I last blogged about User eXperience (UX) Writing and Design in 2021, and since then I've taken my design skills into another dimension--literally. As a Senior Content Designer on Meta's Horizon Worlds, I collaborated with a talented team of visual designers, gameplay experts, audio specialists, and researchers to help build both a framework for a user-created metaverse, as well as individual worlds (essentially apps and games within Horizon Worlds), designed to boost user engagement and satisfaction.

Horizon Central

As the Senior Content Designer for Horizon Central, I helped build this new world that serves as a central hub for both newcomers and frequent visitors to the metaverse.

Horizon Central aims to act as a central location where you can meet up with friends and strangers, and as a showcase for some of the best content in Horizon Worlds.

I collaborated with a talented team made up of product and game designers, 3D visual artist, and audio engineers to define, refine, and built this central hub for Horizon Worlds that significantly increased retention, repeat visits, and exploration of Horizon Worlds.

Among the features and goals of Horizon Central:

  • Highlight compelling worlds and video events
  • Teach users how to perform social interactions, such as adding followers and creating parties
  • Educate about the core loop quest-and-reward system, which awards avatar items, emotes, and stickers to those who complete quests
  • Support seasonal refreshes to introduce new features and highlighted events, such as updated rewards systems and concerts by artists like Sabrina Carpenter

Among the areas where I played a key role as the content designer for the space are:

  • Naming: Not just the world, but coming up with evocative and fun names for locations such as "Cosplay Cabana" (avatar clothing accessories shop) and Triumphs and Treasures (quests and rewards center). Horizon Central needs to feel like a real, fun place.
  • Quests and Rewards: Designed core-loop activities that serve both educational and retention purposes
  • Seasonal Events: Collaborating with game design to develop, evaluate, and enhance interactive elements and quests that promote exploration and encourage repeated engagement.
  • Designing Virtual Spaces: The creation of our inaugural shop, where items can be purchased with virtual currency, necessitated not only experimentation with novel labeling techniques and item previews but also an analysis of how users would navigate the space—mirroring the considerations designers make for brick-and-mortar stores.

Horizon Central stands out as the sole world in Horizon Worlds with a dedicated link in the user interface, making it the most prominent world in the platform. It was a privilege to contribute to its design and launch, as well as to its ongoing enhancements that continue to make it more engaging.

Meta Connect 2023: Setting the Stage for Mark Zuckerberg

Meta Connect is an annual event that serves as both a developer's conference and a platform for introducing new products. With 2023's introduction of the Quest 3 headset and Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, this was a significant year, and to make a splash we created a virtual replica of the Meta campus within Horizon Worlds.

Visitors could explore the Events building to see models of the new Quest 3 and Ray-Ban products and read their specs, but we aimed to make the experience more engaging. We designed the world to highlight the latest features of Horizon Worlds, including a quest-and-rewards system, new graphic meshes, and portals to the metaverse's most impressive gaming destinations.

Drawing on my experience with the Core Loop team's engagement strategies, I collaborated with gameplay and graphics designers to develop a series of quests. These quests rewarded attendees with unique prizes, such as an avatar shirt featuring a Meta Connect attendee badge.

Taking advantage of the immersive, embodied environment, we minimized text and instructions, opting instead for quests indicated by symbols, interactive objects, and other intuitive cues.

We not only had record attendance for the live keynote by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Reality Labs leadership, but also an unprecedented completion rate for the reward quests, with many attendees proudly displaying their hard-won custom Connect swag throughout Horizon Worlds.

Horizon Central Core Loop

One way to keep users returning to an app or game is by engaging them with an appealing "core loop," a reward system that motivates them to complete tasks to earn and upgrade items. In Horizon Worlds, we developed a series of quests that unlock new items, such as avatar outfits and interactive emojis.

The quests encouraged users to interact with others, aligning with the metaverse’s role as a synchronous social network. Users were rewarded for gaining new followers, giving gifts, and exploring Horizon Central and other key worlds.

The initial quest/reward loops led to a significant increase in engagement and return visits, prompting us to expand the scope for even greater appeal and retention. We introduced seasonal events with limited-time quests, drawing users into Spring- and Summer-themed worlds and rewarding them for attending events like concerts by Sabrina Carpenter and Alesso.

Originally, rewards were tied to specific quests. However, with the launch of the Summer Carnival, we began testing a virtual currency system. This system awarded time-limited tickets for completing quests, which could be exchanged for rewards of the user’s choice. This approach allows users to focus on the quests they find most enjoyable and choose the prizes that appeal to them, rather than completing less appealing quests just to unlock a coveted reward. There hasn't been a metaverse-wide virtual currency available in Horizon Worlds, so if this initial test is a success it could become the foundation for a virtual economy that world creators can participate in.

As the senior content designer on the project, I've been involved in every aspect of our quest/reward core loop: setting standards for quest titles and content, crafting specific quests, designing rewards, and incorporating A/B test results and user feedback to update the user interface to reduce friction.

 

Applying VR/AR/MR Content Design to Traditional Content

My earlier work on digital retailing and entertainment for the Xbox console required a different approach than traditional web design. The audience interacts using a controller, views the content from 10 feet away, and desires simple, one-click interactions. The fewer steps between a decision and the ability to purchase a game or view content, the higher the customer satisfaction, and the greater the percentage of users who follow through to task completion.

Creating compelling content for VR (virtual reality), MR (mixed reality), and AR (augmented reality) demands a new approach as well. When wearing VR or MR goggles, users interact with a three-dimensional, immersive world. Whether they’re in a fantastical realm or their own living room, there’s no reason to present them with a wall of text and a series of buttons. Instead, you can make real-world objects glow, add switches and physical buttons, or even have an adorable AI cat or puppy mascot accompany them to answer questions. By guiding and training visitors with a combination of visuals, 3D audio cues, and voice, you can bring a new level of delight and simplicity to the experience.

Horizon Worlds is what they call a "zero to one" product: It's a brand new kind of experience, and because of this, there are few established design standards to follow. It's not a matter of asking "how do designers do this thing?" Instead, a content designer considers the goal, the experience, and the space it's taking place in, and looks for the best way to do it. Is that a traditional, easily dismissed dialog, or something in the virtual room? Text, audio, video, AI characters, visual path wayfinding guidance, highlighting real-world objects... There are so many ways to convey a message, and the goal is to find a balance of delight, simplicity, efficiency, and localizability.

The metaverse doesn't exist yet, but Horizon Worlds is a toolkit that introduces the concept and gives creators a toolkit they can user to explore it. To those experienced with cutting-edge games, Horizon Worlds can feel shockingly rudimentary, but behind the often retro-feeling visuals are some delightful and fascinating new approaches to interacting with users. Having explored Horizon Worlds and competing products and seen the kind of MR and AR technologies that are just a few years down the road, I'm convinced that metaversal technology has the potential to completely redefine how content designers communicate with customers.

For now, though, products like web pages, streaming media service browsers, and voice assistants lack the three-dimensional advantages of embodied technologies like VR, MR, and AR. But designing for a zero-to-one product, where users explore a three-dimensional space, opens up new possibilities for content design. It challenges designers to rethink traditional mental models, find new, intuitive ways to solve problems, and reject “that’s how it’s done” as a guideline.