Bringing post location map back together with collections
The Idea
Most of the time I use Instagram to explore new places. I follow people who travel a lot, who meet friends in cafés with beautiful interiors, who visit museums, galleries, and other such places.
When I decided to go to Amsterdam last fall, I wanted to somehow collect spots I should definitely see. However, I could not come up with any smart solution to search for places and organize those I had already found.
If you are an Instagram user, you probably know that you can save posts and create collections from them. I like that idea a lot, especially because I search for inspiration mainly on Instagram. Unfortunately, I need to use some other app when I plan my trips, which made me want to come up with a more effective way to organize all the content I save while scrolling through my feed.
So I started thinking, why doesn’t Instagram work with the locations of the posts I save? What if I searched for inspiration on the profiles of people I follow, saw what they saved and created my own gallery of cool places?
Public Collections
There would definitely be some adjustments needed in the current version of the app.
First, it would be good to be able to set the collections private or public, similar to how Pinterest works. Imagine you are planning how to design your future apartment and you collect some inspiration on Instagram. You probably don’t want to share this with other people.
But if you travel a lot, you might like to share the spots you consider interesting for your followers. In this case you would set the collection to public and people could take a look at what kind of places you saved, see them in a map, and decide which of these they want to visit as well.
Map View
While using the map, you would be able to manipulate the saved spots. You could mark those spots that you visited as seen or remove them from the map. This option is default when you save a post while scrolling your feed or visiting someone else’s profile.
There would be also other features connected to the map, like using the filter to display only some spots, or navigating to a certain destination.
Another part of this feature is that your followers would see your saved posts. This would be great when you look for inspiration on the profiles of the people you follow. I imagine how great it would be to have all the cool spots that those people visit on one map. I wouldn’t have to create a new collection for each country or city I’m planning to visit because they would be grouped according to location so I could use the collection function for something else.
So what would I do before I went on another trip?
First I would take a look at the posts I’ve already saved and those which are located in the destination I’m going to. I could also visit the profiles of the people I follow and check their saved posts on the map. And in case I liked some place, I could save it to my map. And if I were at the destination, it would be way easier for me to visit all the places I liked and saved on Instagram.
More possibilities
There are many things I can imagine being added sooner or later. Just to throw a couple out there:
Following Collection — you could follow someone else’s collection so the spots would appear on your map and you wouldn’t have to save them one by one
Collaborations —for those who would like to participate in creating a collection together
Sharing with Friends — you would be able to share the whole collection with someone else via Instagram messages
Search — it would be great to be able to search for a collection while saving a post (not possible in the current version)
All spots — you could see all of the posts of people you follow in one map, not just when you visited a certain profile
What do you think?
Do you save posts on Instagram? How do you use the collections? Is a map view of spots something you’d use while planning/traveling? Let me know in a short response to this article.
Anna Klvanova, a designer at STRV with passion for photography and traveling, currently living in Prague.
STRV is a software design & engineering company. Whatever your opportunity, we can unlock it with technology.
Follow the STRV design team on Dribbble or Behance.
Instagram Spots (New Feature Concept) was originally published in Design Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
