There are over 1 billion people who use Facebook Groups on a monthly basis to get things done, share with their families and friends, and connect to others around similar interests.
I worked on Groups at Facebook between 2014-2016. It was an exciting product to work on because I believe it helps facilitate some of the best conversations on Facebook by creating engaged and relevant audiences. Groups also make sharing to a limited audience easy to understand.
Groups cover a variety of surfaces, from desktop browsers to the Facebook mobile app. Groups serve a wide range of uses, from small friend and family groups to large interest based groups. One of the great design challenges is that the product needs to work for a huge range of use cases. At the same time, the product needs to remain simple enough to naturally educate people how to use it so they can get the most out of their experience.
I led a design team with the goal of advancing the product’s usefulness while retaining the familiarity of the Facebook experience which makes it so accessible. We worked in a collaborative environment with engineers, researchers and content strategists to create thoughtful product decisions. We also actively sought out feedback from users and admins to stay in touch with how people are use the product day-to-day.
Some of the projects I worked on were:
- Recent Tab
- Groups Page
- Groups Discovery
- Threaded comments
- Discussion Topics
- Live video
- Seen state
- Groups composer
- Branding
- Marketing
- Group Invitations via email
I learned a lot from this team about how groups function. This learned has stuck with me and I continue to use it today when working on groups in WhatsApp.
