The Opportunity
Users weren't discovering shared experiences (games, watch parties, AR effects) during Messenger video calls. I designed entry points to increase feature awareness and engagement.
Impact
Launched December 2022 to 100+ million users in Vietnam and Thailand (6% rollout), with ongoing global expansion.
My Role
UX Content Designer who expanded into Product Design after November layoffs, shipping the first public release in December 2022 under tight deadlines.
My Impact
Identified critical gaps in user flows that the team had missed
Partnered with User Research to redesign an entry point within Design System constraints
Adapted content strategy to shifting engineering priorities in real-time
Clarified terminology for localization teams
Participated in pre-mortem sessions and internal dogfooding tests
Designed scalable content that addressed edge cases
THE OPPORTUNITY
Video calls are longer and more frequent
User research revealed that shared activities during video calls:
Provide conversation topics
Increase call length and engagement
Reduce face-to-face interaction pressure
Ease anxiety around unstructured time
My analysis discovered gaps in the product flows
I met with the Product Designer to align on context, then independently analyzed the flows to understand the problem space.
“Jen set herself up for success from the beginning by asking me to walk her through the (Disco) flows. Throughout our sync, she asked thoughtful questions around the user problems the project addresses, historical context surrounding the Watch Together and Group Effects flows, and how best to collaborate with me in and outside of the Figma file. Because she nailed her onboarding really early on in our partnership, she was able to confidently go about duplicating mocks and effectively communicate and iterate on her designs even in real time.” — Maxine Kho, Product Designer at Meta
My fresh eyes caught issues the team had missed, leading to quick fixes that improved the user journey.
“Jen identified glaring gaps in the product flows. She surfaced an inconsistency between the "Leave game" CTA on a call screen mockup and the "End game for everyone?" header on the confirmation dialog to Grace, the Product Designer on the Play Together team, which resulted in the inclusion of both "End game" and "Leave game" as possible actions users can take while playing a game on a call.” — Maxine Kho, Product Designer at Meta
“Jen challenged existing designs and provoked healthy conversation around the broader content framework for Disco, lending her vision to the success of the larger work stream beyond the scope of her work.” - Maxine Kho, Product Designer at Meta
“Asked for feedback early and often. Jen readily looped in various XFN (cross-functional partners) to her work and made sure that she's taken into consideration a more well-rounded point of view on her designs. To gain context more broadly, Jen participates in pre-mortem discussions with Engineering, Product Management, and Data Science partners where we spot risks to launch and identify respective mitigations. From these conversations, Jen takes action items with quick turnarounds of 0-1 days, enabling our team to quickly iterate on designs in time for public testing.” — Maxine Kho, Product Designer at Meta
Collaborative Problem-Solving
I identified and mitigated risks through cross-functional pre-mortems and caught critical issues during internal testing sessions. I quickly resolved content and flow problems as they emerged, ensuring a smooth launch.
MY PROCESS
USER RESEARCH FEEDBACK
Entry Point Redesign
User research revealed confusion about the circular icons at the top of the page and their relationship to calls. I explored several solutions, then met with the User Researcher and Product Designer to align on the strongest approach that addressed the feedback.
I prototyped the solution and presented it to engineering and the product manager. The team approved the changes.
The Challenge
Sudden layoffs eliminated our design team and managers, but engineering deadlines remained unchanged. As the sole remaining designer, I partnered with engineers to solve unaddressed edge cases.
The product required users to update Messenger to access new shared features. Ideally, users would tap an image or button to trigger the update—but engineering constraints made this impossible.
Establishing Constraints
I met with the Software Engineer to identify technical limitations:
Tapping to trigger update dialogs: not supported
Graying out the XMA (cross-platform messaging attachment): not supported
Limited platform availability: The solution needed to work for co-watch (Android and iOS) and AR (Android only), plus the desktop app—neither AR nor desktop were currently supported
Determining Content
I searched Meta's string management system for content used in similar scenarios across projects, compiled a list, and tested multiple options.
Solution
After testing variations in design mockups, I selected the user flow and content that worked within engineering constraints, met all requirements, and explained the situation clearly and simply.
EDGE CASE WORK WITH ENGINEERING
My Software Engineer peer gave me a positive review after it was shipped.
I worked with Jen on calls tab disco project this half:
”Very responsive on the content requests: Throughout the calls tab disco collaborations, the engineering team has had a lot of content requests which Jen was very responsive and delivered high quality content.”
”Valuable opinions when lacking UX designer: After our UX designer was no longer with the company, I worked with Jen directly on a few content/UX decisions. Although some of them were ambiguous, Jen stepped up and got great context outside of our team in order to form an optimized UX decisions.” -Ying He, Software Engineer at Meta.
I wrote modular content that works across contexts and accommodates future features.
This is the ideal “updated” XMA people will see.
This is the Android version,
not yet supported.
This is the iOS version,
requesting an app update.
COLLABORATING WITH TRANSLATORS
I worked with internationalization and translation teams to resolve ambiguities in copy. When translators flagged the header "Watch" in shared experiences—unsure if it meant the verb (action) or noun (timepiece)—I clarified the definition in Meta's String Manager system. This documentation now guides future translations of the product.
NEXT STEPS
We shipped the entry points to 100+ million Messenger users in early December 2022, with continued rollout planned throughout 2023.