Product Design & Experiential Design
Roblox Squads: Co-experience for Roblox
Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
06/2022-08/2022
Team
Designers, Engineers,
and a PM
Tools/Frameworks
Lead Product Designer
Impact
Building 0-to-1
During my summer internship, I:
Led
Led the design for Roblox's new multiplayer fabric (0 → 1) that fosters co-play and connection for over 220 million active monthly users
Spearheaded
Spearheaded UX flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs that included delightful social interactions and an omnipresent widget
Collaborated
Collaborated closely with PMs, engineers, and senior leadership to create a PRD and product vision, using design to drive alignment across the company
Product Design & Experiential Design
Roblox Squads: Co-experience for Roblox
Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
06/2022-08/2022
Team
Designers, Engineers, and a PM
Tools/Frameworks
Lead Product Designer
Impact
Building 0-to-1
During my summer internship, I:
Led
Led the design for Roblox's new multiplayer fabric (0 → 1) that fosters co-play and connection for over 220 million active monthly users
Spearheaded
Spearheaded UX flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs that included delightful social interactions and an omnipresent widget
Collaborated
Collaborated closely with PMs, engineers, and senior leadership to create a PRD and product vision, using design to drive alignment across the company
Product Design & Experiential Design
Roblox Squads: Co-experience for Roblox
Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
06/2022-08/2022
Team
Designers, Engineers, and a PM
Tools/Frameworks
Lead Product Designer
Impact
Building 0-to-1
During my summer internship, I:
Led
Led the design for Roblox's new multiplayer fabric (0 → 1) that fosters co-play and connection for over 220 million active monthly users
Spearheaded
Spearheaded UX flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs that included delightful social interactions and an omnipresent widget
Collaborated
Collaborated closely with PMs, engineers, and senior leadership to create a PRD and product vision, using design to drive alignment across the company
Context
Co-experience Platform
Roblox is a coexperience platform, meaning users play, create, explore, imagine, and socialize together across 40 million developer-generated games. However in 2022, Roblox still didn’t do a great job helping users experience Roblox together.
43%
Playtime spent with 2+ friends
-52%
Experiences tried together
While 43% of co-experience time is spent with 2+ friends, people tried 52% fewer experiences when co-experiencing because of the high friction of navigating between experiences with friends.
UX Research
Clarifying the problem
As I dug deeper into this problem with the help of UX research, we discovered that the real pain point was that Roblox doesn’t have a space to manage experiences for groups and reliably getting them into public servers together.
Existing Solutions:
Currently, with the Play Together system, groups can try to join the same experience servers either through the join button in a friend profile or the in-experience invite link. However, both features don’t provide a guarantee that a group of friends can join a game together. This often leads to a long period of trying to match into the same server, wasting valuable play time and creating an unpleasant experience for friend groups.
Principles
Product Principles
Using the user research, we derived and aligned design principles for how we wanted to solve this problem. The solution should be lightweight, which means easy to create and leave. It should also be an omnipresent layer on top of your existing Roblox experience, accessible in any state. Last but not least, it should be flexible, as members should retain the ability to do anything they want.
Squads
What is Squads?
A Squad is essentially a group of users that want to get together and stay together as they move through different experiences in Roblox. Squads enable users to seamlessly create a group, join experiences together, and in the future communicate in real-time via chat and voice. You can co-experience by creating a squad of up to 20 members, invite anyone into the squad, find an experience, and play together. It’s that easy. You pick the friends and experience, Roblox takes care of the rest.
Context
Co-experience Platform
Roblox is a coexperience platform, meaning users play, create, explore, imagine, and socialize together across 40 million developer-generated games. However in 2022, Roblox still didn’t do a great job helping users experience Roblox together.
43%
Playtime spent with 2+ friends
-52%
Experiences tried together
While 43% of co-experience time is spent with 2+ friends, people tried 52% fewer experiences when co-experiencing because of the high friction of navigating between experiences with friends.
UX Research
Clarifying the problem
As I dug deeper into this problem with the help of UX research, we discovered that the real pain point was that Roblox doesn’t have a space to manage experiences for groups and reliably getting them into public servers together.
Existing Solution:
Currently, with the Play Together system, groups can try to join the same experience servers either through the join button in a friend profile or the in-experience invite link. However, both features don’t provide a guarantee that a group of friends can join a game together. This often leads to a long period of trying to match into the same server, wasting valuable play time and creating an unpleasant experience for friend groups.
