The Bulletin September 2022

As Instagram desperately tries to hold on to relevance with more new features, TikTok cracks down on politics and the design world is shaken up by Adobe’s antics. It’s been a big month, let’s dive in…

Instagram is going out on a limb this month with another new feature. What was rumoured has now been confirmed to TechCrunch, Instagram is testing a new ‘Repost’ option, which would allow users to repost anything and share it to their own followers’ feeds. This means that along with suggested posts, users are now more likely to see posts from accounts they do not follow that have simply been reposted. As the team at Social Media Today puts it: it’s like retweets but for posts. Though the nature of this feature would suggest that creators will see more engagement with their content and will be credited for it too, it still remains to be seen whether or not this will add to the user experience. Especially since, most recently users have been unhappy with the surge of recommended posts in their feeds.

This month the team at Mumbrella talked to seasoned pioneers in the Australian beauty industry about the trend towards ‘authenticity’ in the social media world. According to them, and to trends seen in the media, the masses no longer desire perfection. A massive migration to TikTok over the course of the pandemic led to an interest in authenticity compared to the curated feeds that Instagram was known for. The newest popular social platform BeReal shows that this trend isn’t dying out anytime soon. This shift has caused the beauty industry to adapt to a new era where consumers are nonplussed by the early era beauty influencer like the Kardashians, this flawless brand ambassador is no longer appealing. For advertisers this means adjusting to a future of blemished, imperfect beauty marketing, utilising TikTok’s powerful algorithm and original content or authentic influencers.

In what has been described as a “devastating blow to the design community” Adobe has acquired private design company Figma for $20bn. Figma is a free collaborative platform used by designers and engineers. It grew in popularity over the past three years as designers worked together on projects from a distance, and has remained popular and profitable, making it a good acquisition for Adobe to control the competition. Though Figma is promising to remain free for students, one concern among designers is that students might not be able to afford Figma once they leave university if the program becomes part of the Adobe suite. Adobe’s subscription service, $22 a month for teachers and students, grows to around $80 for other users, and limiting the accessibility of Figma would limit the employability of many entering the industry. If the deal goes through, the Wall Street Journal reports it would be one of the biggest buyouts of a venture capitalist-backed startup in US history. Only time will tell how this deal will affect the future of design.

TikTok is aiming to eliminate direct political influence in the app with new restrictions on what politically-affiliated accounts can do as an effort to alleviate concerns around how social platforms can be used for political purposes and influencing public opinion. All political accounts (belonging to governments, parties and individual politicians) will now have to be verified, as TikTok says, “If our community is watching content from [these accounts] we want them to know the account is genuine.” TikTok is also implementing new ad restrictions on political-related accounts, so these accounts will no longer have access to donation advertising or fundraising tools. Political accounts will also be banned from uploading content that solicits donations or directs viewers to another donation page. TikTok will continue to allow government organisations to advertise in limited circumstances (like communicating official health information), but they’ll be required to work with a TikTok representative. These changes may see politics have less influence in social media, though TikTok itself still remains under scrutiny due to perceived links to the Chinese government.

In recent news that may be important to many advertisers, health and wellness brand JSHealth has been fined by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for alleged “unlawful use of restricted and prohibited representations.” The TGA says the brand’s advertising included claims such as its ability to treat serious health conditions like cancer and Alzheimer’s, without obtaining prior permission from the regulator. Though the brand argues that the penalty has stemmed from a misunderstanding in advertising, it suggests that advertisers should take more care to ensure they are not suggesting false claims to their consumers. 

Web design has seen a huge evolution in recent years, with the idea of accessibility and inclusion being a contributing factor. According to The Click-Away Pound Survey, 71% of website visitors with a disability will leave a website if it is not accessible. Even software companies that embrace an accessibility-first mindset still lag in some areas. So what does accessibility look like? For everyone ease of use is key to the success of an experience or app. We make use of accessibility featuresevery day. This includes using dark mode, zooming in, adjusting text size, or using voice to text technology. A disability can also be permanent or temporary. It can mean anything from dyslexia, to wearing glasses or needing to navigate the computer differently after breaking an arm, to far more complex conditions. Truly accessible design means building accessible elements into our apps from the beginning. This might look like using colour appropriately, designing for the appropriate platform – not designing for the web only to launch on mobile devices, considering tricky touch-zones on a phone, and eradicating bias in tech design. Tech teams, brands and companies should have conversations with a broad variety of users to obtain different perspectives rather than UX designers only approaching problems from their own lived experience. Listening to your users, as always, is a good way to provide the service they actually need.

According to a recent Canadian study, as the pandemic passes us by and people go back to their normal daily lives, social media use has declined with the exception of TikTok. In September, the Wall Street Journal reported that Instagram is faltering in its bid to keep up with TikTok, but it is not just Instagram. Recently a Google exec raised similar concerns about how TikTok was drawing younger users away from Google’s core services such as Search and Maps. The study from The Conversation showed that Canadians’ use of social media has declined from its early pandemic peak; however, TikTok had the largest gain (an increase of 11%) in the number of Canadian adults who reported having an account on the platform in 2022, compared to data collected in 2020. While the number of Canadians on TikTok is still relatively small (26%), those who do use the platform visit it regularly (65%) and they are commonly from younger age groups. These findings suggest that TikTok’s appeal has grown since 2020, while other apps have fallen, and that TikTok is no longer just an app for short videos, being the place where young people go for news or even to search things.