Brooklyn Game Store

In order to gain a spot on the Top Pages in the Horizon Worlds app, average player time is a key metric. Users (in this case, players of the Horizon Worlds app) often miss important world interactions leading to key world events. This causes frustration for developers and causes users to preemptively leave a world without the opportunity to experience key interactions designed for the world.

Client goals:
I spoke to the team about their goals, their player insights, and overall desires for their world experience. Using those details we agreed on the goals below; which I utilized as a guide to investigate player behaviors and motivations in order to help the team improve player experience.
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❖ Keep players in the world for at least 3 minutes, but ideally 5 minutes (AKA improve player engagement)
❖ Ensure players can organically discover a hidden key, which opens a puzzle experience; the main world event (AKA increase the organic discovery of puzzles)
❖ The world ‘feels’ like a 90’s era video game store (AKA creation of a color palette invoking the 90s NYC era)

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User interviews and usability tests led to the following 3 reoccurring themes applicable to the MIBKG Horizon Worlds experience concerning their 3 goals of playtime, user interactions, and in-world puzzles:
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1) Users prefer worlds with high intractability - more than colorful or visually-interesting worlds
- "I like worlds that give you a job or mission - they're more fun"
- "X's world is really pretty but I keep coming back to X because it's fun to play in..."
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2) Unexpected cause-and-effect with objects are often a point of delight, and make worlds memorable
- "...I'll never forget my first time using the jetpack - I like to bring people here because of that..."
- "I like X world because the stick mechanic is the coolest - it's always fun"
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3) Users have a high tendency to become frustrated and leave an experience if the world task isn't clear, or if clues aren't provided in some form
- "...see this area looks cool but if you didn't say anything I'd think this is it [no perception of world task - the user thought the experience was a 'hangout' spot, without a game component]"
-"...I get mad because when I miss it, isn't my fault. X world is really nice but shooting mechanic is off..."

I synthesized user feedback into groups of 'joyful experiences', 'pain points', and 'confusion/bug' in an affinity map-style format and shared my findings via Discord. I then presented the following recommendations, tying my discoveries to the main problem, and the team's three chosen goals:
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Recommendation 1: Add multiple hints for the first puzzle to assist players in discovering the key triggering the puzzle experience
Recommendation 2: Add interactive objects early in the experience in order to increase the overall curiosity and interactions ‍
Recommendation 3: Utilize audio to create atmosphere and add sound cues to object interactions
Recommendation 4: Update a color palette to invoke the 90’s era feel
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Average player time increased from 2 minutes to 5 minutes after the implementation of the 4 UXR recommendations. Specifics below.
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(1) Add a variety of hints to the first puzzle to assist players in discovering they key
Action taken: 
❖ Multiple game cartridges provide clues on how to find the first key 
❖ A VR 'attendant' was added to the experience, proving interactions and clues to opening the first puzzle
‍Outcome:
❖  80% of new players participating in usability test discovered the first puzzle.


(2) Add interactive objects early in the experience in order to increase player curiosity and expectation of world interactions.
‍Action taken:
‍Multiple interactive points were added that fit a 90’s style game store:
❖ A ‘VR attendant’ character was added that had vocal dialog and provided players a hint to unlock the first puzzle
❖ TV screens that react to button presses or other objects (inspired by NYC game stores, which would let people play game demos in-store)
❖ Multiple game cartridges became intractable, and cued commentary from the 'VR attendant'
❖ A xylophone was added with a well-known NYC troupe
‍Outcome:
❖  Playtesters experimented with more objects and were statistically much more successful in discovering the first puzzle
(we believe this was encouraged through higher interactions at the beginning of the experience)


(3) Utilize audio to create atmosphere for the experience, and add scripted interactions with players including sound cues.
Action taken:
❖  Utilized freesounds.org to find background music and sound effects‍
Outcome: Players and teammates noted:
❖  It became clearer when puzzles were completed correctly
❖ World objects are more fun to interact with
❖  The developer was inspired to add a talking camera character who told the story of the backroom (opening the world to additional puzzles)


(4) Update the color palette to a bright and colorful 90’s color palette.
Action taken:
❖  Created a few color palettes for the team to choose
‍Outcome:
❖  The initial room's colors were updated — I also built a 90’s style rug. The team and multiple friends of the developer commented positively on the visual, 90's inspired updates.
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**Click here to skip to my learnings from this project or scroll down for details on my process, blockers, and analysis leading to the results above**

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As we were working in a short time frame (four weeks), the team was looking to iterate quickly. I broke up my work into 2 parts (Part 1: User Discovery/Understanding the problem and Part 2: Prototyping/Implementation).
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Part 1 - User discovery and understanding the problem:
Conversations with the team led me to understand their perspective of the problem, state of players, and the Horizon World platform. I decided to utilize a qualitative approach to understand user attitudes, experiences, and motivations — as the goals of  player engagement and puzzle discovery are best understood through direct observation.
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❖ Understanding the problem - 3 days
I visited multiple worlds in the Horizon Worlds app and interacted with players. I also met with the team in VR to go through their experience, understand where they were in the development phase of the project, and to work with the team to create a few hypotheses, or assumptions, about the app and how users interact in Horizon Worlds. The intention was to obtain additional player behavior patterns and observed issues I can work off of, as this was my first time working in VR. Our assumptions are below.
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1) Any confusion or unclear task(s) can easily be perceived as a bug, leading users to quickly give up a task.
2) Many worlds are 'hang out' areas where there aren't many world interactions. This leads to users failing to be curious and play with world objects.
3) Many new users are unclear how they should interact with objects in Horizon Worlds, unless explicitly told/shown.