Principles
Product Principles
Using the user research, we derived and aligned design principles for how we wanted to solve this problem. The solution should be lightweight, which means easy to create and leave. It should also be an omnipresent layer on top of your existing Roblox experience, accessible in any state. Last but not least, it should be flexible, as members should retain the ability to do anything they want.
Squads
What is Squads?
A Squad is essentially a group of users that want to get together and stay together as they move through different experiences in Roblox. Squads enable users to seamlessly create a group, join experiences together, and in the future communicate in real-time via chat and voice. You can co-experience by creating a squad of up to 20 members, invite anyone into the squad, find an experience, and play together. It’s that easy. You pick the friends and experience, Roblox takes care of the rest.
Context
Co-experience Platform
Roblox is a coexperience platform, meaning users play, create, explore, imagine, and socialize together across 40 million developer-generated games. However in 2022, Roblox still didn’t do a great job helping users experience Roblox together.
43%
Playtime spent with 2+ friends
-52%
Experiences tried together
While 43% of co-experience time is spent with 2+ friends, people tried 52% fewer experiences when co-experiencing because of the high friction of navigating between experiences with friends.
UX Research
Clarifying the problem
As I dug deeper into this problem with the help of UX research, we discovered that the real pain point was that Roblox doesn’t have a space to manage experiences for groups and reliably getting them into public servers together.
Existing Solutions:
Currently, with the Play Together system, groups can try to join the same experience servers either through the join button in a friend profile or the in-experience invite link. However, both features don’t provide a guarantee that a group of friends can join a game together. This often leads to a long period of trying to match into the same server, wasting valuable play time and creating an unpleasant experience for friend groups.
Principles
Product Principles
Using the user research, we derived and aligned design principles for how we wanted to solve this problem. The solution should be lightweight, which means easy to create and leave. It should also be an omnipresent layer on top of your existing Roblox experience, accessible in any state. Last but not least, it should be flexible, as members should retain the ability to do anything they want.
Squads
What is Squads?
A Squad is essentially a group of users that want to get together and stay together as they move through different experiences in Roblox. Squads enable users to seamlessly create a group, join experiences together, and in the future communicate in real-time via chat and voice. You can co-experience by creating a squad of up to 20 members, invite anyone into the squad, find an experience, and play together. It’s that easy. You pick the friends and experience, Roblox takes care of the rest.
Design Decisions
Crafting the full experience
Governance
As I created a user flow for Squads, my first question was this: who decides which game to play. The democratic approach would entail everyone votes on which game to play. The other option was a host model, like Roblox’s old Party system where one person gets to choose what games a group will play. I tested these governance styles in competitor products as well as dogfooding the different user flows to our team. I also did research on what Roblox’s old Party System was and it’s shortcomings.
Through testing, I found the democratic method being time consuming and easily swayed by peer pressure. However, the host model constricted non-hosts from having any control over what game should be chosen, and also led to only one organized game per squad. Host model doesn’t scale especially when squads want flexibility to play several games. We needed a new construct for game selection and governance.
Leads
I came up with a governance role called a Lead. When a squad member suggest a game for the Squad, they become a Lead. Leads control that specific game, like configuring private or public server and starting that experience. and members can follow a Lead into their game. No one leads the Squad itself, but you can help lead an experience for Squad members. This solution mimics the natural dynamic of real world groups while remaining lightweight.
Selection
Now, what if a Lead selects an experience with a server size less than the squad size? In this case, putting everyone in the same experience server is impossible. But it’s crucial to have those experiences available since not everyone might want to participate in that game, and it would also be a jarring experience not to be able to play some games just because you are in a squad.
Ready Up Mechanic
I solved this with a Ready Up mechanic. When a Lead suggests a game, member can choose to ready up for the game or just hangout. The spots are taken, first come, first serve. And from there, the Lead can start the experience.
Design Decisions
Crafting the full experience
Governance
As I created a user flow for Squads, my first question was this: who decides which game to play. The democratic approach would entail everyone votes on which game to play. The other option was a host model, like Roblox’s old Party system where one person gets to choose what games a group will play. I tested these governance styles in competitor products as well as dogfooding the different user flows to our team. I also did research on what Roblox’s old Party System was and it’s shortcomings.
Through testing, I found the democratic method being time consuming and easily swayed by peer pressure. However, the host model constricted non-hosts from having any control over what game should be chosen, and also led to only one organized game per squad. Host model doesn’t scale especially when squads want flexibility to play several games. We needed a new construct for game selection and governance.
