I organized a design sprint that brought together 25+ stakeholders across two organizations and three teams. It turned out to be crucial for building relationships and laying the groundwork for this 0→1 project.
The end-to-end process, from design sprint through launch.
Driving alignment
The sprint built a shared understanding of our goals, the unique advertiser problems on Messenger, each team's long-term strategy, MVP prioritization, and early design explorations. It surfaced differing assumptions that had been quietly blocking alignment — and by the end, we'd come together as a single team with a unified goal.
Prioritizing features
When my team collaborates with a partner, we bring core ads expertise while the partner brings deep knowledge of their vertical and surface. I documented general ad use cases while the Messenger team documented "messaging ad" use cases and north-star solutions.
We evaluated each feature by impact (adoption, completion, performance, retention), experience (needed, expected, nice to have), strategic relevance (key vs. not integral), and eng/design effort (low, medium, high) — then prioritized each into MVP, fast-follow, or future, and worked through the items where we disagreed.
Scoring and prioritizing features across impact, experience, strategy, and effort.
Design principles
From what people, platform, and product experts shared in the sprint, we distilled three guiding principles:
Principle 01
Lightweight
In priority markets, connectivity is a real constraint. A simplified experience where advertisers can easily access, create, and manage ads is key for SMBs.
Principle 02
Personalized
Recommendations reduce cognitive load, help advertisers create better-performing ads, and build trust over time.
Principle 03
Supportive
Our advertisers are often inexperienced solo entrepreneurs — so we guide them at every step, without overwhelming them.
