@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.

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. :)

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.

Hey Cindy, That's alright!

We don't have direct plans for any functionality like this.

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.

Hey Armand, Thanks for having me!

1.

We're very flexible. When it comes to the type of work we do, our teams still sit together; designers sit with designers, iOS with iOS, Android, Web, Infrastructure etc.

Apart from the type of work we do, we try to get our product teams together. So if you're working on a specific part of the product — like Direct — we have areas of the office that can be used just to focus on that. A combination of PM, Design, and Engineers will sit together for a (part of the) day to keep focus, but might split off again to do their own tasks.

2.

I think it was before I joined that I had the sense it was going to be pretty big. I actually joined the product in the first hour after they launched, and have used it pretty heavily since.

The one moment that it really sunk in was the first time I saw someone at a concert take a photo with Instagram. And I looked at my former colleagues' — Jessica and Greg — faces and just couldn't stop smiling.

3.

Some photographers I enjoy a lot: @chrisconnolly, @danielkrieger, @danrubin, @davejohannes, @jayzombie, @moneal, @pketron and @throughthetinylens and then there are some awesome animal accounts like: @harlowandsage, @trotterpup, @winter, @ventusthecorgi etc.

1.

Possibly. I think the Netherlands is a great country, and it's been very fascinating to see the tech- and digital product design industry grow there in the last couple of years.

But there's still a lot of conservative thought when it comes to digital, and a lot of naysaying. And that's not an environment I want to be in right now.

And then there are two other reasons I love living in the Bay Area: 1. the insane amount of talented people out here 2. the weather

2.

It was fairly serendipitous. I was traveling around the United States, and was in San Francisco when I got an e-mail if I wanted to talk to Kevin (Systrom). So we got together in their tiny office at the time and we had a chat. We talked about the product, where it was at the time, where it was going. And we talked a little about what I'd been doing and my ambitions were.

So then I started working for them from The Netherlands, and they seemed to like the work I was doing and I moved over.

Why me? I think it was a combination of the body of work I had built up in the years before that as well as being able to design and do a lot of engineering.

3.

Being at Facebook specifically hasn't changed the way we work a lot. Growing our team has. We still work very autonomously within Facebook, yet being here has provided us with many resources and ways to quickly grow our team. And there are effects to this team growth that we have had to deal with.

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.

Communication & Multi Media Design ;)

Hey Tim,

In college, I did Communication and MultimediaDesign in Maastricht. While I definitely created some critical thinking during the course, much of what I know, love and do nowadays is self-taught.

At it's time, the course was pretty behind in it's curriculum and had a hard time catching up. So during projects I would always try to find some new pattern or technology to learn instead of adhering to the technical guidelines of the project.

I think that in many cases digital design education is lagging behind a lot. The reason for this is that much of the industry is moving forward so fast, that it's hard for schools to even stay on part with them. The college degree for me was important because it got me my visa. But I haven't used it at all apart from that.

And at Instagram and Facebook we don't specifically look for a degree. You don't need a degree to be a good designer and or product thinker.

Tangentially related: the speed at which our industry moves, while being a problem for the education systems, is actually a great blessing for people who want to learn at their own pace, at their own times.

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 George, Thanks so much for your thoughts.

1. We deeeefinitely need to fix that, thanks for the heads up.

2. We are learning a lot from our very first campaigns and we're very much focused on making sure the advertising experience will be the best possible one for people who use Instagram.

3. We're always very excited to see people build and use tools that allow more creativity on Instagram, and are always looking at how we can improve and empower people that use Instagram.

1. Never try to cut corners. And don't ever think you're right the first time around. Even though you are some times. Finally, make sure you're solving a problem. Design for design's sake is rarely a good idea.

2. I think that we're in a very interesting place. A place where we are getting new tools, or are using them differently (Quartz Composer, Framer, Origami, Macaw, Sketch etc.) I'm pretty excited around the stuff that Koen Bok is doing with Framer. The stuff around Origami. A lot of the open source stuff that FB is doing in front-end web, like React and Flux. Pete Hunt is the guy to follow in relation to that, although he might be a little hardcore on the programming side.

3. I absolute love product design. Client work is great for it's variability, but I really love diving deep into a product, discovering and defining problems and trying to figure out the best solution. And be proven wrong and having to figure out a different one. :)

Hey Jayna,

Thanks for the support!

1. I can't answer that with 100% assurance, but I think a lot of it has to do with performance and reliability.

2. I'm really happy with what I'm doing right now! I feel very lucky to have found something I was passionate about and get to do that as a job. Apart from that: I'd probably do some more traveling and make photographs all over the world.

3. I think hamburger menu's have their place. But it's a small place where they actually make sense. If you get into a place where you would be looking at using a hamburger menu, you should ask very hard if there's a need to scope down the product, or if there isn't another way to configure the functionality.

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.

I was traveling around the US, and was in San Francisco when I got an e-mail if I wanted to talk to Kevin. I think the company was six people then.

So we got together in their tiny office at the time and we had a chat. We had some small talk, talked about the product, where it was going, what I'd been doing and my ambitions were. After that I met up with Shayne, who was the first engineer hired and had a chat with Mike.

From there I got a contract to work remotely for them as a freelancer. Which meant that I was doing my workday 11AM-7PM and then I would do another work day from 8PM-3/4AM. They seemed to like the work, so I was asked to join full-time. 2011 was a pretty easy year visa wise, so we got the visa pretty quickly and I moved! :)