Responsibilities
Lead designer
3D design and animation Motion design Interactive design Experience design
Ket Metrics
The Brief
Play Together is a cross-org collaboration between Facebook Gaming and Messenger Rooms, that allowed people to play synchronous games during video hangout. I pitched the concept designs for team roadmap reviews, and iterated on end-to-end experience for the product (web and Android). I defined final designs for initial launch, and operated as lead designer working with cross-functional teams between Facebook and Messenger.
The beginning
🧑🏻💻 Previous works…
I was Product Designer in Facebook Gaming team, working on Instant Games and Cloud gaming platform. I lead a 2-day design workshop to explore the space of real-time gaming in Facebook with 5 product team members. We aimed to deliver design direction for features that would support seamless co-gaming experience in Facebook ecosystem
The design sprint eventually resulted an experimental API for an event-based real-time game in Facebook. The project did not see a huge success, since the real-time games can only be hosted by game developer pages, significantly reducing potential player funnels. Additionally, there were a lack of platform support for audio/video presence for concurrent players.
🦠 Spring of 2020
With the unforeseen event in early 2020, we saw massive breakout of Covid 19. Quickly, Messenger Rooms publicly launched in the world, to address the growing need of virtual hangout in Facebook’s ecosystem. The video hangout tool received traction as people were adapting to the new norms of social distancing. As this was happening our team quickly pivoted to pitch the idea of real-time games in Rooms as a feature. Games in Room seemed right, because it naturally induce co-presence and gave reason for people to convene. The idea was well received and prioritized as one of the first partnered teams for Rooms.
This was when I moved to Rooms team, to support maturing of Rooms platform and continue my work on real-time social gaming.
Rooms was born with cross-app communication in mind. It is highly complex product with various entry points, and device compatibilities. When building on such platform, we had to be intentional about where to start from. For initial launch of Play Togther, we scoped the product to be web(Chrome desktop) and mobile(Android) for Messenger. This allowed the teams to anchor on these constraints and work with other variables.
Collaboration
As the lead designer, I pitched the idea of Play Together as concept and worked with cross-org teams to deliver the MVP experience. Player experience dwelled in Messenger Rooms, adopted Messenger Design system components, and were supported by Facebook Gaming infrastructures. Additionally, we built partnership with external game publishers to acquire unique game contents.
Research
What is Remote Togetherness?
Interviewed with 19 people over 3 weeks.
We aimed to explore and understand the ways in which people are organically connecting to others remotely. While Covid-19 influenced people to use video call for alternative form of social gathering, there are limitations to video calls that demotivates them from using them frequently: Video calls are emotionally and physically exhausting, and they are less rewarding then in-person interaction.
Gaming and co-watching are reportedly the most natural, rewarding and engaging ways people have connected with others. When asked to expound on ways people are trying to connect with others, stories about daily game playing or special events over games were in great supply. Gaming provides an immersive contextual environment that creates a greater sense of normalcy and reduces fatigue for participants.
Analogy of Game Party
Imaging you and your friends are in the living room. You decide to pull a board game from the shelf and asks everyone who wants to play the game. Some decline to play, but still hang around the room because a) they don’t know the rules, b) will be leaving soon, hence don’t want to negatively impact the game c) are not comfortable because they aren’t good. You start playing games with those that agreed to playing, and still welcome those in the room to join the game at anytime if they change their mind. Anyone else who enters the room during game are also welcome to join the game itself.
Rooms, People and Things
I iterated on various types of designs, and finally aligned Messenger and Facebook side stakeholder on the designs below. The overall game board on the viewing window, and also made sure that video tiles are positioned in vicinity to induce co-presence during gameplay.
Result
Built a few prototypes to illustrate the core interaction for game creation to stakeholders.
Final designs
End-to-end experience of Play Together include core functions of creating/joining/ending/leaving game in Room, grid logics, and report functionality. It was launched with 9 initial game titles for initial beta testing.
🚧 Public global launch was paused due to iOS restrictions
There were a few challenges and external constraints that may make it hard to see a wider adoption of this product. There was a strict Apple restriction for not allowing games to be in Messenger app. This makes it hard to fully utilize the network effect; one iOS user not able to play in the Room would discourage rest of the group to play the game without the iOS user.
Play Together was in beta testing for Android-heavy countries in 2021-2023
🙌🏼 Updates
Play Together is finally launched globally to Messenger on iOS, Android, and Web on April of 2023.
