In 2024, efforts to begin making Horizon Worlds made for VR devices available on mobile began. In 2025, the Horizon org went into a mobile lockdown to update the app experience to include discovery and play in the Horizon Worlds made available on mobile.
My scope was dedicated to mobile discovery research, specifically for the Feed and Details Pages within the mobile app. New paradigms were being introduced to existing VR users and new mobile-only users needed quick information about what they could play, how to play it, and social signals for each World to evaluate if it was worth their time.
The mobile Discovery team needed to know what users expected from a mobile gaming platform’s discovery surfaces, including how to rank and ensure personalized recommendations on a Feed and how to showcase the details of a game’s quality, friend engagement, and how to jump in on the fun on their first day in the app.
Peer platform audit
While my design and engineering teams planned out what would be needed to translate existing VR surfaces to mobile, I conducted an audit of discovery surfaces such as Feeds, Store pages, and Search to inform initial efforts and ensure we provided the most critical information present on similar apps and storefronts to our users.
Inputs from this audit included what metadata was necessary for at-a-glance decisions on the Feed, including ratings and device compatibility signal, and what users would click into a details page to get more information on. Auxiliary features like leaderboards for asynchronous social engagement and competition against their friends, achievements and awards for each game, and chaining mechanisms to discover more games from the creator or similar themes emerged from this audit and were added to sprint efforts based on priority.
Qualitative Engagement Reasons Study
Once a structure of necessary surfaces was planned, I conducted a qualitative study to determine what units on Feed and Details Pages would help acclimate new users and get them quickly into personalized recommendations while teaching them the mechanics of the platform and evaluate what units returning users consistently referred to in order to decide what to play next or play again.
Design Sprints
I was involved in the design sprints to translate research insights into a framework for a design language playbook for the mobile app, which was adopted across teams working on other, non-discovery surfaces, for a cohesive app experience. My contributions to the design sprints also helped designers hone in on testable concepts and designs from a wider exploration of what we could do, leveraging existing knowledge to help the team pursue the most-likely-to-succeed option from their ideations.
Final Evaluations
At the end of the year, I conducted final evaluations to assess the state of the discovery ecosystem on mobile. These evaluations included qualitative interviews about the design system and appeal of the mobile Feed and details pages and a diary study to identify any existing pain points upon repeated use of the app when finding games to play.
Through this work, I not only influenced the initial direction of app decisions and validated our decisions with user insights, but also created new work to further develop the value of the app’s discovery surfaces and take Horizon from a gaming-first platform into a social gaming hub. Learnings from this work continue to be used for Meta’s Reality Labs mobile discovery work off of the Horizon Worlds Feed on mobile, and have shaped the product strategy for additional features across multiple teams in the org.
The synthesis of these insights also led to a recurring newsletter-style post across discovery teams in VR and mobile orgs to share information and insights and ensure a cohesive research-backed perspective on how we address discovery pain points as they emerge.