Project Overview
Nearby Friends is an opt-in feature on Facebook that lets you share your approximate location with the friends you choose. Most people use it to see who’s nearby to meet up or to know when friends are visiting from out of town.
After joining the Location Products team, I became the Lead Designer for Nearby Friends and focused on improving the experience to increase adoption and user trust. Product metrics and past research pointed to a major friction point: the onboarding flow for new users.
Problems
1. Users thought their exact location would be shared to their entire friend graph, which made them uncomfortable and unwilling to try the product.
2. Selecting friends to share with felt unintuitive. People expected a list of friends, rather than the privacy selector you get when drafting a post.
3. Users were confused by repeated location permission prompts and didn’t realize they needed to choose “Allow all the time.”
Design Improvements
To address these issues, I redesigned the onboarding flow to build clarity and trust from the start. The updates clarified that only approximate location is shared, simplified how you choose friends to share with, and explained why specific location permissions are required.
Project Impact
By reducing the flow down from 8 to 4 screens and putting privacy controls at the forefront, the new experience led to not only significantly higher adoption, but also improved retention.
