SUMMARY
An exclusive interview with the Head of Design at Instagram
“If we want Instagram to be a place that stands for creativity, it has to start with the team that's designing it,” says Brett Westervelt, VP, Head of Instagram Design, Meta. This is a tall order for the design team at Instagram, but one that’s being realized through his leadership that prioritizes different perspectives, collaboration and looking for inspiration in unexpected places.
We sat down with Brett to discuss his vision for Instagram — both as a creative platform and creative tool — and how it’s coming to life. We cover a lot of ground: from the Edits app and his favorite moment of the work week, to Ray and Charles Eames and Beyoncé. Whether you’re working in a design field or not, we expect you’ll find Brett’s wisdom on craft and creativity both inspiring and applicable to your work.
Thanks for sitting down with us, Brett. To kick us off, tell us about your background.
I found my way into product design by reading an article about IDEO — who played a big part in established human-centered product design as a practice — in a magazine. I didn't even know product design was a field. I was like, “Oh, I want to do that.” I ended up studying under David Kelley, one of the IDEO founders, at Stanford’s design program, the d.school.
How do you bring this foundation into your work at Instagram?
At Instagram, we place a high value on craft and sweating the details. That's the foundation of everything we do. We care about the details because we want to make the app progressively better at the things people are relying on Instagram for, day over day: to stay close to friends, express themselves, or, in the case of creators and small businesses, to support their careers and livelihoods.
Another key for us is building a team with a wide range of skills and perspectives. Instagram has been around for 15 years, so the next breakthroughs will be harder to come by and less obvious. I want our team to bring new ideas and points of view to the table and be open to riffing on or debating ideas with each other. It’s like being in a band or basketball team — there's this “we’re in it together” mindset. Building on what teammates are doing helps us create compelling experiences for everyone.
Tell us more about the connection between Instagram and creativity.
Two things are key to unlocking creativity: One is giving people great tools, and the other is giving people a stage or platform to share.
Think about other creative pursuits: Whether it's composing music or creating a work of art, you need to be inspired by the tools you have at your disposal to do great work. That’s why the tools we give people matter. And then there’s the audience. Many creative acts come to life in a new way when there's an audience. On Instagram, the audience can be as small as the one other person you’re sending a message to or as big as making a reel and sharing it with the whole world.
That’s interesting — can you share more about how having an audience influences an artist’s creative output?
Most creatives have a lot of work that no one ever sees — private poems or paintings that don’t see the light of day. But what someone does choose to share brings people together and inspires others to create themselves.
For example, musicians hear music out in the world, and it builds up in their heads over time. They take what they’ve heard, put it together in different combinations, filter it through their life experiences and individual craft, keep iterating and ultimately create something entirely new. I think this process is true for most creative mediums — there's an input that gets mixed up in your head and your heart and then comes out of you in its own very personal way. My hope is that Instagram is a place where this type of creative magic can consistently happen.
I have to ask given the number of references: Are you a musician?
I'm not — just a big music fan.
Who are you listening to right now?
I’ve been listening to the new Rosalía album — Lux — non-stop. Rosalía pulls from a wide range of genres and sings in 13 languages on the album and I can’t stop listening to it.
You use a lot of analogies — like music — to describe your ideas. Is this something you do with your team?
Yes, I do. I think we get more powerful inspiration when we look to analogous fields that have parallels with what we’re designing. I’m also passionate about looking to the past to inspire the future of what we build.
Tell me more about that.
We recently took some of the design team to the Eames Institute. Charles and Ray Eames are known for designing furniture, but they designed in a number of other arenas, too, from architecture to film to exhibition design. My biggest takeaway from the visit was a quote from Charles: “Innovate as a last resort.”
But as designers, isn’t that a bit counterintuitive?
Right. As designers, shouldn't we be innovating all the time? Charles Eames’ point was that before we create something new, we need to understand the history of what’s come before and have a perspective on how it could be better. At Instagram, we don't want to do something just to be different or the first. We want to do it because we think we can do it better and improve the experience. If we can’t make something better, it’s not likely to be all that valuable.
What’s an example of this?
Earlier this year, we released a standalone video editing app called Edits. The app came from our conversations with video creators. They shared that most video editing apps have an overwhelming number of complicated features. So we designed Edits to be simple, fluid and fast. Creators also told us that they often collect ideas throughout the day, but it’s hard to keep track of them — some use physical notebooks or even send emails to themselves. Our vision for Edits reflects this: We want Edits to feel like a pocket-sized studio where creators can collect all of their ideas and inspiration and then when they’re ready, create and edit their projects into fully-formed creations.
The Edits app is designed to feel like a pocket-sized studio where creators can collect their ideas and inspiration and craft them into thumb-stopping video content.
How do you balance this approach of assessing the past and present when the future is hurtling at us with new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI)?
That’s what’s fun about our job as designers! The past gives us a clear sense of people’s core needs. Instagram helps people connect and express themselves, but these aren’t new needs. The need to communicate was met through the postal service, then the telegraph and then the telephone. Instagram is part of this progression of how people communicate, it’s an evolved solution for a timeless human need. The past anchors us, but the future paints the possibilities of what might be.
How does this translate to designers’ work at Instagram?
Sometimes I ask my team, “If you could time travel to the future and bring back any artifact to today, what would it be and why are you excited to have it in your life?” We talk about our job as designers at Instagram as inventing the future of creativity and connection. If we do our job well, we can hopefully give people that experience of time travel — of products that feel magical at first but quickly become the new normal way.
A new app or Instagram feature can’t just harness a new technology if it doesn't ultimately meet a need. If it’s just cool technology, it won't find a place in people's everyday lives.
What are you focused on right now?
I see my role as creating the right space for our team to do strong design work: putting the right people together on a project, making sure we ask the right questions and pushing the work to be as good as it can be.
At any given time, we have a number of ideas sitting in different stages, and there’s a real energy in seeing these ideas take shape. It’s rarely a linear, straightforward path. We’re constantly prototyping ideas because we’ve found that’s the best way to explore and stay creative as a team.
What’s your next meeting?
Actually, it’s my favorite time of the week: design review. I get to witness someone putting something on the table that they’ve been working on. It’s the moment where our team is taking creative chances, sharing an idea to see what others think. Everyone is looking at it from a different perspective with the goal of making it better.
It also mimics the courage that creators around the world are taking every day when sharing their own ideas and work on Instagram.
Totally. If we want Instagram to be a global community where people can express themselves and be creative, it has to start with the team that's building and designing these experiences. This also underscores why craft matters. This is why we sweat the details. You can really feel when a product has been designed with intention and care, and that’s what we aspire to do everyday.
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