Enhancing The User Interface of X (formerly Twitter) For A Better User Experience

8 min readOct 6, 2023

What if users were able to find exactly what they were looking for when searching for or looking up trends on X?

What if X could narrow its search results to the exact or related content a user is searching for, filtering out all other unrelated contents?

WORK OUT HOW TO DO IT WITH ME WITH

Problem Statement

Below are screenshots of a user searching for a particular topic in the trends but getting a totally different and unrelated search result because the content creators are adding every trending topic to their contents, making their contents appear over the topic of interest in every search, therefore optimizing impressions and maximizing monetization.

Below are screenshots of other X users relaying their frustratuions. You can see full thread by clicking here and here

What is the challenge?

Without a doubt, there is an observed decline in user’s interest in using the X’s search and trends feature due to excessive and incessant abuse by content creators to use trending words and topics to drive impressions to their contents.

This, in turn, produces a messy search result and results filled with unrelated contents due to the X’s algorithm.

This unnecessary and incessant abuse of trends makes almost useless the whole idea of the user using X as their choice of blogging and news platform. It makes it less enjoyable and no different from other social platforms like Meta (Facebook)and TikTok, where only non-educational contents thrive.

X is perceived to be (and was built) different, and as such, it is seen as the apex social platform for these differences. I'm not sure how it is perceived elsewhere, but in Nigeria, early adopters and frequent users of the X are considered to have a higher IQ level than users of any other competing platform.

However, it is also believed recently that X is losing that flair and gradually receding to becoming a common tool for content creators of all sorts, filled with memes, TikTok clips, Telegram betting groups redirect links, and free pornographic videos.

Users’ Pain Points

Surfing through spams and unrelated contents to obtain the needed information at the time.
Sustaining focus through distracting contents to stay on the purpose of search.
Losing the excitement to find exactly what it is they are looking for.
User’s inability to control the nature and types of contents appearing on their search results and trends feed.

User Goals

The following are the key points that the user will enjoy from the proposed UI:

A narrow and perfect search result
More decent search result and trends flow
Elimination of distracting contents; and
The user’s ability to decide whether or not see unrelated contents in search results and trending topics

Users’ Priorities

Apart from being able to decide if they want to see adults and sensitive contents on their feed, users also need the ability to decide if they want non-informative or unimportant contents to show up on their feed and search results, as well as their ability to identify these contents from their original content of interest.
But not for those who only want to commercialize X, most users only seek a social platform that helps relay their intelligence and allows them to hold educational conversations and spaces, as well as influence and challenge political decisions by their local political authorities.
Users want a feeling of some level of control over the commodity they are paying for. If X intends to or is charging its users a token, it is only pertinent to make them feel some level of control over what shows up on their feed

Solution Offering

This user experience research proposes that, when content like the ones in screenshots in the problem statement above is made, that is, content with more than one trending word at a particular time and particular to a certain geographical region or country are made by a creator, X algorithm will automatically flag or tag the content as spam in a similar way as the mockup below.

By doing this, content creators are not given the option to appeal or not if their contents are spam, like in the case of creators of pornographic contents appealing that their contents do not have adult features. Instead, users will be given more control, with an option of deciding whether or not they wish to see contents flagged as spams appear in their search results or timeline feed.

User Tasks

With the introduction of this narrowed and custom content display option, users will now have to only follow some simple steps in their privacy and safety settings to update on what kind of contents they want to see when they look up for trends

To approve consent, users can go to the contents you see option on their privacy and safety option of settings and privacy as shown above and toggle the spam button as shown below to either give consent or revoke.

By giving consent, contents with more than two or more trending words will only appear in the search results of those who permit them, with a spam tag in the top right corner, as seen here.

Who benefits from this?

1. Help manage data scrapping on X

This will not only help users enjoy the experience on X, by limiting the number of unwanted and unnecessary contents uploaded to X’s database, but it will also help with the data scraping problem faced by X’s server.

2. Helps X maximize profit

More importantly, as a commercial platform where content creators earn from the number of impressions and Ad revenue, this will task creators to become more creative with their contents and seek better ways to entertain their audience without spamming or posting pornographic contents. That way, a content creator who wishes to have their content get more reach will have to pay X for promotion

3. Offers users more control

Users get to exhibit more control over their feed. It will help users decide what gets their attention and what doesn't. Adult contents and sex tapes will no longer appear in search results of “Vladimir Putin”, and GIFs of Mark Zuckerberg as well as Kamala Harris memes will no longer get so much attention or impressions except by user’s choice

4. Helps restore X’s status

This will then restore X to once again becoming the apex platform for blogging, entertainment, news, and events, as well as for hosting intelligent conversations and spaces, without having to pay everybody that creates content, irrespective of how lame and unintelligent the content is.

Executing Proposed Solution

If considered, this can be implemented simply by observing the following steps:

The team of developers at X can develop a program or an algorithm that collects data on trending topics or topics in the trends for that particular region for a particular period of time.

The developed program or algorithm will be allowed to filter these topics and use them to match contents and posts from users and creators within that region or locality.

These filtered contents or posts should be tagged as spam in the same manner that adult and violent or pain-inflicting contents are blurred with the “viewer’s discretion” warning.

Let the program filter posts or contents tagged with more than one or two of these topics or hashtags.

Users can then go ahead to decide if they wish to or not see these contents in their trend feeds or search results by toggling on or off the “Display contents marked as spam in your trends and search results” option in their settings, as seen in the mockup below

Conclusion

Content creator’s abuse of trends is becoming excessively overbearing, thus making X not any different from TikTok and Meta; only that, contents are borrowed from TikTok and plastered over X.

This has really increased since the monetization policy of the platform, which lets verified creators share in the ads revenue generated by their contents. This doesn’t just make the platform less exciting; it also makes feeds and search results messy and filled with irrelevant contents

To this end, as a user experience designer, this case study is proposing this as a sustainable solution: that if the developers at X could set up an algorithm that collects every topic in the trends for every country or region and then use this algorithm to match contents, filtering contents with more than one or two of these topics in them, the system could tag these contents as spam, thus enabling users to decide if they want contents as such to appear on their feed or search results.

This will not only cut the cost of paying creators for below-standard contents but will also help in data scrapping.