23andMe Social Sharing Feature

When someone takes a 23andMe test, the anticipation for those results build as the days and weeks pass. They’re waiting to find out if who they think they are, is in fact true. The results can be shocking, eye-opening, and, more often than not, unsurprising. Either way, it’s a moment worth sharing; worth being a part of the conversation on social media.

When 23andMe customers do share their results, they’re typically sharing screenshots of our reports. Our reports however were never designed to look great in a single screenshot so we decided we could provide tools for users to create a worthy IG post. A post that the user (and our brand team) could be proud of.

I took a look at the social media posts that users were creating and was able to put them into 6 different categories. Below, the 3 categories on the right felt more in-line with what is considered “thumb-stopping” content. They also, however, rank higher in the effort required for the user to create it.

Problem
Users want to share their results but they have to jump through hurdles to share something engaging.

We want to be part of the conversation on social but screenshots don’t represent our product and brand in the best light.

Exploration
With video becoming a preferred media on social platforms, I explored ways to make the results experience a shareable video moment.

Video allows for richer storytelling; building anticipation, and revealing results in an animated form. I drew inspiration from Facebook’s “friendiversaries”, developing a concept for a personalized video featuring the user’s photo, name, and ancestry data.

Meanwhile, the product team worked with Brand Design to create still photo templates that use color and typography to jazz-up the user’s results for sharing.

In investigating the feasibility of the personalized video, we found we would need third party resources to deliver it. We conceded to testing the still templates before deciding to put resources into building the video.

The task at hand was to build a feature that allows users to create a social media post with their 23andMe results and a photo of their choosing to create that engaging content.

I started by doing an audit of sharing flows within other mobile apps.

In the end, the solution I landed on was a familiar flow to those accustomed to social sharing, but with the added abilities to edit the ancestry specific templates we’ve provided.

We launched the feature and users started posting.

But launching is just the beginning. We wanted to improve discoverability and add a new, seasonal template.