Surfacing Stories on Messenger
Messenger Rooms launched as people began looking for an alternative to Zoom, which faced a number of security and privacy issues at the time. When the problem was identified we quickly jumped into action by forming a cross functional team to determine what and how quickly we could accomplish an updated way for individuals to connect.
We identified a potential stop-gap that would allow users to consume Stories content higher upstream by combining the active and stories tabs.
The Process Behind the Work
A group of designers, developers, researchers and product managers met for a five day kickoff to better understand the current space. Here is the outline for our kickoff and how we approached the problem.
Understanding Context- The first day is focused on establishing context in which the project will exist, understanding the space and customers as well as understanding the unique perspective of each stakeholder.
Determining User, Scope and Priority- Now that we had the proper context and information from the group as a whole, as well as each stakeholder, the next step was focusing on the specifics of the project – defining the problem, the user, determining scope, feature set, timeline and deliverables.
Solution Exploration- Now that we have the proper context and better understand the problem and project, the next step was to understand any existing design guidelines or preferences. This included Lightning Demos and Individual Sketching.
After a full day of prototyping we met with potential users and had them test and explore the prototypes.
We identified a potential stop-gap that would allow users to consume Stories content higher upstream by combining the active and stories tabs.
Conclusion
As a designer in this project my role was to actively participate in the kickoff as well as lead sections of the meeting. Working with two other designers we spent a full day prototyping and joined our researchers in the user sessions to learn more.
After the kickoff and consolidated findings we broke out our work and I was tasked with the XML cards and join button. This was a really fun project that allowed us to work with a large range of individuals to ensure we are creating a product they will love using.
Working with a strong product management team meant we had to be precise in our planning and estimating as we needed to make sure our velocity remained on track for a quick turn around.
