Facebook Messenger
I was an art director for Facebook Messenger on their stories feature. Our goal was to grow user engagement by giving people creative ways to express themselves. We wanted them to share more stories so we gave them artistic tools for posting. With this feature, users could add art, photo frames and stickers to their Messenger photos. This was at the beginning of Messenger’s inroads into stories.
Client
Facebook
Roles
Art Direction, Ideation, Illustration
Phase 1: Global launch
For the launch, we needed to serve up content to people in over 20 different languages. Each user needed to feel like they had content relevant to them. To do this we used a combination of existing sticker art and Google fonts. The Google fonts were easily translatable and varied. This strategy allowed us to rapidly generate hundreds of unique photo frames.
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English and Hungarian translations of sticker art
Phase 2: Evergreens
Holidays and life events are key times for people to share photos. With timely art, we could encourage people to post to friends & family. Even small things with the right art, can help turn something mundane into something special. I helped art direct a team of artists to create the content.
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Holidays
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Voting / politics
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Family
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Comic book effects
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Travel
Phase 3: Programmatic frames and animation
We wanted to serve up content that felt even more relevant to each user. Staying up all night? Now you can post the time stamp on your stories. Want to share you're at an amazing spot? We created a frame to announce your location. By employing the user’s immediate circumstances (like time, weather and location), we could pre-populate programmatic frames with that information.
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Location
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Weather and time
Animated text & reactive animation
Animated content was posted in far greater numbers. We also knew that people loved adding text to their photos. Animated text was a natural fit. For reactive animation, we had a simple particle generator. The photo frames that would alter and move the animation when users moved their phone.
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Reactive particle animation
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Animated text stickers for photos
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Conclusion
During this period Messenger and the Facebook app were both exploring story features. We gave people the tools to be creative. Inspiring them to express themselves and expose them to the possibilities. In the end, this was a stepping stone to user generated content. We got people started and now they could create their own. This was also a key way to scale the feature.
Credits
This work was art directed by me and executed by team artists: Tina Lei, Kyna Diggs, Abi Munoz, Travis Kotzebue, Peter Bacallao and Christine Herrin