Designing Instagram Search Around User Intents and Content Types

Design the search experience inside Instagram: what people can look for, and how they find it. ```hint Start from what people are looking for People open Instagram search with very different intents: finding a specific person, exploring a topic, finding a place to eat, or tracking down a reel they saw last week. List those intents first, because they decide what the results page has to show. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is this a redesign of Instagram's existing search, or a new kind of search, such as keyword search across posts and reels? - Which outcome matters most: finding people and accounts, discovering content, or finding businesses, places and products? - Which users come first: casual users looking for friends, creators who want to be found, or businesses? - Should search cover what is inside content (spoken words, text on screen, audio) or only names, captions and hashtags? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - The search intents and the user segments behind them, with a chosen focus and the reason for it. - Prioritized pain points tied to those intents. - The design of query entry, result types and ranking, including how accounts, posts, reels, audio and places are balanced on one page. - Safety, integrity and privacy: harmful or sensitive queries, spam, and content from private accounts. - A search-quality success metric with guardrails. ### Follow-up Questions - How should search behave for a sensitive query, such as one about self-harm or extreme dieting? - How would you tell whether better search adds to total engagement or only moves time away from the feed? - How would search need to change for a business trying to find creators to partner with?