I disagree - there is no "target audience" for shit UX. Their "target audience" uses Snap despite its awful UX, not because of it. Those users wouldn't suddenly run away if the UX did actually improve.
Perhaps I'm just used to it, but I find SC's UI/UX to be quite nice to use. I would be disappointed if Snapchat's UI changed to be more like Instagram's; IG's UI may be more discoverable, but it just doesn't feel as smooth.
I liked the UI of early Snapchat (2013) when there was only a recent Snaps list and a camera view and you could swipe between them. It all went downhill from there, but the biggest blow for me was the stupid thing that you have to pull down when in the camera view to get access to your contacts. I wish the "designer" that had this stupid idea would be sentenced to several years of reading all text in nothing but Comic Sans.
The UX might be good but I've heard nothing but complaints about the app quality from teenagers and that's on iOS. They are starting to straddle snap and Instagram.
Teenager here chiming in, Snapchat is great but kind of slow on my (Android) phone -- It takes like 5 seconds for it to even load who has new stories, and I used to be able to swipe up to show my stats and snap code but now it's a bunch of related/nearby content ("top stories") I don't care about. Ads between stories are kind of annoying but I understand they need to monetize somehow.
It's great for sharing photos and quick texts but no one uses snap maps, the sponsored content is cringe, and I have yet to see spectacles in real life because unsurprisingly, we don't have the money to buy $100+ camera glasses.
I should also add that a lot of my friends do use Instagram stories, but a lot of the time it's just a picture with the text "AMOS: {sc_username}" (AMOS means "add me on Snapchat") so take from that what you will.
Same thing I've noticed, and even beyond that people still seem to feel the need to put a final layer of effort into their insta stories relative to Snap stories, I'd say Snap still has a definite role
What I mostly notice about Snapchat is the ads on the right side are obnoxiously sexual or celebrity driven. Not so amazing experience there, it's like the checkout aisle at Safeway.
(ever noticed that magazine where the cover is always "how to lose 30 pounds in a day" and then a chocolate cake?)
I meant the upload time for Spectacles, not sure if we're talking about the same thing? The UX for the Snap app is great. I was the most active Snap user I knew up until recently (hence why I have Spectacles)