Design Process at Facebook
August 27th, 2009 by
Russell Wilson
Caught this writeup from Luke Wroblewski on how Facebook designs their software. Key takeaways for me:
- design team delivers front-end code
- share early and often; design is involved start to finish
- design team size = 25 (out of 1000 employees)
- design is iterative – know from the start that your designs are “experiments” (my words) and may/will change
See the whole article here.
Design Process at Facebook: Caught this writeup from Luke Wroblewski on how Facebook designs their software. Key.. http://awe.sm/1Hnz
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
the design proccess at facebook, http://bit.ly/1383XS
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Hey Russ, what do you think of the "design team delivers code" model? We just moved our designy coders to the dev teams where they aren't so isolated and matrixed and are trying to focus on interaction design in the core (and matrixed) design team, delivering light mockups only during up front feature work, then partnering again with their former buddies when it's time to build.
Jay, I have had a lot of success with the "design team delivers code" model and I really think it makes sense. Some of the challenges of course are managing joint schedules and deliverables, but it has solved many of the problems designers face such as getting specs correctly implemented and gaining buy-in/camaraderie with dev.
With your design coders in dev, has their been any impact to synergy with the design team or no? I assume the design coders no longer report to the design manager correct? That would concern me…
Seeing how big and popular Facebook is, I am a bit amazed that the design is so basic after all. The esthetics and the formula of it actually is rather simple, which is surprising considering they should have so much to work with.
Hi Russ,
It’s been a while, just came across this post. A number of years ago I consulted with Getty Images and in their process they had a design team that did “wire-frames”, essentially the structure of their sites and the process flows. Sufficient so they could do UI testing while their hard-core coders got on with the body of the work. Take it easy,Salina