A new paradigm for Facebook App Navigation system (design led ground breaking product revamp)
In this high-stake project I led research for a systematic design improvement. In collaboration with Product Design, we planned and spearhead a 2-week design sprint and subsequent validation studies. This required working with 5 teams across the Facebook and Messenger apps, gathering existing knowledge, creating leadership alignment across 2 apps, and design a complex research study informing a grand vision. This collaboration led to a new navigation paradigm, resulting in both short-term and long-term product improvements.
Context:
Content navigation in the Facebook app is a complex topic. Balancing users' need for finding information and the discoverability of high-priority features is crucial in such a feature-rich application.
The presence of multiple organically grown navigation surfaces posed a significant challenge in locating information and features.
To compete with rapidly growing content engagement apps like TikTok, the FB app design leadership had to aggressively prioritize making the Community Chats feature more discoverable and widely adopted. This feature became the company's top priority across FB, MSGR, and WhatsApp in the end of 2022 and early 2023.
Role:
As the main research lead, I coordinated research and synthesis across research organizations within FB and MSGR apps.
I summarized and represented our existing knowledge of FB app navigation in a 2-week intensive design sprint with designers, researchers, and content designers working on high-visibility features across the Facebook apps and within MSGR.
I designed and executed multiple rounds of studies to evaluate the hypotheses developed in the design sprint and proposed product improvements for the design team to achieve short-term successes while working with leadership to pave the road for more resource intensive and long term improvements.
Impact:
Introducing a new navigation paradigm in the FB app that combines the existing navigation elements into a scalable navigation system.
The new navigation design based on the insights derived from my research accounted for a 10% increase in discovery and engagement with Community Chats, the Facebook App’s top priority feature at that time.
Contribution:
I represented research findings and acted as a catalyst for change, using insights rooted in understanding people's problems.
Driving change through intentional design.
Employing a flexible and effective research design approach that assessed users current understanding of the app through various navigation patterns.
