Improve Instagram Stories for close-friends sharing among Gen Z

How would you improve Instagram Stories to boost close-friends engagement and retention among Gen Z users?

Context

Gen Z increasingly shares with small circles (finstas, group chats, BeReal) rather than all followers. Posting to everyone feels performative.

Clarifying questions to ask first

Goal: more posting, more replies, or retention?
Close Friends list only, or other small circles?
Any constraints on ranking changes?

How to approach it

Clarify the business goal and tie the product to the company's mission before touching solutions
Segment users by behaviour or need (not just age), cover the whole ecosystem, and pick one segment with explicit criteria
Walk the end-to-end journey and separate real pain points from feature requests
Brainstorm a range of solutions (quick fix, data/ML, moonshot) and prioritise with impact vs effort
Define a North Star, funnel metrics and guardrails, then call out risks, edge cases and mitigations

Framework: Goal & mission -> Ecosystem & segment choice -> Journey & pain points -> Solutions & prioritisation -> Metrics & guardrails -> Risks & edge cases

Sample answer

Segment by sharing behaviour: frequent sharers, lurkers who reply, anxious non-posters
The pain is pressure and audience anxiety, not missing features
Managing one Close Friends list for every context is clumsy

Pains: one list fits nobody, fear of judgement, replies get lost in DMs
Solutions: multiple named circles, low-effort prompts to share with circles, reply threads on circle stories
Metrics: North Star = weekly users sharing to a circle; guardrails = report rate, unfollows, overall Story views

Multiple named circles with low-pressure prompts for anxious non-posters. Measure weekly circle sharers, guarded by overall Story views and reports.

What interviewers look for

Behavioural segmentation within Gen Z
Creator vs viewer pains
Privacy and pressure trade-offs
Retention metrics over vanity metrics