The biggest lesson learned from Snapchat's UX fail
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My 17-year-old daughter never listens to the car radio. Ever.
Her default state in the car is to sit with one earbud firmly implanted in her left ear listening to 'grime' and the other dangling over the right, so she can monitor for trick questions like, 'What did you do at school today?' and, 'What did you have for lunch at school today?'
I was listening to the news on the radio about Snapchat's UX change and the subsequent outrage from users when my daughter unexpectedly exploded.
"YES! It's terrible! They've RUINED it!" This was just the start of a five-minute rant detailing how the update just didn't make sense, her friends all hated it too, she kind-of understood why they did it (after I explained it to her), but that's not what SHE wanted from the app.
If you are not a user, Snapchat's changes effectively demoted immediate posts in favour of an algorithmic-based UI change designed to promote more relevant content instead.
After overcoming my shock at the fact she did at least occasionally listen, her passion for the issue made me wonder if Snapchat had broken one of the golden rules of UI design and UX strategy: Once you hit 'publish' it's no longer your app/website, but their experience.
Many websites and apps fail to understand a simple contract between the user and whatever the publisher is trying to achieve. Users do not open your app because of who or what you are but because of what you can give them.
This was brought home to me recently by the changes to another social media app,Facebook. I haven't spoken to a single friend who subsequently believes Facebook is now pretty much pointless.
They have no interest in what 'friends', or rather 'randoms you come across in life and you accept their friend request' are posting. Like me, they were mainly using Facebook to consume news and follow their interests via special interest groups and Pages.
Mark Zuckerberg might want his app to connect people more, but his users just want to use the app as they did before, as a media and knowledge consumption platform.
So… What Happened With Snapchat?
In Snapchat's case, users wanted the latest updates. Now, the interface is 'confusing', and they fear missing out. When you are young, as the majority of Snapchat users are, your primary concern is not to be the person who didn't hear this piece of gossip or missed out on that influencer's video. Snapchat's success was built on delivering hot content, immediately, with the ability to share and consume other's opinions instantly.
This is where it gets interesting. At Huddle, we believe the UI interface IS the business, not just surface aesthetics. In their IPO a few years ago, Snapchat's mission statement was, "We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate." So they are a camera company... Who knew?
But staying with that for a minute, if they are a camera company operating in today's instant world, they surely need to make the interface quick to use and share your pics and equally quick to discover and comment on other's pics? This is why the redesign is confusing — and not just for the users.
Longterm, Snapchat's decision to fundamentally change the user's experience may be just a blip. Their justification for the change — that in time it will lead to more relevant rather than immediate engagement for the user — might come right. That's if there is a long-term for the app.
A single tweet, from a prominent celebrity who claims to hate the UX update, wiped $1.3 billion off Snapchat's share price as her 24 million followers agreed with her.
What This Means for Brand Strategy in 2026
Years on from Snapchat's misstep, the lesson still isn't being learned. At Huddle, we see versions of this mistake regularly — not with apps, but with brand and website redesigns. A firm invests significantly in a new visual identity and website. Their team loves it. It looks modern. It launches. And then, quietly, enquiry quality drops or conversion rates fall.
Almost always, the problem is the same: the redesign served the client's internal vision of the brand rather than the user's need from it. The site was restructured to reflect the firm's organisational chart rather than the way users actually navigate to find what they want. The messaging was written for the partners' approval rather than the prospect's first impression.
When we worked with Future Platforms on their brand and digital design overhaul, the critical part of the process was not designing the new UX — it was mapping the existing user behaviour first. What were visitors actually doing on the site? Where were they dropping off? What were they searching for that they couldn't find?
The brief wasn't 'make it look more modern.' It was 'make it work better for the people who use it.' The visual rebrand followed from that, not the other way around. The result was a brand that felt more credible and a site that converted better — because it was built around the user's contract, not the client's preferences.
Three Questions to Ask Before Any Rebrand or Redesign
- What does our user actually come here to do? Not what we want them to do — what they actually do. Analytics and user research tell this story better than any internal workshop.
- Will this change make it easier or harder for them to do that? Even beautiful design can be a barrier if it adds steps, removes familiar patterns, or prioritises brand expression over functional clarity.
- Who is this change really for? If the honest answer is 'it's for us' — to look more modern, to reflect our new values, to excite the team — pause. That's a valid motivation, but it needs to be secondary to whether the user's experience improves.
If you're planning a rebrand or a brand refresh and you want an honest assessment of where your brand is working and where it isn't, start with the Blandscape™ audit. It's Huddle's 10-dimension brand scorecard, and it's free.
Or brief us directly — we'll tell you what we think, honestly.