2025Messenger
Is Meta’s standalone messaging platform, enabling over a billion users to chat, call, and share media across devices. Beyond 1:1 messaging, it supports group chats, video calls, stickers, voice notes, reactions, and app integrations. With end-to-end encryption and cross-app communication with Instagram, Messenger aims to make conversations seamless, expressive, and secure—whether you’re chatting with friends or engaging with businesses.
Messenger.com Meta
Sr Product Designer
Prototyping
UX, UI
Problem
Sharing FB content could be easier and intuitive when wanting to send to frequently contacted friends. we want to reduce steps users need to take to select contacts and share content on their feed on Messenger.
Audience
Facebook and Messenger users.
01.New components.
There were extensive discussions around how we educate users on the drag-and-drop functionality, including the components we’d use for guidance and feedback. We also explored how to visually display the content once it’s dragged, and how to clearly highlight valid drop targets—similar to the experience in Messenger.
New components inculde:
- Education hover tool tips
- Education modals
- Dragged content mimimused & focused mimumised
- Chat drop target
02.Education.
A two-pronged approach to user education was chosen. First, a modal would introduce the feature upfront. Second, a more subtle discovery method was implemented—when a user hovers over content in their feed for 5 seconds, the item would slightly jiggle, dim the surrounding content, and trigger a tooltip with messaging to encourage them to drag and drop the content to share with friends.
03.Exploration of
interaction.
After discussions between design, product and engineering, we agreed that it was technically more efficient to remove the ‘undo send’ option. Instead, shared content would automatically open in a collapsed chat window. This approach streamlined the flow while preventing users from accidentally sharing content with the wrong person immediately.
04.Sharing between
message windows
We also considered other ways users might share content. One key opportunity was enabling drag-and-drop from chat box to chat box. Another was allowing users to share AI-generated content—such as images created with Meta AI—directly with friends.