# John Merlino > Product Designer at Meta Location: San Jose, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/johnmerlino I strive to utilize my design process to formulate frameworks and strategic approaches that help teams understand complex problems. Collaboration is my primary method to achieve impactful results. I build strong cross-functional relationships with product, research, engineering and other stakeholders to deliver on team goals. I most enjoy creating high-fidelity prototypes to bring a collective vision to life. Then help drive product teams through principled decision making and experimentation to deliver people-centric experiences. Learn more about my past work at http://www.johnmerlino.com ## Work Experience ### Product Design, Lead - Search & Meta AI @ Meta Jan 2024 – Present | Menlo Park ### Product Design, Lead - Sharing & Messaging @ Meta Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Menlo Park Help people share more privately with the friends and family they care most about. Drive more connection through the social content people discover across Meta’s ecosystem. ### Product Design, Lead - Instagram & Facebook Shops @ Meta Jan 2020 – Jan 2022 | New York Worked across Meta app teams to create a unified and seamless commerce experience. Drove design strategy for the buyer journey and optimized on-app purchasing through cross-functional collaboration and experimentation. Contributed to commerce top-line goals and helped establish a new multi-billion revenue stream. ### Product Design, Lead & Manager @ Meetup Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 | New York Partnered with product, research and engineering to reimagine Meetup's unique on/offline, cross-platform event experience and align strategy with leadership. • Crafted mobile and desktop north star vision • Prototyped organizer and attendee user experiences • Supported engineering experimentation and implementation Managed talented and diverse product designers through roadmapping, experimentation, design critiques, research, recruiting and day-to-day execution, in order to help build a thriving culture where designers can grow their careers. Drove strategic approach and process to redesign Meetup's design system. Led federated model to evolve and maintain system through design/engineer collaboration. • Partnered with Frank Chimera to define brand vision and color palette • Simplified and refreshed component library to align with brand • Designed 2 iconography families • Extended Meetup's illustration language to deliver new app empty states and marketing art • Defined system guidelines and playbooks ### Director, Product Design, CPO of IVY @ VaynerMedia Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | New York Our team's primary function was to maintain and evolve a suite of business resource management tools called IVY, which was designed & developed internally for Vaynermedia. IVY provided business vision and strategic insights to the company, tracked employee effort, informed staffing/hiring decisions, presented simple financial reporting, optimized process workflows, and more. Since its inception, IVY has contributed to Vaynermedia's success and growth by increasing team productivity and promoting company-wide communication. • Led an iterative product design process and was responsible for managing and executing within the team's full design stack. • Conducted user research through current and potential user surveys as well as qualitative user interviews. This informed the team's user-centric perspective in all product experiences. • Documented product requirements through user stories, articulated user and technical constraints, and set success metrics. • Implemented user experience documentation through user maps, product wireframes & experience concepts, utilizing UX best practices and design patterns. • Created both rapid and high fidelity prototypes, using InVision, Flinto & Framer. • Designed, maintained & documented custom UI style guide of elements & components. • Supported engineering with front-end markup - HTML (Jade templates), CSS, JS (KnockoutJS). Tested and shipped features within 2-3 week sprints. My role included a secondary objective of researching and developing a public SaaS version of IVY. This effort was formed into a separate initiative and team called Inductiv, whose mission was to empower employees with a better understanding of their work lives. • Conducted market research to discover potential opportunities. • Quickly prototyped product ideas at various levels of fidelity. • Designed and assisted in engineering of multiple beta apps. • Prepped for fundraising by preparing investor decks, implementing company and product branding design. ### Director of Product @ Katch.me Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | New York Katch built a simple, frictionless way to save and discover live mobile video online. It integrated with notable live streaming apps, Meerkat and Periscope, and served decades of video to 1.3M users per month. Katch started as a 2 day hack, then quickly grew into a must-have tool for the flourishing live streaming community. As director of product I helped build a loyal, active user base and beloved brand. My role encompassed product strategy, user experience, interface design, product prototyping and front end development. ### Director of Product @ Seen.co Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | New York Seen algorithmically structured real-time social media data into digestible stories. It's aim was to organize the real-time web and provide tools to search and discover trending media. I was responsible for the product’s visual language and identity, user experience, customer development and front end code. ### Co-Founder @ Freshthrills, LLC Jan 2007 – Jan 2014 | Brooklyn, NY Freshthrills was a design studio founded by Kingsley Harris and myself in 2007. It provided creative leadership and client services to a wide range of clients - from large agencies to emerging tech startups. Our team built successful identity systems, award winning websites, habit-forming consumer products and intuitive business tools. ### Design Technologist @ Community Connect Inc. Jan 2004 – Jan 2007 | Greater New York City Area ### Web Designer @ Community Connect Inc. Jan 1999 – Jan 2004 ## Education ### Communication & Graphic Design Pratt Institute Jan 1998 – Jan 2002 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmerlino - Website: http://www.johnmerlino.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/johnmerlino JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/johnmerlino/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-07