Thoughts on how WhatsApp and Facebook design at scale
I’ve been a product designer at Facebook close to four years. I’ve worked on a variety of teams such as Groups, Sharing, and Privacy. At this time last year, I got an exciting opportunity to begin work on WhatsApp.
Going in, I knew designing for WhatsApp was going to be a significantly different experience than designing for Facebook. It’s been more eye-opening than I expected and taught me to approach problems and my work from different angles than I’d previously considered.
I’ve learned a lot over the past year and want to share what I’ve observed designing for WhatsApp and Facebook.
Strong principles
WhatsApp designs and builds its product with specific principles in mind. These principles are at the core of the decision-making process. Here are some examples of these shared values:
- The interface should feel native to the device the person is using
- The app should be lightweight and require as little storage as possible
- The interface should be simple
- User actions and animations should be quick to respond
- Features should provide obvious utility so they require little introduction
