Reflect on the User Interface (UI)
Right from opening this app, you are shown a colorful rainbow logo. This is a change they made a number of years back from more of a neutral camera logo. When you are on the app, you will see followers' story posts at the very top, as well as activity and direct messages, and tabs at the bottom showing the users tabs. These include home page, explore page, post tab, Reels (videos), and lastly their profile page with all of their posts. On the profile tab, the user can edit their account, track use, see followers and their activity on other peoples' pages. The rainbow colors definitley gather attention of the user. To like posts, you double-tab and a heart shows up on the screen. The designers are intentional about pushing activity of your followers, as well as creating a never-ending feed. With each refresh, there is a new set of posts. The posts on the main feed are in chronological order, and once the post is seen and interacted with by the user it is hidden. The app is constantly refreshing the explore page, and once the user scrolls on a particular "style" of post, it will continue to show you more of that kind. The more the user interacts with posts, the more similar posts will be pushed through the algorithm.
Reflect on the User Experience (UX)
Refleting on personal experience, having been a user of this app for the past 10 years, this app has negativley impacted me negativley and positivley. This app allows connection between friends and institutions that the user may wish to connect with from any distance. You can see what people are accomplishing and stay connected at any time. The design of the app has a positive affect on the user, I believe. However, this app has negative connotations that have come with the increase of influencers and use of algorithm in recent use. The app has had negative impacts on my attention span in the way of scrolling, and the ability for the app to be continuiously updating posts and filtering what it thinks you're interested in. Whenever there is a lull in my day I find myself immediatley opening Instagram and scrolling mindlessly, not even interacting with posts. But on the opposite hand, if you click on something that you are not interested in, even on accident, it will continue to show you similar posts. I like that the app has the option to hide things like like counts, because I feel like with this app specifically, there is a lot of pressure to have certain amounts of followers/ interactions. This app relies heavily on status in order to be pushed through the algorithm which can definitley have a negative effect on mental health. The realizations of the ways the UI make me feel are not new, and have been present on this app for many years. I have learned more about how to recognize the degree to which this app impacts me.
Reflect on How this Resource Might Impact or Support Digital Wellness
The apps I use daily are mostly social media apps and apps relating to work and school such as Canvas, Outlook, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. I think the social media apps benefit me in the way of allowing me to connect with friends and families in an instant. These social media apps also bring me joy a lot of the time and can serve as a distraction from the apps/ programs that are not as interactive and fun. However, my attention span from using these apps has decreased severely, and I wish I had the ability to watch videos or focus on assignments without getting distracted by these apps or needing background noise. I think I can model digital wellness to my students by hopefully creating a mode of screen time in the classroom that is interactive but not to a point that it becomes reliant, and also encouraging screen breaks. I am not exactly sure what this would look like with younger classes, but for older students who may be using more apps and progams to complete school work, I as an educator can encourage students to think critically about what they're posting, who's seeing it, why they're posting, and making sure that they are building digital competency.
Reflect on the Accessibility of the Application or Tool You Chose
This app is free, which is accessible to the user. From the settings that are easy to access on posts, there is not an option to add captions to videos, but there may be a way to do this in settings. The user can change the language in settings, as well as hide words and phrases you do not want to see on your free. I believe this app does have compatibility to work with a screen reader.
Reflect on the Ways in which Being Aware of Digital Design and Digital Wellness Could Benefit You as a Teacher?
This can benefit me as a teacher because I can best design/implement the apps my students will use and do work on in class so that they do not have negative impacts on my students. Now that I am more aware about what has been impacted me in a more negative way, I can work to avoid these in my classroom.