Facebook Product Design Internship

Role

Product Design Intern

Timeline

Summer 2022

12 weeks

Skills

Interaction Design

Product Thinking

Visual Design

User Research

Tools

Figma

Principle

Dscout

Origami

WHAT I WORKED ON

Unlocking new ways to foster deeper connections in Facebook Groups

The main goal of the Facebook Communities team is to create new ways for Facebook group members to share and interact with others. During my internship, I led a project that created a lightweight, low-barrier way for group members to break the ice and be part of a shared experience together. My internship was very cross-functional collaboration heavy and I worked very closely with engineering, user research, product management, and product strategy.

this work is under NDA.

If you’d like to learn more about my work in detail or overall experience at Meta, please shoot me an email :)

challenges & learnings

🏃🏽‍♀️ biasing toward action

When my team experienced a reorg, roadmap priorities changed and my intern project was shifting on an everyday basis. Working in a new ambiguous space, it felt paralyzing at times since everything seemed unclear.

However, one of my mentors Alex pushed me to just start designing, because mock ups and prototypes can create clarity for yourself and your team. You know how a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, a prototype is worth a hundred (literal) screens.

⚙️ thinking at a systems level

I developed a nuanced understanding of the mechanics of Instagram and Facebook features and how they operate across Meta’s ecosystem of apps.

By doing so, I proposed to leverage an existing feature in order to create a cohesive experience. Thinking at a systems level allowed me to adapt mental models while aligning with other similar teams.

🧭 leading east-west alignment

I led alignment for my product feature across the team and overall pillar. This consisted of communicating with XFN partners, conducting extensive background research, and ensuring that my project was aligned with other evolving work across all apps.

🌎 understanding the impact of every design decision

Designers are responsible for thinking about edge cases, scalability, and how features can be used in different environments or out of context (for better or for worse).

Especially at Facebook, I challenged myself to constantly think about different use cases and potential repercussions when it came to areas such as privacy and scaling the feature to different Facebook Group sizes and topics.

OVERALL,

This internship really pushed me to grow. My internship experience was a bit unconventional—my team went through a re-org and as a result, my intern project changed four times. However, this turned out to be a really great learning opportunity as it helped me uncover new strengths such as navigating ambiguity as well as honing in on existing ones such as being proactive and resourceful.

I learned how to not only be a better designer, but more importantly how to be a better product thinker and cross-functional partner. Overall, I am very proud of the work I accomplished during my 12 weeks at Meta.

#thanks

Despite a few bumps along the way, I could not be more grateful for the people who made my internship experience what it was. Thank you to my manager Kait for always cheering me along; to my mentors Jeff and Alex for pushing me to zoom out and think at a systems-level; to Emily for being the best office lunch buddy; and to my XFN partners for guiding me as I learned how to be a better collaborator and communicator.