What do you do if your best design work is a small project?

"“I am trying to show the value that I brought. But it seems I'm failing.” Cayenne is a senior designer with more than a decade of experience, but she had one specific problem: her best work is small."

"“The key to translating that kind of impact isn't to fudge the scale. It's to talk about the problem in more detail.” The ask sounds simple. The problem isn't."

"“In 2016, Meta (then Facebook) had a problem that would shape future social media interactions: people didn't know how to react to a funeral announcement.” Hitting 'Like' on news that someone's uncle died felt wrong. But 90% of Facebook's traffic came from mobile, where typing a comment was real friction."

"“So most people stayed silent, and Facebook watched whole categories of human moments slip past the platform, including grief, sympathy, and shock.” Sometimes, your best work isn't part of a company-wide AI initiative with a $17M budget attached. Sometimes, it's the 'one quick thing' she got asked to do that turned into some of her best work."

Cayenne, a senior designer with over a decade of experience, found that her best work was small in scope. Her best results sometimes came from a “one quick thing” rather than a large company-wide AI initiative. The key to communicating that impact was not to exaggerate scale, but to describe the problem in more detail. In 2016, Meta faced a social interaction challenge: people did not know how to react to funeral announcements. “Like” felt inappropriate, while commenting created friction on mobile, where most traffic came from. As a result, many people stayed silent and categories of human moments, including grief and sympathy, were missed.

Read at Medium