Eric Bollman is a Design Lead on the Facebook Groups team. Today he stopped by the Funsize studio to discuss his team's approach creating their missions, how they design and evolving the product, and methodologies they leverage to test and validating their design decisions.

On this episode we discuss:

• Eric's experience running and growing a startup called Perkville in the bay area
• Creating a culture of mentorship
• Being a Chief Design Officer of one, and how running a startup helped Eric refine his focus and purpose
• Eric walks us through the Facebook Groups team, their mission and how they work
• The importance of "north star" concepts and their ability to help you sell an idea and a vision to your team
• Why shorter (3 day) sprints can be more effective than 5 day design sprints
• The "People/Problem" framework at Facebook and how Facebook designers drive the products and determine what to ship
• The value of diverse job experiences and how working in an agency can help you learn skills to create and sell ideas
• Having a diverse team of designers gives you awesome collaboration and outcomes.
• Testing incremental changes get you incremental results, but when you test big bold ideas you can see huge angle changes in your metrics
• Designers need to get out of their bubbles (most of your users are not like you)
• Tips on user testing when you don't have real user testing support or funding