Visual search
A tap opens products and related posts, and a follow-up search narrows the results. The hard call was whether the suggestion helped enough to interrupt the reel, and how specific it had to be to feel worth tapping.
Current work
Francisco Guzman
Senior Staff Product Designer
I design new products and the systems behind them, from startups to Instagram scale.
Today I lead product design for Instagram Shopping as an IC. I set direction across teams and still design parts of the product myself. Before Instagram, I was Nuro’s first designer and Instacart’s second. I studied engineering and HCI at Stanford.
Instagram01
Design lead2020–2023, 2025–now
Making shopping work inside an app people don’t open to shop.
A dedicated shopping destination didn’t work. People open Instagram to be entertained, then shop when something they see catches their attention. We had to bring shopping into the content instead of asking people to go looking for it.
I’ve worked on Shopping twice. The first time, I designed seller onboarding, then managed the team bringing shopping into Feed, Stories, Reels, and Live. Today I’m back designing the product, focused on making anything you see easier to shop.
ScopeHands-on product design and direction across several teams.
Selected work
Business AI
If no one was available, AI could answer product questions. The chat identified itself as AI before the first reply.
Creator monetization
Creators could tag products from across the web and choose when each card appeared.
Seller onboarding
Sellers could set up a shop in Instagram, on the web, or through Shopify. Each path connected the same catalog and payment system to Instagram checkout.
Shoppable formats
Feed used a product tag. Live needed a card timed to the broadcast. In every format, products had to be easy to reach without getting in the way.
The team had a vehicle that could drive itself. No one knew whether the product was an ice cream truck you walked up to, something you hailed, or a fleet behind someone else’s app.
As Nuro’s first product designer, I worked on the customer app, vehicle interface, remote operations, fleet tools, and field research. I worked directly with the autonomy, hardware, operations, and engineering teams.
Selected work
Remote vehicle startup
One operator could remotely start multiple vehicles and see every readiness check or blocker.
Grocery service pilot
Real shoppers and drivers fulfilled orders while a Nuro vehicle sometimes handled the last handoff. Running the service showed us what the product still needed.
Fleet scheduling
The calendar put every vehicle, operator, and task in one place, from mapping runs to build tests. Operators got a daily schedule, and later the system could suggest one automatically.
Field research
Sessions in daylight, at night, and in the rain showed where people hesitated, especially around the doors. Sound, voice, and the screen had to explain what was happening before anyone touched it. You cross in front of a car because you caught the driver’s eye. With no driver, the vehicle had to send that signal itself.
Night field test
Instagram03
Design lead2023–2025
What would people actually pay Instagram for?
Meta Verified has one name but is really five products: a creator subscription and four business tiers, from $15 a month to about $500. Creators and businesses want different things, and every tier has to earn its price.
Instagram had never sold a subscription, so we had to build the product from scratch. I owned the Instagram experience and pitched and designed its core benefits. Designers across Meta and partner teams led onboarding and account management; I set direction and reviewed the work. Facebook later adopted the same benefits.
Live nowMeta Verified ↗
Selected work
Links in Reels
Links became the top reason subscribers upgraded to a higher tier, without turning every reel into an ad.
Notability
Once anyone could pay for a badge, users needed a way to tell a well-known account from a lookalike. We tried several approaches and ended up putting follower count next to the name in search.
Shared accounts
Big accounts had been sharing passwords. Now owners could add people, see what each person did, and keep messages and stories private unless they chose otherwise. Another designer led the detailed design. I set direction and reviewed the work.
Links on profile
Link-in-bio services turned one profile link into a page of links. Instagram’s version became one of the top two reasons people signed up.
Original credit
Automatic detection ran for everyone. Subscribers could request a human review when another post reused their work. If the claim held up, the copied post was labeled with the original creator’s name.
When I joined, the customer side had a designer. The people doing the shopping had none, and in-store shoppers and drivers ran the whole operation on mobile web.
As Instacart’s second product designer, I focused on the people and tools that got an order from the store to someone’s door. We built the first native app for shoppers, drivers, and cashiers, along with the systems they used to apply, schedule shifts, and get paid.
Selected work
Replacements
Preferences already in the order let the shopper keep moving when an item was out of stock and the customer didn’t answer.
Shopper app
The app became the shopper’s list and map through each store. When an item was out, it suggested replacements from that customer’s history and what other customers had accepted.
End of the order
Picking was only half the job. Each bag was barcoded and its location recorded so a different person could deliver it.
Shifts and pay
Shoppers used the same app to set availability, pick up shifts, and see delivery pay and tips each week.
In-store fieldwork
People are unbelievably specific about food. Butcher and deli counters were among the slowest parts of a shop, so the prototype carried the customer’s exact request into the store instead of forcing it into a standard quantity field.
Whole Foods, 2015
The face of Instacart
I owned the early shopper experience and worked shifts myself to understand the job. The photo from that fieldwork became the shopper signup site and ran in recruiting ads for nearly two years.
Archived shopper signup site
Career
2013–nowI’ve managed teams twice. Today I’m an IC again.
At Instagram, I’ve led teams of up to seven, hired four designers, and coached three to promotion. Today I’m back as an IC. I set direction across teams, but none of those designers report to me.
| Instagram2020–now | 2025–now | IC |
|---|---|---|
| 2024–2025 | IC + Manager | |
| 2023–2024 | IC | |
| 2021–2023 | Manager | |
| 2020 | IC | |
| Nuro | 2018–2019 | First product designer |
| Instacart | 2015–2018 | Second product designer |
| Prismatic | 2013–2014 | Interaction Designer |
| Stanford UniversityEducation | MS Symbolic SystemsHuman-Computer InteractionBS Management Science & Engineering |