Design tensions: interaction criticism on Instagram's mobile interface

User interfaces are continually evolving. Contemporary interfaces, particularly mobile interfaces, have developed their own design language as they have discarded skeuomorphs and metaphorical representations to support their design and introduced features not available before in desktop interfaces. Despite the pervasiveness of mobile interfaces, researchers have neglected the development of theory that accounts for how they still connect with or deviate from early interface design constructs. This paper adapts the notion of metaphorical tension to formulate and explore a new construct, design tension, which scopes an exercise of interaction criticism on Instagram's interface. As a result, this paper argues that design tension is useful to account for how interface components introduce features that are discordant to interface standards and best practices, things from the real world, and the user's belief system. It also suggests that both the method and construct can be applied to other communication design artifacts distinct from interfaces to produce intermediate-level knowledge.