Leads
I came up with a governance role called a Lead. When a squad member suggest a game for the Squad, they become a Lead. Leads control that specific game, like configuring private or public server and starting that experience. and members can follow a Lead into their game. No one leads the Squad itself, but you can help lead an experience for Squad members. This solution mimics the natural dynamic of real world groups while remaining lightweight.
Selection
Now, what if a Lead selects an experience with a server size less than the squad size? In this case, putting everyone in the same experience server is impossible. But it’s crucial to have those experiences available since not everyone might want to participate in that game, and it would also be a jarring experience not to be able to play some games just because you are in a squad.
Ready Up Mechanic
I solved this with a Ready Up mechanic. When a Lead suggests a game, member can choose to ready up for the game or just hangout. The spots are taken, first come, first serve. And from there, the Lead can start the experience.
Design Decisions
Crafting the full experience
Governance
As I created a user flow for Squads, my first question was this: who decides which game to play. The democratic approach would entail everyone votes on which game to play. The other option was a host model, like Roblox’s old Party system where one person gets to choose what games a group will play. I tested these governance styles in competitor products as well as dogfooding the different user flows to our team. I also did research on what Roblox’s old Party System was and it’s shortcomings.
Through testing, I found the democratic method being time consuming and easily swayed by peer pressure. However, the host model constricted non-hosts from having any control over what game should be chosen, and also led to only one organized game per squad. Host model doesn’t scale especially when squads want flexibility to play several games. We needed a new construct for game selection and governance.
Leads
I came up with a governance role called a Lead. When a squad member suggest a game for the Squad, they become a Lead. Leads control that specific game, like configuring private or public server and starting that experience. and members can follow a Lead into their game. No one leads the Squad itself, but you can help lead an experience for Squad members. This solution mimics the natural dynamic of real world groups while remaining lightweight.
Selection
Now, what if a Lead selects an experience with a server size less than the squad size? In this case, putting everyone in the same experience server is impossible. But it’s crucial to have those experiences available since not everyone might want to participate in that game, and it would also be a jarring experience not to be able to play some games just because you are in a squad.
Ready Up Mechanic
I solved this with a Ready Up mechanic. When a Lead suggests a game, member can choose to ready up for the game or just hangout. The spots are taken, first come, first serve. And from there, the Lead can start the experience.
Explorations
Omnipresence
Squads should be omnipresent, meaning whether you are in the lobby, experience, or app, squad members should be getting relevant updates on what is happening with the Squad and reenter into the lobby. I explored affordances for this, including persistent bars, sliders, and navigation panels. to fit in the future, this would also be important for having quick voice controls. The goal in all of these designs was to be informative while feeling natural in the app experience.
Emotes
I also wanted lobbies themselves to be a space for self-expression. So I explored emotes in the lobby. Share how you’re feeling or spam the Squad with fun reactions. Since the emotes are just packets of synchronous information, these emotes can also be configured by creators and developers for custom expressions, tieing into Roblox’s goal of create everywhere.
Explorations
Omnipresence
Squads should be omnipresent, meaning whether you are in the lobby, experience, or app, squad members should be getting relevant updates on what is happening with the Squad and reenter into the lobby. I explored affordances for this, including persistent bars, sliders, and navigation panels. to fit in the future, this would also be important for having quick voice controls. The goal in all of these designs was to be informative while feeling natural in the app experience.
Emotes
I also wanted lobbies themselves to be a space for self-expression. So I explored emotes in the lobby. Share how you’re feeling or spam the Squad with fun reactions. Since the emotes are just packets of synchronous information, these emotes can also be configured by creators and developers for custom expressions, tieing into Roblox’s goal of create everywhere.
Explorations
Omnipresence
Squads should be omnipresent, meaning whether you are in the lobby, experience, or app, squad members should be getting relevant updates on what is happening with the Squad and reenter into the lobby. I explored affordances for this, including persistent bars, sliders, and navigation panels. to fit in the future, this would also be important for having quick voice controls. The goal in all of these designs was to be informative while feeling natural in the app experience.
Emotes
I also wanted lobbies themselves to be a space for self-expression. So I explored emotes in the lobby. Share how you’re feeling or spam the Squad with fun reactions. Since the emotes are just packets of synchronous information, these emotes can also be configured by creators and developers for custom expressions, tieing into Roblox’s goal of create everywhere.
Learnings
Learnings
Learnings
Check out my other work
Check out my other work
Check out my other work
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Orbits: Audio Designer
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Google Creative Lab
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