The Facebook Feedback and Reporting Experience project was an ambitious initiative aimed at improving the online environment for over 2 billion global users across Facebook and its associated products. The primary design challenge was to develop a system that not only gathers user feedback to train machine learning classifiers for proactive content violation detection but also streamlines the reporting process, making it efficient for users to report undesirable content and behavior. This system had to be scalable across various Facebook products, adaptable to unique user problems, globally applicable to diverse reporting personas, and user-friendly. The project, led by a senior product designer, included a team comprising a UX researcher, a content strategist, and five engineers. Beginning in 2018, the project involved designing, prototyping, and user-testing to differentiate between feedback and reporting, followed by quantitative testing and iterative design improvements. The successful implementation of this project led to its expansion across over 160 surfaces within the Facebook ecosystem, including Oculus, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
The design process for the Facebook Feedback and Reporting Experience was meticulously structured and executed, following the principles of the Double Diamond methodology. The journey began with crafting a Northstar vision, crucial for securing leadership buy-in. This vision was brought to life through UI designs and user flows created in Sketch, coupled with interactive prototypes built in Principle for user testing. The focus during this phase was on gathering qualitative feedback to refine the system. Emphasizing an iterative design approach, the team used the feedback and data collected to make continuous improvements. Small-scale experiments were conducted to validate hypotheses with quantitative data, ensuring that each element of the Northstar vision effectively supported the underlying assumptions without adversely impacting other metrics. A critical aspect of this phase was to differentiate between feedback and reporting, a challenge that was addressed through user-testing. The success of these initial stages enabled the scaling of the product across all Facebook platforms, ensuring consistent user experience on over 160 surfaces, including Oculus, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Acting as a product evangelist, the project lead also played a pivotal role in educating other teams about the value and functionality of the new system.
The final design solution of the Facebook Feedback and Reporting Experience emerged as a holistic, user-friendly system enabling easy submission of feedback and reports of negative experiences or behavior across all Facebook's core and owned products. This solution now supports a global user base exceeding 3 billion people. Its impact on the target audience has been significant, with ongoing improvements and pivots based on user feedback and foundational research. A key measure of success for this project was the reduction in the prevalence of content that violates Facebook's Community Standards. Through iterative design and experimentation, the team achieved notable reductions in policy-violating content categories, particularly in areas such as nudity, violence, and hate speech. This journey underscored the importance of patience, testing, and iterative approaches in building solutions for a diverse, global user base. The project not only achieved its goals but also contributed to the growth and development of the design lead, reinforcing the effectiveness of a proper design process and methodologies in tackling large-scale, ambiguous problems. The learnings and achievements from this project are expected to have lasting implications on future design projects, setting a precedent for addressing complex challenges in digital platform management.
