What makes Tiktok so addictive?
TikTok is one of the biggest entertainment platforms today. The Platform that has more than 500 million users to this day. What are they doing right? Apart from the fact that they have invested a ton of money into marketing, what is really going right with this App?
Today as a learning curve, I took up the challenge of understanding the UX of Tiktok, and why it is one of the most installed App in such a short time and what makes it better than all the others out there?
There were many similar apps that emerged through the time. Dubsmash or Vine which were very similar to Tiktok and were in the market before Tiktok but not merely as popular as Tiktok. Vine even shutdown because they couldn’t monetise due to the competition.
Dubsmash
A few clicks and scrolls later:
Many icons in the UI present a clickable illusion, but each click led to more options, seemed like it took more attention and gave results that weren’t expected.
When one is expecting to see a reaction and it doesn’t happen it gives a very negative experience on the user, for example: Create button itself takes us to another page, At this point I clicked the +(create) button again and nothing happened even though it gave and illusion of clickablity. Clicking on the camera button on the top left provides users with more options which further deteriorates the experience because a camera button gives a sense of opening the camera and directly video recording but at this point it gave more choices which quite confuses the users. Since this is a segment on Tiktok let’s get back on track.
Now, I am not someone who is always on Tiktok but Oh my! when I started using it, even without my knowledge I started to scroll for more videos, and more and then, even more. The engagement level on Tiktok is even higher than Netflix. After each video Netflix at-least gives us 5 seconds for the next video to start, but in Tiktok its a vicious circle, it loops us in the same video until we interact with it. The first time I started using it, it took me almost three loops to realise the video was repeating.
This interactive design is what makes it such a popular app. The communication in todays generation is no longer between a communicator and an audiences. The interaction is most popularly among the user and technology.
Story time! recently I was walking in a street in India and I saw a mom and her 3 year old son walking on the street. Mom was holding her child and walking, “well more like dragging him!” and the kid was constantly engaged in the phone, he had no awareness toward anything outside the phone what so ever.
This is how much technology has control over our feelings, which is also why we expect technology to communicate with us and Tiktok has one of the most reciprocative UI.
Our mind is constantly observing visual patterns and communicate the behaviour of the application to our minds. Peoples attention span is limited, so the lesser amount of attention the user has to put the better the communication. TikTok UI has very simple but quick attention to important information like the rotating audio sound track, profile, share, comment and like which meets the visual aesthetics requirement.
To be honest I figured out a lot of features by mistake! like the double tap for like and deep tap to unlike a video, random swiping and the list goes on. Pretty fun!
Some of the features that work best for the app are as following:
Super simple UI
It starts off with a feed of videos. The more you scroll the more you start to watch the videos that align with your interest, this part of the algorithm is similar to most apps but TikTok is super open about it, which encourages users to scroll more for more. The most innovative thing in this platform unlike others is you can start watching videos even without following anyone, which gives one the comfort of not feeling like they are starting off from ground up to build followers.
Building User Loyalty
Tiktok is extremely loyal to the creators and in return the users feel the sense of loyalty towards the platform. The features of creating a video is made so effortless, interactive and creative.
Tiktok produces content based on User generated content model which keeps the users very engaged and also keep them loyal to the platform. Not only does Tiktok remain loyal to the creators but it also allows them to add other social media profiles on the account, which allows users to promote their Youtube channel or Instagram profile or business webpages very easily. A lot of creators also say that Tiktok has helped gain traction onto Instagram and other profiles.
“Tiktok has helped me drive more traffic onto my Instagram and youtube accounts!”
The creators life is made very easy with features like face recognition, multiple personalised filters, video collaboration, easy video editing, wide range of music etc. This saves so much of the video editing time. All of these features create a feeling of excitement for content production.
Music sounds better with you!!
The next big thing!! The algorithm to discovering the video and personalised sound track for what to create next is pretty crazy. The sound tracks are original and show the original creator. This platform is pretty awesome for sound producers to promote their work.
Whats exciting is from the audio page we can gauge on how many people have already created a video for the sound track, which kind of triggers a feeling of excitement and challenge to create a video for the sound track.
“Oh my! 19000 people have already created a video for this! Maybe I should do one too!”
These are some of the many design patterns we all love. Tiktok doesn’t particularly follow all the design rules we learnt from books but it still works great.
Because we love numbers I am getting into the stats
I also conducted a User research in some of the popular Tiktok groups to see if there is something users would like to see change about the app. I got an overwhelming response from most users that there is nothing about the app that they would like changed.
Almost felt like a slap in the face! How can an app be so loved?
Some of them have a few great additions that they would like changed but almost 60% of the users love it the way it is and that is how loyal Tiktok users are toward the app.
The results of my Research are as following
User Research
I started my Initial research creating survey’s and understanding whats working and whats not.
Also Because I’ve never used this app as much before!
The users I have concentrated today on are based on all age groups who are using tiktok, who spend at-least 45 minutes on this app from Facebook group members.
You love the platform, I am sure I know where to find you :P
For the most part of it everyone loved the“For you” page and the “discover page”, and why wouldn’t they?
I wanted to know what they love and what not and interestingly just one other thing!
What would you Change?
Some of the answers that I have received were pretty interesting and seemed like really great opportunities!
- Connect the sound tracks to Apple Music and Spotify.
- Curated Content (very old content is being shown in For you)
- Comments are not sorted in order and are shown randomly.
As of now, the app being is banned in several countries. Lets see what happens!
This design pattern is the start of a more creative turn on User Experience.
To conclude, let’s not be scared to break some rules!
