J.T. Trollman — I help make useful products, building on over 15 years of experience working across both major brands and tiny startups.
Practically speaking, I try to solve meaningful problems for people.
Six Questions to Structure Great Projects
Two Lessons For Using Feedback
Fueling Creativity: How Harley Earl Taught Us Design Reshapes Everything
AI Should Take Offense (Or We Risk Losing All Our Politeness)
Facebook — Product Design Manager, New Community Experiences
Make America Dinner Again — Founding Designer
Go Insurance — Advisor
Go Safe Labs — Secretary & Treasurer
Facebook Campus
Founding design manager for a comprehensive new community product for college students. Launched summer 2020.
Facebook Neighborhoods
Founding design manager for another new community product, for local neighborhoods. Launched fall 2020.
Facebook Events
Design manager for the Facebook Events product ecosystem and the Facebook Local app. 600M people per month use our products.
Make America Dinner Again
Founding designer for this national volunteer organization, fostering better communication across the aisle.
Community Integrity
Design lead across all Facebook Consumer Support tools, including reporting and Help Center.
Core Experiences
Designed core systems for Facebook, including News Feed, rich engagement features, and emerging market features. Designed the first comprehensive design library for Facebook on Android.
I’m particularly invested in my work at Facebook because it enables me to do the greatest amount of good I can manage for society — with all the humbling responsibility and pitfalls that can entail. I’m currently supporting multiple “0-1” new product efforts in our Community Product Group, and am a product lead for our internal design education initiatives. I’ve helped facilitate internal racial justice initiatives as well, both on the product and the people side of things.
Previously I was the design manager for Facebook’s Events products and Local app, enabling people to spend more time with close friends and family in the real world. Before that I spent years on our Community Integrity team as the design lead for our content moderation and help products, touching everything from chat bot technology to redesigning our reporting and help center tools. And winding the clock back even more, I was one of two designers to create our first Android design & navigation system in the process of initiating better emerging market support; and I worked on News Feed and expression products (like adding stickers to comments).
Key areas of interest for me include creating products for underserved communities; emerging-market enablement; privacy, trust & safety issues; community involvement and engagement; political engagement; public information access; automotive & transit technology; AI; and cartography. (I’m also a huge nerd for music, comics, videogames and cars.)
I've spoken internationally about some of the issues above. After the 2016 US election, I also became the founding designer for a passion project to facilitate understanding across the political divide at Make America Dinner Again. We have over 12 chapters nationwide, and have been covered everywhere from The New York Times to the BBC to The Blaze. Somehow both Oprah and Glenn Beck love us.
Before all that, I co-founded two start-ups (B4UGO and Happiness Engines), piloted a small design agency, and tinkered on countless other side projects with friends. I’ve also acted as an advisor and strategist for start-ups, and worked alongside great folks at IDEO for some years as well.
HIVE: Designing For Empathy
A talk grounded in three principles for designing for empathetic products
Tel Aviv Talks: Designing For Moments of Struggle
Examples of how designers can and should consider how their products touch people in their most vulnerable moments
Bridge Builders 2019: Product Thinking
A primer on how Facebook has a uniquely developed opinion on product thinking
Bridge Builders 2020: What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Product Design
Grounding people in the soft skills of product design: proactivity, communication and humility
Facebook Design Camp
As product lead for Facebook’s design education program, I’ve crafted and taught the curriculum for a wide variety of classes geared toward thousands of company design team members
Facebook Design Mentorship
I run the senior designers mentorship circles program for the Facebook App org, and mentor 2–3 managers and designers each half
External Mentorship
I mentor 1–2 under-represented external designers each half, with the goal to create lasting relationships
I’m an amateur photographer with a great joy for people and the outdoors, slowly learning how much I respect videographers for the added dimensions of sound, motion and time they juggle. I've been lucky enough to have my work included in publications such as The New York Times.
Drop me a line at jt@jtroll.com, or through social media of your choice. Thanks for your time!