Defining how businesses communicate with customers at scale.

TL;DR

WhatsApp Flows is a developer platform that enables businesses to build native, task-focused workflows inside WhatsApp, replacing broken chatbot experiences with richer, structured interactions. I worked on this from the ground up: first as part of a small team designing the foundational component and layout system for Alpha, then as sole designer leading the Shopping Layouts for Beta and then shipping to large screen companion web for general availability.

The Brief

Businesses were already conducting complex interactions on WhatsApp at scale: booking appointments, ordering food, paying bills. But the experience was broken. It was inconsistent between businesses, cumbersome, and often forced users to app-switch to complete tasks. Messaging was great for communication but a poor paradigm for getting things done.

The brief was to design a system that gave businesses the tools to build rich, native experiences on WhatsApp, while protecting users through guardrails, consistency, and WhatsApp's core values: simple, reliable, private.

User research revealed two key tensions: users wanted simple, easy ways to interact with businesses, while businesses wanted flexibility to serve their customers well. The design challenge was to give businesses enough configurability to build useful experiences, without sacrificing the consistency and trust that make WhatsApp what it is.

The Component System

The foundational system shipped with 18 components, covering everything from basic inputs and text to more complex interactions like date pickers, image carousels, and conditional logic.