Facebook communities design systems

  • Platform: mobile and web

  • Role: Design lead

  • Year: 2020

People join communities like Groups, Profiles, and Events to connect with others and find a sense of belonging. These core community design patterns makes these products easier to use and for product teams to build upon.

Communities redesign

I led a usability-focused redesign of Groups, Profile, and Events Home. I worked with each product team that had it’s own list of primary user needs and actions they prioritized. The challenge of this project was creating designs that would work across these different communities.

Breaking down common components

During the first stage, my team focused on abstracting each component of the communities header. The pieces were: navigation, visual photo, name and privacy, action bar, and subnavigation.

Groups

Join and participate in a meaningful community.

Events

Find something interesting to do with family and friends.

Profile

Connect with family and friends or followers.

Make it clear to the user what’s next

I designed the action bar to show the user how they’re connected to the community and then when they’re connected, show what they can do next.

Group posts on News Feed

Redesign the post header to showcase community content in News Feed.

Evaluating trust and safety

I proactively used realistic content to stress-test how the post headers would look if posted by a bad actor impersonating a public figure. These design matrices helped us have deep conversations with our integrity teams.

Highlighting community

I explored visual treatments to de-emphasize the friends and family nature of the post and put more focus on the group the post came from.

Related Discussions

Groups can foster rich discussions around specific topics. We wanted to explore how to enable deeper dives into a particular topic or discussion around a link, and help users chain their discovery on topics like cooking, parenting, or outdoor sports. I was the lead designer on this project.

See press announcement from Facebook Communities Keynote Summit.