The London Dream — My Facebook Product Design Internship Story
I spent the summer of 2019 at Facebook’s London office as a Product Design Intern. Here’s how it happened.
The Diwali Night
8th November 2018, 1.03 AM — I was about to head to bed after an amazing Diwali. This Diwali was special since it was the first time in many years when everyone including me and my brother was at home for the festival of lights.
What made the occasion more special was a call I received that night. +44, the country code flashed on my mobile, and my heart skipped a beat. I knew it was from London, probably from my recruiter. I had been anxiously waiting for the decision for the last 3 weeks but had forgotten about it since it was the festive season. Now, the nerves were back again as I picked up the call.“Sorry to call you at this hour, just wanted to share the good news with you”—were the words on the other end. The nervousness soon turned into feelings of joy and disbelief.
Bare Beginnings
Taking the story further back in time, my Facebook journey started in January 2018 when I casually applied to one of its open design intern position through the careers page. I wasn’t expecting any reply since I was already very late for the Summer’18 internship process. Plus, it was Facebook. I mean, why would a company like Facebook even consider some self-taught designer from an engineering school in India when they have an option to pick the best brains from top design schools around the world. Right? Wrong. To my surprise, I heard back from a Facebook recruiter.
The recruiter mentioned that they only consider pre-final year students for the internships and I had still 2 years to graduate, but she mentioned that I should reach out in September when the roles for 2019 open. It was a bittersweet feeling — I was ecstatic about getting a response but I had to wait 8 months for the interview. I realised that this was actually a blessing in disguise since now I had ample time to prepare for this opportunity—an interview with the world’s biggest social network.
Over the summers, in addition to my Google Summer of Code project, I reworked my portfolio and in no time September was here.
The Interview Process
Facebook follows a fairly simple intern interview process:
- Recruiter’s Call — The recruiter talks about your design projects, past work experiences, and standard review questions.
- Portfolio Review — One hour VC interview with a design manager from Facebook. You need to present your favorite two projects.
- App Critique — One hour VC interview with a designer from Facebook. My interviewer picked the app for me, it was Medium.
Below are some really good articles available which touch upon the specifics of these interviews, so I am skipping that part.
The app critique and the portfolio review rounds are back to back, so it’s like a 2-hour interview. There was a small hiccup in the interview since the college internet snapped during one of the calls, but the interviewer was very considerate and proceeded normally with the interview.
Interesting Back Story — My interviews were scheduled just a day after Hack In Out 2018, a hackathon I was planning to attend for a long time. So I asked the hiring team to reschedule the interviews but they mentioned the next available dates are in December. I panicked that the positions might get filled by that time and proceeded with the original date. This was a risky decision since on the day of the interview I was severely sleep-deprived (due to the hackathon) and tired from traveling (the hackathon was in another city — 1700kms away)
But I guess it’s true that fortune favors the bold. After a few weeks of anxiously waiting, the Diwali call happened.
12 Weeks at Facebook
I worked in the Integrity org which helps to make Facebook a safe and inclusive community by minimizing bad experiences for people. Under the integrity vertical, I specifically worked on designing identity verification systems to ensure integrity in Facebook products.
Over the course of twelve weeks, I had a chance to work on two main projects — both revolving around the identity space. I managed to ship my first project on all platforms — Web, Android, and iOS, before the end of my internship. Getting a chance to ship your work to over 180+ countries was definitely one of the highlights for me.
The second project was equally exciting and I learned a lot about interaction design, prototyping, and product decisions (PS: Origami is awesome). The fact that it required significant engineering efforts meant that we couldn’t ship it during my time there. But we still managed to do some user research and the prospects looked exciting!
In addition to this, I worked on a few side projects (posters, stickers, logos, etc.) to take a break from my main projects and I thoroughly enjoyed them.
