ROLE
Product Design Intern

TOOLS
Sketch
Origami

WHEN
May 2019

DURATION
3 months

During the summer of 2019, I was a Product Design Intern with Facebook Messenger’s Real-Time Communication team— the team that creates the Messenger video calling experience.

My main project was to rethink how the Capture button could function within a Messenger video call. Instead of just being a way for people to screenshot their call, how could Messenger expand the Capture button’s capabilities to be more interesting, customizable, or fun?

I began my project by understanding what the current Capture feature did, which involved a lot of video calling and capturing… with myself.

I found that the current experience felt a bit obtrusive with the persistent thumbnail and floating buttons. The options to delete, capture a new Snapshot, or send the Snapshot to the chat thread also seemed limiting and boring. After pinpointing these downfalls, I conducted some competitor analysis by taking a look at what other apps with video calling features or screenshotting features were doing, like Snapchat, Facetime, and Instagram.

I explored many different product flows and ideas, which I showed in Design Critiques to Product Designers within my team and from other Messenger teams. Their feedback helped me narrow down the scope of my project and cut some parts that were complicating the design.

After many iterations, I finally had a flow that I felt confident in, but I wanted to get signal about my designs from people outside of Facebook. I decided to put my designs through User Research, so I created mock ups and functioning prototypes for real Facebook Messenger video callers to try out. Their reactions, comments, and ideas supported some of my design decisions, but also questioned them. The participants identify ways that helped me further dig into ideas I had previously let go.

My experience with my project, team, new friends, and Facebook as a whole has been unforgettable. I am very thankful for my amazing manager and supportive team!