@harlowandsage, they're amazing and ridiculous. — http://instagram.com/harlowandsage/

Honorable mention to @trotterpup, @winter and this one video of a pomeranian thinking he's swimming: http://instagram.com/p/oPjTqCyxNt/

Thanks, Matt! Glad to be here.

1.

Over time, our process has changed. For the longest time our team was very small and we had a series of products we wanted to ship. So everyone would focus on that.

Nowadays we have multiple parallel projects at the same time. We have a general roadmap of where we want to be in certain increments of time, but we're still intentional and agile in case we need to sway from that and focus on something specific.

When it comes to workflow, we start by making sure we have defined the correct problem and what questions come out of that. In all phases of the process, we're in conversation with Kevin, Mike, Peter etc. about which way to steer.

With these questions we will do very quick iterations sketching and white-boarding to make sure we are all on the same page. From there it's a lot of explorations; both static visuals and interaction (we use Quartz Composer and Framer for interactive prototyping) The whole process is aimed at honing in on the exact, focused product we want to ship.

From there on out we make a list of priorities of what would be the minimum viable product, which parts we would love to have when we launch, and which parts we think are too much for that version. And we're ruthless about cutting features.

2.

Our design team sits together. We're all very open to critique, even if someone just comes over to one of our desks and asks what something on the screen is. When there are strong opinions we discuss them, and try to resolve them in a rational way. Mostly with questions, suggestions and a whiteboard.

3.

Simplicity, sensibility towards engineers and learning from people who use your product.

There are a lot of beautiful products out there that could have been built possibly simpler and faster.

There is a lot of time wasted on getting everything exaaaactly right, where most of the time you're not even sure if many of the calls you make are correct.

It was definitely crazy. None of us were expecting that would happen. And obviously most of what was written was completely incorrect. I think for me it was a distraction for about two weeks.

After that, it was really fascinating to see how focused we were again. We had work to do, products to build, a community to support, and we just kept on doing that. Like nothing happened.

There's a general vision of where we want the product to go in multiple timeframes, and what themes are set around those timeframes; 6 months, a year etc.

From that, we break out what we can do in the next couple of months as a next step to attain that vision. Then, a lot of the design in it is actually trying to figure out what the problem is we are trying to solve, instead of designing a solution.

Once we figure this out, we lock in and have a ruthless focus on what we should ship within what timeframe.

We've gotten this feedback a lot. It's not a high priority right now, but we're always looking at improving the product. :)

Prioritisation and brand equity.

We're aware of it, but apart from sleeping better as a designer, there's not that much of a need there. We won't forget about it, though!

Haha, good questions!

1.

The transition has been pretty great. I was very reluctant at first to move across the world and leave my friends and family behind, but they have been nothing but extremely supportive. We try to stay in touch as best we can across a 9 hour timezone difference. This is hard at times. But the weather is great. SF has it's moody days, but that only happens 10-15% of the year.

2. There's some dutch foods that are hard or impossible to come by: real good shwarma, a 'kapsalon' or just a 'frikandel'. San Francisco has a plethora of great food places, it's kind of ridiculous. I virtually stopped cooking after moving here, because the average food in restaurants is so good and very well priced. And then there's the great restaurants. There are so many of them, it's ridiculous.

Haha! Awesome!

Yeah, Mt. Tam is definitely one of my favourites. If you're in SF or ever visiting; Mission Cheese is a go to.

1./2.

Before Instagram, I had been shooting with a DSLR since around 2004. The type of photography I was mainly focused on was performance related; live bands, DJs, parties etc.

Because of Instagram I started to look more at the world around me and try to find the interesting shots in everyday things. And from there I actually started intentionally going out more, to explore and take photos I wouldn't have taken otherwise.

3.

Two of the favourites I took: - This OS X looking umbrella: http://instagram.com/p/foD436h0Nd/ - This crazy light: http://instagram.com/p/bNTUnwB0Kw/

It's hard to point out a specific photo from others, but here are some photographers I enjoy a lot: @chrisconnolly, @danielkrieger, @danrubin, @davejohannes, @pketron and @throughthetinylens

1.

