The smartphone has made snatching the perfect Cartier-Bresson moment a well-documented reflex. With film swapped for digital, we can shoot off any number of images, at concerts or simply out of the window, and – using Instagram – not just share but also modify and personalise them with filters that sound more like Ikea furniture sets than anything photographic.
Of course, the best ones show some sort of an eye for composition – and there are plenty that don’t quite cut the mustard – but it’s the user interface that fascinates me. The filters are crucial to Instagram’s success. New research from Yahoo Labs shows that filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on.
More than that though, the act of using them to modify and ‘perfect’ the image – scrolling between filters, pushing the contrast, mucking around with vignette and tilt shift – is as key to the casual user’s enjoyment as their taking the photo in the first place. Instagram could come up with the perfect automated filter, but if they did, they’d lose all that invaluable interaction and engagement.
There are plenty of insights to be had about the ‘like’ as bizarre sort of quantifiable good-will currency – even Silvio Berlusconi is on Instagram – and how to get more likes, but what interests me most is how it elevates process and customer experience, putting them on the same level as product.
Instagram’s network is based on taking and sharing pictures, but it’s the fact that users have spent extra time on it that makes them invested in their own network’s engagement, projecting their own self-image. It’s that which gets people to linger and dwell, making it a more viable platform for brands as well.
People are inherently aware of their own personal brand, and take responsibility for its output. In a way it’s like the paint-your-own-pottery studios, where you can go in and decorate your own mug. Ceramics are the commodity, but it’s on you to personalise and create the product. The shop just gives you the tools to finalise it and make it unique.
From a business app perspective, the best platform is one that can be built on and customised with ease. Rather than programming from the ground up, companies want to roll in different widgets and visualization tools, clicking and dragging intuitively – playing with the filters, if you like – until they get something that meets their needs, which looks and feels intuitive and solid. That’s what we’re doing with the HANA Cloud platform, and it’s a million miles from where we were ten years ago.
Author: Jamie Anderson