❖ User discovery - 2 days
I visited Hub Worlds for user interviews (Hub Worlds are open worlds designed for players to meet other players and join in short multiplayer games). My goal was to talk to about 10 users to gain insight on their experiences in Horizon Worlds, pain points, motivations, as well as to test my team's three assumptions above. I also wanted to collect data to create personas for Horizon Worlds players. I aimed for 10 players because I believe it would provide a happy medium between working quickly, as the client wanted, and allowing room for a healthy amount of feedback in a medium that is new to me. I decided against recording these sessions to increase the comfort level of interviewees, encourage honesty about their experiences, and increase the amount of users willing to be interviewed. As a side note, I love having recordings on hand to show others, particularly to sell the importance, or effect, of key findings but as the team trusted the UX process, my work, and were more focused on fast iterations I didn't record these sessions.
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I synthesized feedback in an empathy map, created two personas, and presented my findings to the team in Horizon Worlds during a VR meeting. Below are a few key details learned.
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- Players age ranges were from 22 to 36, most players in their late 20s.
- Most players used male avatars (7 male avatars 3 female avatars).
- The most common reason given for participating in the Horizon World's app is to 'check out the space' (to experience the app, general curiosity about VR, and the capabilities of Horizon Worlds).
- The most popular, or favorite worlds, are shooting or fighting experiences.
-The most common pain point is not knowing what to do in a world, and object interactions that appear as bugs (where player's are sure if a world interaction should be expected, or if a genuine bug caused the interaction).
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Personas:‍

Initial user took place in hub worlds (hang out areas of Horizon Worlds). A second round of users were obtained via hub worlds and word-of-mouth.

My goal during user interviews were to:
-Understand player motivations
-What experiences/mechanics they find 'fun'
-What aspects of VR design add to puzzle discovery
-Pain points new players experienced in Horizon Worlds experiences
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At the end of each interview I asked if there was anything else about VR/Oculus/Horizon Worlds we didn't touch on. Below are few key questions I asked in all player interviews:

❖ What brought you to try out Horizon Worlds?
❖ Do you have a favorite (type of) world? Why?
❖ What are your impressions of this world?
❖ Are there any movements or mechanics you find uncomfortable?
❖ Tell me about an experience that was frustrating.
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I wanted to take a little time to do a competitive analysis, as possible within the tight timeframe. Doing so allow me to (1) experience similar worlds to the one the team is building (to view object interactivity, puzzles, music, and atmosphere) as well as to
(2) spend time with the team engaging in constructive conversations about VR experiences and their world.

I formally met up with the team twice and we had additional improvised session with various members about once a week. We discussing world events, interactions, pros and cons of other experiences as we traversed them. I treated the sessions as informal interviews (I created an interview script for myself to ensure I asked key questions in each world). See example below.

❖ What are your first impressions of this world?
❖ What strikes you about this world?
❖ How would you rate this world? Why?
❖ Any ideas or mechanics you'd like to see in the BKGS from this world?

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I hit a few blockers while working on this project but they weren't the issues I thought I might run into. The 3 below were my biggest assumed blockers.

(1) My biggest worry was applying my skills in UX/UI into a medium that was completely new to me, as I couldn't find  secondary research to utilize as guidance.
To guard against this issue, I made the time to ask the team and players key questions about the Horizon Worlds, it's use-cases, interacting with others in this medium vs meeting people outside of the app has been, etc before beginning my work. These conversations gave me a good basis to understand the medium and plan how to best apply my UX research skills to this  medium.
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(2) I was worried about attaining players for users interviews and playtesting.
In this case, feedback from the team on where to best find players and my years of customer service/client support experiences allowed me to quickly resolve this assumed blocker. It was actually really easy walking up to players and starting a conversation. In order to be transparent and prompt players to be open I:
- Always began conversations by introducing myself and saying hi, followed up by an easy question (e.g. - "how's it going? / "have you visited this experience before?").
- When I felt the player was comfortable I let them know I'm working on a world with a small team and if it was alright with them I'd love to hear about their thoughts of the Horizon Worlds app so far.


(3) I thought my acclimation into the Horizon Worlds app might take more time than I wanted to spend.
I learned that traveling worlds, creating test worlds, and building 3D models came a lot easier than I thought — my developer background definitely helped here! Meta also had a nice tutorial on building in Horizon Worlds. I didn't get to go through a few more complicated tutorials due to a bug in my user profile, but I ended up not needing those skills to complete my work (scripting and advanced animations). The team was happy to take on advanced scripting and I was able to learn more about animations from the team during build sessions well enough to build appropriate models. Building was actually really fun, and the team noted I picked up concepts pretty quickly, which was great (I also spent time reviewing videos on YouTube and other sources in preparation).
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This was my first project working in VR and my first time working in Horizon Worlds. I had a great time learning about the platform and utilizing my skills in a completely different space. I was able to apply a lot of my experience working in different spaces in tech that definitely helped me hit the ground running. My main takeaways were:
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❖ Always ask questions, and keep your own assumptions in check
❖ Every interaction is an opportunity to learn and get new ideas
❖ Be ready to iterate, and work through what that means to the project before making any moves
❖ Users are almost always happy to talk and test — be open and honest about what you're looking for