive, make your users' friends care about them

Yesterday I paid beer to a bunch of people in exchange for them trying out my new app, WYD

The app is incredibly basic in terms of functionality and design, yet, some people have no idea what to do when they open it.

Seeing this, the designer in me started to panic and doubt the effectiveness of my work.

This doubt remains. There are DEFINITELY things that need to be improved and will make an impact in the quick understanding of the app, but as I stood there and observed different people try out the app, something much more interesting started to happen: People started explaining how the app works to each other.

People were sharing the app on their instagrams and getting DMs from friends asking how to use it.

There were several group conversations about how to use the app happening in the bar and online through private messages. As one person understood what the value was, he/she would be eager to tell others if they thought it was cool enough.

This got me thinking about wether this is happening just on WYD because my design is particularly confusing, or if it also happens with other apps. 5 minutes of thinking were enough to understand that this is obviously happening in every consumer social app.

- Almost 2 years ago I introduced BeReal to some friends. They didn't get it or cared;

- A new user on twitter has no idea what a retweet is;

- Most people aren't aware of half of Instagram's features;

- All new users do on TikTok is scroll the FY page, ignoring the rest;

- It takes a while to fully understand the dynamics of Snapchat;

- Among many other examples.

If you are still reading this, you probably care about apps and understand them WAY BETTER than the average Joe.

I see the average Joe as (a.) someone whose last two braincells are playing cards, and (b.) someone who is eager to learn things he is interested in.

This leads me to the conclusion that no design will ever be simple enough, BUT if people care about your product, they will make an effort to learn.

In a consumer social product, the """ easiest""" way to make people care, is making their friends care.

(this poses the Cold Start Problem)

Concluding:

To make your social apps intuitive, make your users' friends care about them.

Friends care about the app -> User cares about the app -> User opens the app but doesn't get it at first (normal) -> User makes an effort to understand the app because he really wants to get it.

or:

User finds an app -> He doesn't get it -> He has a friend that already uses the app -> He talks to that friend about it -> Friends explains it.

Note to self: Don't use this as an excuse to have shitty design fundamentals lmao