I attended a presentation given by Ben Blumenfeld, the communication design manager for Facebook, at the AIGA Conference today. As a Facebook addict myself, getting an inside perspective on how the Facebook design team approaches problems and ideas, was very insightful to me.

Blumenfeld talked about 3 main points when approaching design:

1. Ship and Iterate

When Blumenfeld’s design team is given a design problem to solve, their approach is to come up with an idea and execute it right away as opposed to drafting it over and over to perfection before launching it. He says that if it fails, they will fix it and try again. But if they don’t ship, then they will never know if it will be a failure or a success. They don’t discuss it until they are blue in the face. They go right to work on it.

My key takeaway here is that they don’t waste time talking about it.  You can talk about something until you’re blue in the face. But until you build it and ship it so others can use it, you won’t know if your theory will really work. So what would the point of the theory be if it’s not implemented?  It’s just theory.

That explains why I log into Facebook one day and see some new features, then the next day, the features are gone.

2. Leverage by using existing tools for greater reach

The newsfeed, groups, fan pages, and the translation tool are a few examples that are being leveraged.

Blumenfeld gives the example of a guy (who’s name escapes me) who was completely against FARC (the revolutionary forces of Columbia) and what they stood for. So, one night, he went online and created a Facebook group which represented his feelings towards FARC.

By morning,  150,000 people had joined that group, and the numbers continued to grow. Eventually, the group members asked him what they should all do now? This guy had unexpectedly and single handedly gathered hundreds of thousands of like minded people from all over the world in a short period of time, just by creating a Facebook group one night online, and which probably took him no longer than a few minutes to create. How amazing is that?

He since organized protests against FARC in different parts of the world to which hundreds of thousands of people showed up for.

It’s incredible that one Facebook group could draw in so many people globally. Talk about leveraging a tool to success!

3. Be data informed

Blumenfeld’s  team approaches design in many ways, including that of their own gut feelings. When their gut tells them that an idea will work, they go for it, build it, then take the risk and put it out there for the public to use.  Then the observe the numbers, the clicks, the results, and modify it from that data. Again, if they talked about it and didn’t execute, they wouldn’t move forward.

This guy’s presentation rocked. He was down to earth, no arrogance, no ego… just completely himself, and the love for his work and the company shined through.