Facebook profiles, clearer across four profile types

Facebook has four profile types: personal, additional, professional and community. People couldn’t tell them apart, and the header was cluttered. The redesign had to make each type clear and keep integrity information visible while taking up less space.

+64%: Scroll engagement
8%: Lower bounce rate
15%: More room for photos

Role: Sole designer, from strategy through final design
Worked with: Privacy, Legal, Integrity and Product partners
Timeline: 6 months
I owned: Strategy, research, prototyping, visual design and executive reviews

The redesigned Boba Guys and Ninja profiles on two phones

← All work

Decision 01

Map the constraints before designing

Situation: The project started with an executive concern that profiles felt cluttered. Any change to the header touched privacy, integrity and policy, and Legal required business entities to be identified.
Choice: Before any concepts, I collected requirements from each partner team and audited every header component across all four profile types: what it does for visitors and for owners, what we’d ship now, and what would come later.
Why: I needed to know which integrity signals had to stay visible, and how far they could move without breaking compliance.

Everything the header had to hold, from the navigation bar down to Invite.

The four profile types before the redesign. Few cues showed whether an account was a person, a business or a community.

The Page label in the Details section of the original design — The original “Page” label. It took up space and people didn’t understand it, but removing it would break privacy and integrity requirements.

Decision 02

Change the structure instead of adding a label

Situation: Our first pass added a new element to signal profile type: icons, subtle labels, or the category alone. Partner reviews set firm limits. The “i” integrity entry point had to stay visible, nothing new could sit near the avatar because that space is reserved for online status, and category labels didn’t read as tappable.
Choice: We moved to structural changes, testing labels in the header and in the details area. Each version went through Privacy, Legal and Integrity review.
Why: At Facebook’s scale, with localization, every new element is expensive.

The first pass: a “Community” marker, tried in six places on the profile.

Decision 03

Win back space in the header

Situation: A content-first initiative asked for a smaller header.
Tested: Left-aligned profile photos, a smaller avatar, a shorter cover photo, and details condensed into fewer lines.
Result: About 54 pixels of usable space. The change raised new privacy requirements, which we then had to meet.
Why: On Facebook’s most visited surface, every pixel decides what people see first, and each one had to clear Privacy, Legal and Integrity.

An additional profile, before and after. Drag to compare.

Boba Guys and Ninja profiles before and after: the old centered header beside the smaller, left-aligned one — Before and after, side by side: the smaller, left-aligned header on a business page and a community profile.

Decision 04

Separate the profile label from the integrity entry point

Situation: In testing, too much visible information weakened the page. People wanted to know whether a profile was personal or professional, and participants in Brazil cared about whether a profile could advertise.
Choice: The profile-type label and the integrity entry point became separate elements. The arrow now goes straight to integrity information, and every required element stays within one tap. We applied the same structure to additional, professional and community profiles, keeping existing differentiators like CTA placement, usernames and the verified badge.
Why: Integrity information had to stay within one click, and telling types apart didn’t have to rely on a text label.

A community profile, before and after. Drag to compare.

Redesigned personal, professional and community profiles on floating phone screens — The new structure across profile types.

Results

64%

increase in scroll engagement

reduction in bounce rate

15%

more room for profile and cover photos

100%

of integrity and compliance requirements kept

What I learned

1
Show less, unless it’s critical.
Progressive disclosure worked best for everything except the signals people needed to see right away.
2
Regional differences matter.
What people needed to know about a profile varied by market.
3
Few people knew the types differed.
Most participants didn’t know that different profile types had different features.
4
Every pixel has to earn its place.
On a surface billions of people see, there’s no room for almost right. Every element, and every pixel it takes, has to justify itself.

Most of this project was getting Privacy, Legal, Integrity and Product to agree on the same few pixels. Treating that alignment as part of the design work is what made the layout come together.

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