Redesign of Facebook Groups

2020

Facebook Groups is a feature of the Facebook brand and is popular for creating communities of people with similar interests, hobbies and motives. The variation of group types is endless, with an estimated 400 million Facebook users actively using the tool as of 2019. It serves many purposes, from groups looking to buy or sell goods, to individuals sharing opinions, experiences and memories on one platform.

UX Research

To understand the redesign that was conducted, we created user interactions stories which presented possible interactions from different Group users.

Moving further into our research, we also created user journey maps to present two different journeys a user could potentially take within Groups.

Usability Testing

Now that we understood our users, we moved onto testing the current Facebook Groups. We used Heuristic Study and Cooperative Evaluation techniques.

Findings from Heuristic Study

We followed the guidelines of the cooperative evaluation. This guide is separated into four sections. User Recruitment, Preparing Tasks, Interact and Record and Debrief.

We set up a sample Facebook Group and added users to the group to allow them to perform different tasks.

Before testing we decided the criteria for testing the users which included the following:

Set up an event and view it in the calendar
Write a status using animated backgrounds. They must then schedule the post to go live 30 minutes from the time they have written it and must restrict the commenting by turning it off and adding a location.
The user must try to go live on Facebook and must then add a poll using the interactive section of the live video.

We asked 5 people to be involved in our testing. This group of people had very mixed abilities. Two of which we're familiar with the tool, one of which had an average understanding and two who had a below-average understanding of the tool. Each user was provided with the same laptop and same setting.

Main Findings from Cooperative Evaluation

UX Designing

From our usability testing, we uncovered the problems in the design of Facebook Groups. In the redesign, we had to figure out how to fix these issues and implement them in the tool. We decided we were gonna focus on the UX and usability of the tool. I created my prototype on the tool Sketch.

The first step involved repairing the statuses that were not posted in chronological order. To achieve this, we had to remake the ‘Discussion’ section of Facebook Groups. I created new statuses and constructed them chronologically from the dates they were put up. I mimicked the discussion page that we created for the user testing.

As a group we all agreed with the users feedback about the Watch Parties feature available in the tool. Watch Parties allows Group admins to go live and watch videos, allowing other users to view them, comment and react to the live video that is being streamed to the user . We thought the feature was not beneficial to groups and confused users with live streams. We attempted brainstorming ideas to improve this design but felt that it did not add anything special to the tool so we decided to remove this feature, as you can still share videos on Groups and have live comments without hosting a watch party which was basically the purpose of the feature. By removing this feature, we wanted to create something that we thought would be more beneficial to a group that uses Facebook Groups focusing on the Events section.

We created a classification feature called ‘Tags’. Tags help section the events on the calendar into different categories. They are coloured bubbles, each colour representing a separate category. When viewing a calendar, a user is capable of viewing all the tags at once or has the option to view each tag separately. The user can make these tags represent anything they desire. An example where this could be used is in a rota. An employer can use a tag to represent each employee and the employee then has the ability to view everybodies shifts but also has the power to view their singular shifts only also.

The current calendar is very basic, so we then created wireframes of different types of calendars that could be used within the calendar section of Events. The three different types are daily, weekly and monthly. By giving the user the capability to change the type they prefer, the more ways that the calendar could be used.

Monthly Calendar with Tag feature that can be filtered

Daily and Weekly Calendar which also can be filtered

Marketing Campaign

It was important to consider the main stakeholders of the tool before moving on with redesign or testing. Facebook Groups itself appears to be a platform used by people of all ages, gender and background.

With such a broad spectrum of possible stakeholders suitable for analysis, we felt it was best to focus on individuals and organisations who would fit into the group categories Facebook provides (hobbies and interests, buy and sell, relationships and identity and entertainment). We narrowed our investigation down into two groups in particular, buy and sell groups and organisational groups

From there, we identified our stakeholders and prioritised them according to their power and interest in the tool (usually defined by their role) and, finally, giving us a better understanding of the essential ones. Below are the stakeholder maps indicating the importance of each stakeholder in the collaboration tool:

Facebook Groups is entirely digital and the most effective way to advertise these new changes to the tool is through digital marketing. The channels we felt would be most effective at engaging our target audiences are as follows:

Online display advertising through Facebook Ads in the sidebar of personal profiles.

Social Media platforms like Facebook and Instagram through sponsored posts.

Promotion updates through emails marketing.

Video marketing through quick, simple and refreshing tutorials with bright imagery could draw more people to examine the advertising and investigate the campaign further.