UX Facebook Design Jam 2019

As an Interactive Design student that is currently on a UX placement in Kainos I was thrilled when I received an invitation to Facebook's annual Design Jam! It is an invite-only event set up for university students in the UX field and takes place in Facebook's HQ in London.

We got to work alongside the Facebook Design team all day, getting expert guidance as we helped design solutions to real problems. Here's how the day went!

The full day consisted of:

• Introduction to Facebook
• Quickfire Tasks
• Q&A panel with Facebook Design team
• Lunch
• Grouped design Task
• Task Presentations
• Social (with drinks!)

What happened on the day!

We started off the day with a talk from a Facebook Product Designer about what Facebook are working on at the moment, with mention of their new portal device (video chatting technology) and new possible updates to Facebook. From there we got to each take part in three 20-minute quick-fire tasks that had us come up with solutions for Content Design, UX Design and User Research problems.

After that we got to listen to a panel Q&A with nine different designers all from Facebook - we were able to hear their thoughts and opinions on different topics ranging from data transparency to what could be possible with future technologies. This was really interesting as each person had a different side to the argument depending on their role. They also gave out a lot of advice for people starting out in the industry and one piece of advice that I will definitely take onboard is a quote from one of the UX Designers:

As a UX Designer your job is never done, there are always changes that can be made to improve that users experience'.

After lunch we got put into groups, were given a fake app/user persona and we were given this design brief:

How might we design an experience that provides better control and transparency for their data within your given app?

We were given an event booking app, and we had to come up with ways to show our persona (an older gentleman who was afraid of apps saving his data) that the app would work better with his data saved and it wasn't all scary! We came up with an idea of having a 'data blackout' toggle that would remove all of his data on the app to show him how much less efficient it would be, as well as having a little information button at the top of every post to show what data is used and why.

We then presented our ideas back to everyone as a group and went for drinks with the rest of the design students and Facebook team. Overall it was such a great experience, and I was so privileged to have been able to attend.