Being at Facebook specifically hasn't changed the way we work a lot. Facebook has been very helpful in growing our team, but we've had to deal with this growth. Instead of being a tiny team that can only focus on one project at the same time, we can now focus on multiple. But that also means we needed some process in place to handle these multiple projects.

2.

I still absolutely love the Netherlands, and I wouldn't mind being there from May until September — weather wise. When it comes to work, I think I would enjoy being in or around Amsterdam, as there are some talented people and interesting digital product design related things happening there.

Sometimes I miss it, but then I look at the weather report. ;)

One of our core tenets is to allow as much freedom to our community as possible, so we're okay with whatever they come up with.

From a design perspective, we see some problems that non-square photos bring, especially with white letterboxing in grids. But it's hard to design against that.

We don't have any plans to add any non-square formats or anything.

Multiple screens generally get done in what we call a 'Map' PSD. Some times all the layers are in the PSD, nowadays I try to put them in Linked Smart Objects. But that's still a process I'm transitioning in to.

Sadly there's little tools we have at our disposal now. I would love the ability to select a Layer Comp in a Linked Smart Object. Because that would allow you to have 1 PSD with all of your UI elements and different views into that PSD in your map file. :)

Ruthless prioritisation. It's on our radar and I hope we have some time to fix it soon!

Hey Laurie,

Thanks for reaching out!

We're working together heavily with the Facebook recruiting organisation for that. I expect us to start looking for interns in the next cycle. I'm not sure if we will look for interns specifically for Instagram or if one or more from Facebook will be allocated to us.

Hope that helps!

Hey Jenny,

Thanks!

1. @chrisconnolly, @danielkrieger, @danrubin, @pketron and @throughthetinylens (but there's way more...)

2. Depends on the project! For some of them, research is a part of the process from day one. Research might actually be the reason why we're doing the project, and we'll dig deeper with more research as we work on the problem.

When it comes to research studies for new products or features we're building, we try to get to a usable state as fast as possible and get people into the lab as early as we can. We have learned a lot about that in the past, especially when we were working on Photos of You and Video, and it's been invaluable.

Getting in touch with a solid research team has been one of the best parts of joining Facebook.

3. Yeap! Research is engrained in the design process.

4. We have an awesome research team at Facebook that we tap in to whenever we need any help, and we're building out our own team under the leadership of an awesome guy named Andy Warr. We're actually looking for a Qual Researcher now! https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=design&req=a0IA000000CzHP8MAN

5. The ones that have been really meaningful to me are @dguttenfelder in North Korea and @syriandeveloper in Syria. And then there's @sonyayu who can make just about any dog pose for her. And @robinmay who found her husband through Instagram. Oh, and @joselourenco who makes crazy (instagram themed) art.

A lot of our design process starts with what our goals are. From there we try to define what problems we see the need to solve to hit these goals. A lot of the design work that we do is discovering and defining these problems, so we can make sure that we're designing the right solutions.

When it comes to the amount of people that are involved, it differs. There's large and small projects. On matters of figuring it what direction we should go in; we have design reviews to decide those. Sometimes a lot of them, sometimes little. We have learned to be very flexible in this process.

Hey Ahmet,

Thanks!

Daily inspiration comes a lot from experimentation nowadays. I used to spend a lot of time scouring the internet, but a lot of digital product design is more about defining the problem and it's possible solutions. Once there is direction on potential solutions, you can do research for information in a very focused way.

Most exciting: Spent a week working from the Facebook office in NYC, got to know some of the awesome people there and got to enjoy the city thoroughly.

Least exciting: Meetings and e-mail. Definitely those.

Hey Jeff,

The amount of time a design takes can vary a lot. From a couple of weeks to a couple of months.

When we look at designing and building product there are three roles at work: Design, Engineering and Product Management. Some times one isn't needed as much, other times one is blocked by the other. And all of them give feedback to each other.

We have some very talented engineers with good sensibilities towards design that will hack a way a little just to show us what they would want to add and change. Which is a really awesome rapport to have.

A lot of our process is based on iteration. In many cases, the design process is more about discovering what the problem is we are trying to solve than actually coming up with the final product.