By Meta Careers
With a community of over 2 billion people, our Design team at Facebook works on a diverse range of challenges. That's why we're taking you inside product design at Facebook, sharing more about our global team of product designers, the problems they tackle, and how they work.
Hear from our Product Designers: Perin, Nick, & Moriah
We caught up with three people on our product design team who work on products with social impact to get their perspective on why they chose their teams at Facebook and to learn more about the work they do here.
What They Work On
Perin R. is a product design manager in Menlo Park for the Goodwill team, responsible for creating product experiences at the top of News Feeds that help people worldwide celebrate what matters to them and their communities. These moments give people new ways to reach out to each other at notable times, from the first day of summer to Diwali to International Women's Day. “It's like wishing someone a happy birthday, but now I can wish you happy Passover, or say 'Eid Mubarak' for Ramadan,” Perin says. Her work at Facebook helps facilitate these moments of connection and delight — and also connects her with the people on Facebook, even as she designs experiences to connect them to each other. “It's emotional to work on different cultural experiences,” she says. “I learn about them, and it brings me closer to the people who celebrate.”
Nick I. is a product designer for Blood Donations on Facebook, which aims to help people discover blood donation opportunities near them — a way of “helping people in communities lift each other up,” Nick says. These connections start on Facebook and go on to make a huge real-world impact. “We have a rare opportunity to build something that helps save lives in a very direct way,” he says. “Each time we improve the product, it has a tangible impact on people's lives.” The scale of Facebook allows its designers to tackle these kinds of large, difficult problems. “We are in a unique position to have both the resources to tackle such problems and the scale to truly make a difference,” Nick says.
Moriah R. is a product designer in Tel Aviv. She collaborated with the Express Wi-Fi team to help define a new feature that communicates what data rollover means when you buy a mobile data pack. With Express Wi-Fi, we’re working with carriers, internet service providers and local entrepreneurs to help expand connectivity to under-served locations around the world. "We aimed to enable people to get the most out of their mobile data and alleviate fears surrounding upgrading to monthly data plans.” Moriah says “Coming from a data management-focused product, it was imperative to bring in my knowledge but to also stay open and not make assumptions. Some things could carry over, but other aspects had to be researched from scratch. In return, I was able to translate many of those learnings back into my product work."
How They Approach Designing for Social Impact
As part of the product design team, Perin, Nick and Moriah work on ways to bring the Facebook community closer together. “Our mission is to find the ways that people are using Facebook for good, through research, and to build tools to make them more effective in the world,” Nick says. The teams they work on take a broad look at someone's Facebook experience, well beyond how often they sign on or how many friends they have. “It's about more than metrics,” says Perin. “It's about the feeling and emotions our users experience while using our products.”
Understanding those experiences means seeking out and listening to feedback from people who use Facebook. Nick recently went with his team to India to meet the people who manage Facebook Groups dedicated to coordinating local blood donations and was inspired by their dedication. One woman even needs two phones to manage the thousands of messages she receives from Group members daily. “Research helps us discover new problems and inspires us to create better products,” he says. “Even after leaving the field, we continue to collaborate remotely and get feedback as the product evolves."
Product designers take that collaborative approach within the company, too, seeking out perspectives and input from other disciplines. “Our cross-functional team is really passionate about design, and they have a lot of great ideas,” Perin says. She works especially closely with the product manager on her team. “When everyone is passionate about solving hard problems and you are surrounded by smart people who are experts in what they do, we get to think beyond product experiences and collaborate on the overall strategy together.”
This sort of interdisciplinary work means that successful product designers not only have visual, interaction, and communication skills, but are also great collaborators. “Being an effective designer means absorbing diverse perspectives, synthesizing that feedback, and channeling it toward the next iteration. It's about assuming less and listening more,” says Perin.
"Teams in Facebook are encouraged to openly discuss, share and document their work,” says Moriah, explaining her experience of collaboration at Facebook. “Widening the audience of our work is essential for getting diverse and comprehensive feedback. It also helps other teams to learn from our processes and move faster. In many situations, other teams have tackled problems similar to mine. It's great to be able to look at their research and insights and incorporate their learnings into my work. It's easy to reach out to people across the company to help make us more informed and influence our product work."
Highlights of Designing at Facebook
At Facebook, designers are a key part of product development. For Nick, that sense of “extreme ownership” is one of the most exciting things about his work here.
“As a designer, I'm not just responsible for the pixels,” he says. “I'm also responsible for the product concept — the whole strategy of what we're doing."”
Designers at Facebook also have access to tools that allow them to work both more quickly and more effectively at every part of the design process, from ideation to iteration. “Our internal tooling gives us the ability to explore more broadly and execute ideas more quickly,” says Nick. “Origami and a suite of in-house Sketch plugins let me create high-fidelity visuals in minutes, so I can spend more time steering the product direction.” Other tools make it easy to receive and understand feedback on initial designs, and how designs are working out after they've shipped. “Data scientists help us run complex experiments and interpret results, informing the next crop of design solutions," says Nick.
For Perin, one of the best things about being a designer at Facebook is the other designers she gets to collaborate with and learn from. “You're surrounded by smart people, so you're soaking that in and also producing a higher caliber of work,” she says.
What's more, it's exciting to know that her designs are reaching so many people around the world.
“These are global moments in time that connect people. You get to see your ideas come to life and your families get to see it too,” she says."”
She also values how that kind of exposure helps her learn and grow as a designer. “Millions of people will see something you do, so you're able to understand so much, so quickly.”
To recap, some of the highlights of designing at Facebook are:
- Designers are a key part of product development and are leading product initiatives
- Internal tools allow you to work more effectively and efficiently
- You get to see your work come to life and reach many people around the world
Join our growing team!
Facebook Design is growing across the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, London, and Tel Aviv:
Stay Connected!
- Learn about Facebook Design at facebook.design
- Learn about Life at Facebook on Instagram via @facebooklife.
- Join our Facebook Careers Talent Community Page for the latest updates.
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