Time Away from Desk
A lot is going on in the company during the week — talks, workshops, offsites, socials, etc. and sometimes it’s really difficult to prioritize stuff. But I tried my best to gain new experiences and join these events whenever possible (even if it meant working late on a few days ;))
Facebook Open Arts— The In-house Art Studio was one of my favourite things about the Facebook culture and I tried to attend one workshop every week!
My Saturdays and Sundays were strictly reserved for two things — catching up on sleep on one day and visiting parts of the UK on the other one.
And in addition to these, there were tons of intern events planned — London Bus Tour, Thames Boat Trip, Escape Rooms, Lion King Musical. Shout out to the team for putting in so much effort and making it a memorable experience for the interns.
Takeaways
There were quite a few takeaways for me from this internship:
1. Understand the Constraints
The first project I worked on was to redesign an existing experience, and I immediately jumped on to designing the new screens. Soon I realised that it’s really important to understand the constraints and intentionality behind the current design before you start coming up with a redesign solution.
There’s a reason why something is designed in a certain way.
I learned this lesson the hard way. So if you’re working on redesigning something, set up a time to chat with the person who designed it in the first place to discuss why are things a certain way.
2. You’re not an “Intern”
At Facebook as an intern, you’re treated as a full-time employee. What this means is that everyone trusts you 100% in the product areas that you own. This was a bit surprising for me since I was expecting someone to take a call on the major decisions like–Where and How should we ship? But here I was given autonomy since I owned that area.
3. Communication over Assumptions
In a company of this size, I learned how important communication can be. With tons of partners and projects, it’s easy to lose track of the current state. So you must keep everyone on the same page with explicit communication (even if it means spamming ;)) rather than assuming that the other person is already aware of it. This helps to avoid confusion in the future and helps to collaborate better.
4. Try to Ship Projects
I suggest this for two reasons. One, as a designer, you can’t put the project into your public portfolio unless it has been launched because of the NDA. Two, when you try to ship something, you learn a lot of stuff like planning experiments and launches, communicating the designs to engineers, dealing with legal and privacy teams, etc.
So it’s a good opportunity to improve your product skills and learn a lot of real-world wisdom, and in bonus, you get a project for your portfolio.
5. There’s always room for improvement
I learned not to take anything for granted or “already designed”. For example — In the first project, we were using a list view to outline a process and I didn’t think that it could be improved, instead, I was focussing on the bigger details. Later on, my manager suggested me to critically analyze the small details in the flow as well. As a result, we ended up using illustrations in the list view to make comprehension easier.
Even company-wide, I identified a few opportunities where the day-to-day experience could be improved. I learned the importance of being curious and tried to suggest changes to improve the experience for people (these ideas make up cool side projects!)
Regrets
Since the time was limited I couldn’t wind up all the stuff I had planned.
- Meeting more designers outside my org: Facebook has one of the best design cultures in the world and it was a golden opportunity to meet and learn from the best. But I couldn’t take out time for meeting designers outside my org. :(
- Shipping Other Projects: There were parts of the second project which I could have shipped before my internship ended if I wasn’t slacking.
- Traveling More: I wanted to travel more in the UK but just couldn’t gather enough courage to travel solo. As a result, I had to skip a few places and spend some weekends in my bed :(
Closing Notes
During the entire course of 12 weeks, there wasn’t a single day when I was stressed about the internship. I focused on having fun and doing the best work I could without thinking about the results. Thanks to Dhvanil’s advice — Just have fun. That’s all that matters.
I had an unforgettable summer and without a doubt, it was one of the best learning periods for me. When I look back, the entire experience feels like a dream. I made friends for life, met so many amazing mentors, and did some design work that I am proud of!
This wouldn’t be possible without all the amazing folks who I met in person as well as through the internet. Thank you so much! (This article will double down in length if I start mentioning everyone who helped me, sorry :(
In case this inspired you and you are interested in designing stuff for 2.8B people, do consider applying to Facebook :)
Till next time 👋
