Facebook News
Prototyping a dedicated home for trusted journalism inside the Facebook app, the interactive models we used for design feedback and shared with publishers and Meta leads.
Overview
Facebook News was a dedicated place for news in the Facebook app, a mix of stories chosen by a team of journalists and personalised selections tailored to each person's interests. Building it meant getting the experience right long before a line of production code.
I created the interactive prototypes the team used to pressure-test the design, the models we reviewed internally, walked through with Meta leads, and put in front of publishers to gather feedback on how their journalism would look and feel inside the product.
The surfaces we prototyped
A front page of the day's most newsworthy stories, chosen by a team of journalists.
Selections tailored to what each person reads and follows, surfaced alongside the curated set.
Dive deeper into business, entertainment, health, science & tech, and sports.
Subscriptions carried over, plus controls to hide articles, topics and publishers.
Prototypes as the conversation
A tab this consequential, for readers, for publishers, and for the newsroom relationships behind it, couldn't be decided from static screens. The prototypes made the interaction real: how Today's Stories read, how personalisation sat next to curation, how controls felt in the hand.
Those working models became the shared artefact, the thing design reviewed against, leads signed off on, and publishers responded to.
From a US test to international rollout
What began as a test with a subset of people in the US grew into Facebook's first international investment in news. In January 2021 it started rolling out across the UK, featuring hundreds of national, local and lifestyle outlets, from the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Sky News and Channel 4 News to local sites and titles like GQ and Vogue, with France and Germany next.
The prototypes were the artefact that carried the experience into every one of those publisher conversations.
There's more inside
The prototype walkthrough is protected. Enter the access code to watch it.
Inside the prototype
A walkthrough of the News prototype.