A New Look for the Tik Tok Favorites Page
About Tik Tok
Whether you love it or hate it, use it or don’t, we all know Tik Tok. Since its debut in 2018, it continues to rank in the top 3 Free Apps on the Apple App Store with more than 130 million downloads in the United States and 2 billion downloads worldwide. It was also the most-downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in 2018 and 2019, surpassing Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. TikTok has a younger audience, as 41% of its users are between the ages of 16 and 24. Among this age group, 90% say they use the app daily.
The Tik Tok app allows users to create short videos ranging from 15 seconds to 3 minutes in categories like dance, comedy, education, and more. The “For You” page features recommended videos based on user activity such as likes and interactions. Users can view videos from people they specifically follow on the “Following” page which is located on the left of the “for you” page. In addition to “liking” a video, users can choose to add to “favorites”. When a user likes a video it gets added to their profile page under the heart icon. When a user favorites a video it can be found on the favorites page that is broken down into pre-made categories such as: videos, hashtags, sounds, effects, and products. However, beyond these categories there is not much flexibility as to how the content is organized.
The Problem
Unlike other social media platforms, Tik Tok does not allow users to customize the Favorites page and create categories for content as they see fit.
In the image above, you can see the current process. While watching a video users can hold down the screen and a modal view will pop up allowing them to save the video, add to Favorites, and share with friends. Once a video is added to Favorites it will appear on the Favorites page with other favorited videos.
Personally, I find it aggravating that once I favorite a video it goes to a page full of all the other videos I’ve favorited. At this point, there isn’t much of a difference between simply “liking” a video or adding it to your favorites since they both display a never-ending collection of videos (see image below). The current design inevitably forces me to keep scrolling until I’ve found the video that I’ve previously saved. What happens when I see a cooking video and want to view the recipe later in the week? What if I see a video with a cool DIY project? How about when I see a funny or cool video I’d like to be able to see again? The current Tik Tok design does not account for this user need.
The Process
Customer Journey Map
Before prototyping, I took some time to consider the potential user expectations and experiences when using Tik Tok and engaging with a new Favorites feature that allows for the creation of categories. This future state map walks through four stages: View Content, Engage with Content, Share with Friends, and Add to Favorites. It also makes note of the user’s thoughts and emotion throughout each stage. I considered how the user currently views content, the emotions they experience, how they engage with content, and potential actions they might want to take after viewing a video.
My Solution + Prototype
With my redesign, users will be able to add videos to custom categories within the Favorites page so they’re organized and easily accessible later on. In addition to creating their own categories users will also be able to search each category.
Let’s walk through this process in the image above. While viewing the For You page users can tap the “Share” icon to open the Share modal or hold down the screen to open a second modal with similar options. Up until this point nothing has changed from the current Tik Tok layout. However, my prototype allows users to tap on “Add to Favorites” which shows an expanded menu of categories as well as an option to create a new category.
The new Favorites page, can still be accessed from the Profile page and still includes the current content filters (videos, hashtags, sounds, effect, products). However, the new Favorites page displays each category with a preview of the first four saved videos rather than a continuous collection of videos. I took inspiration for this layout from the current Discover page on Tik Tok. From here, users can tap on a category to see a detailed view that contains the related favorited videos.
Overall, my main goal for this prototype was to create an intuitive way for users to save videos and easily access them later if needed. Most importantly, I didn’t want to create an unnatural or cluttered interface, or make the favoriting process more convoluted.
By updating the Favorites feature to allow for the creation of custom categories, users will feel more in control of their Tik Tok experience and continue to engage with content for longer periods of time.