Facebook Facial Recognition Sign-In
Growth team
Product design
Prototyping
In 2014, as Facebook was growing across the world, there was an issue with people losing their sign-in phone numbers, emails, and passwords. This was especially problematic in new markets where such things were not as sticky as they were in the U.S.
We had a hypothesis that we could use facial recognition to better tie users to their identity and help them easily access their facebook account, without having to remember anything.
The goal of the project was to define the experience at a high-level in order to pitch the idea to the executive team.
I worked closely with Adriel Frederick, the PM , and a few facial recognition engineers to determine how it would fit into the current Facebook product.
I began by outlining the flow:
I then built an interactive facial recognition prototype in quartz composer that would actually recognize a human face.
I felt this was incredibly important in order to rapidly test error messages, animations, and visuals with the real user experience of facial recognition firsthand (This was 2014!).
Below are a couple proof-of-concept prototypes I made in quartz composer for both successful and unsuccessful sign-in. Both prototypes worked live and executives could demo it with their very own faces.
Successful:
Unsuccessful:
We were thrilled about the potential of this technology and excited to bring users closer to their real identities. I’m still waiting for this to ship. Shout out to Scott Savarie and Joey Flynn for the great feedback and quartz help.