I decided to share my work from Instagram through three themes that stuck with me: Advocate, Delight, and Volunteer.
SEPT ‘22—SEPT ‘25. This post is part reflection, part advice (for whoever ends up in this corner of the internet) and and a look at some things I built along the way. At times, it might read like a solo story (it is my site, after all), but the work was always deeply collaborative. Big love to my XFN partners at IG.
Advocate
My product thinking leveled up at Instagram thanks to the rare setup of working on a small team and being tasked with pursuing novel 0–1 ideas with “angle-changing” potential (IG speak for meaningfully positive behavior change). I was lucky to have a team that made space to engage deeply with each other’s ideas through weekly product syncs and I got to be in tight, focused working sessions with a PM or an engineer often.
We did this for all phases of an idea, not just getting together for the initial brainstorming, but through prototyping, dogfooding, design explorations, and even after a launch. We debated everything from first principles and built a culture around strong opinions (not just welcomed, but required). But those opinions were loosely held, which meant you weren’t advocating from ego, you were advocating for the best idea to win. That made everyone think sharper, listen harder, and push each other and each idea to great lengths.
[SOMETIMES THAT MEANT BEATING AN IDEA TO DEATH]
[SOMETIMES IT MEANT ITERATING AND SHIFTING DIRECTION]
Group Mentions came out of an idea that was originally centered around events. After many product discussions and a full rework, we landed on something the team had real conviction in. Although at the end, Group Mentions didn’t ship (it just didn’t move the big numbers IG cares about), it was the most positively liked and well received Stories feature in Adam Mosseri’s Broadcast channel, still to this day. Wish I could’ve done more to get that one out the door.
Coverage from a Test Country ↗
One idea that did ship through a winding, iterative path was Add Your Music. The project started as an interactive sticker that let users rank their top 3 songs, creators, or opinions. But early prototyping and product discussions made it clear that it was too much friction. We simplified it to just a one thing, which helped usability but blurred the value and it was now unclear how this was different from what already existed. We layered on new mechanics, but it still didn’t feel right.
In one long conversation in a product discussion, we shifted the direction entirely. We narrowed the focus to music and leaned into sharing your favorite song of the day, and finding out your friends’ top tunes. That led to Add Your Music. It ended up launching as one of the lightweight, expressive sharing options for Stories in one of IGs’ sticker drops’ as the hero sticker.
[SOMETIMES IT MEANT BEATING AN IDEA INTO SHAPE]
Quicksnap started as one of many camera concepts we explored in our team, and through prototyping and constant dogfooding, it evolved into something special because we were relentlessly advocating for our teen users as we shaped the experience designing with their creative habits in mind.
Quicksnap isn’t fully launched just yet, so for now I’m going to show my work through a few articles and screenshots from the public test countries. The final product combined a unique no post-cap creation flow, lightweight consumption, a simple interaction model, archive and recap features, and dozens of tiny touches like animations, haptics, and the occasional easter egg. Every part of it was pushed into existence by design work, team trust, and a whole lot of advocating when it would’ve been easier to move on.
[SOMETIMES IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING YOUR IDEA ALIVE]
You have to advocate for your work in so many different forums, to so many different people, especially when the leadership isn’t convinced. I have far too many stories of doing this, or ignoring to do this, but I’ll spare those for now.
One of my favorite things I added into the app came from pushing hard for a tiny feature with no data story. We made @mention reshares full-bleed by adding a single line of attribution. Nothing headline-worthy, but it cleaned up a cluttered UI. It stalled in testing without a clear metric win, so I rallied the team to pull user sentiment (inc. Reddit and X screenshots) and we reframed it as a craft win to get it shipped. This process of back and forth unfortunately took months.
Delight
[TAKE SILLINESS SERIOUSLY]
I’ve seen firsthand how much users love surprise and discovery, and it’s one of my favorite things to sneak into every feature I work on. Just enough magic to make people smile or pause. More on those projects when they launch.
Still, Emoji Pong is the best example I can give. It started as a silly idea that I quickly prototyped and posted in the biggest IG channel I could find, just to see if it got others excited. It did. Within that week, we had a working iOS prototype (which was a game of pong triggered by tapping an emoji in DMs). Another week later, it was live on Android too. The joy it sparked internally made it easy to rally engineers who were excited to build it. And then we just put it out there, no marketing, no announcement. It went viral.
Overall these types of delight features become brand sentiment for the app. In the case of Emoji Pong, it helped blur the lines between communication and entertainment during chat pauses. It even got highlighted in press events;) I prototyped and shared a few other games that never shipped, but honestly, that wasn’t always the point. Sometimes you make a thing just to get people excited, open up a new direction, or remind the team that play has a place in the product too.
Volunteer
[JUMP IN WHENEVER YOU CAN. RAISE YOUR HAND (a lot)]
During my ~3 years at Instagram, I jumped into nearly 20 (!!) design sprints across the org. I also gave over a dozen lightning talks covering everything from product lessons to team insights to a few offbeat topics (for onboarding, IG Design Summit, or anywhere it helped to hear directly from someone deep in the work.
I stepped into these moments because I wanted to, not because I had to. Volunteering like this was a way to spread energy and spark ideas. The design sprints especially reminded me I’m good at rapid idea generation and imagining paths others might not. I leaned into that and some of my ideas made it onto roadmaps of other teams, shaping real product.
I also volunteered for special moments that helped make Instagram feel fresh and culturally relevant through limited-time product features. These were often fast, scrappy efforts run by a small crew in need of help from product designers and engineers. I’ve been able to get out a handful of fun, high-energy ideas through these, like this Back to School activation↗
Shadow Side
[A FEW HONEST FOOTNOTES ON THE THEMES ABOVE]
#Advocate
Because our team was so collaborative and engineers were deeply involved in product thinking, I had to remind myself that some decisions are design decisions, and not design by committee.
#Delight
Emoji Pong’s success spun up a whole games initiative on Instagram, but the magic wasn’t the game itself, it was that it came from play. It’s easy to try and copy the outcome instead of cultivating the curiosity and freedom that led to it.
#Volunteer
Jumping into everything can stretch you thin, especially when you're raising your hand too often while still juggling your actual work.
Wanna know what it’s like to design at Instagram? Scroll to the bottom of this page↗