Coordinated Party Travel

Role: Product Design Lead

Product: Meta Horizon Worlds

Timeline: 4 Weeks

Teams: Social, Server, Matchmaking, Instancing

I led the redesign of party travel in Horizon Worlds, resolving a critical system failure, aligning cross-functional teams, and restoring user trust in the platform’s core navigation experience.

Key Outcomes:

  • 99.75% success rate for party travel post-launch (up from 75% failure rate)

  • Shipped in 3 weeks, resolving an issue that had blocked playtests for over 3 months

  • Eliminated 200+ people-days per week of wasted time across teams due to failed navigation

  • Aligned 4 teams (social, server, matchmaking, instancing) around a unified travel model

  • Established new UX standards for intent-based navigation and party coordination

Context & Challenge

  • Party travel in Horizon Worlds was failing — users couldn’t reliably navigate together.

    • 75% failure rate blocked internal playtests and live experiences

    • 200+ people-days lost weekly due to coordination issues

    • No documentation or shared system understanding

    • Unresolved for 3+ months across multiple teams

    I stepped in to define the problem, align teams, and lead a system-wide redesign.

Methodology & Coordination

  • System Mapping:
    Reconstructed undocumented flows across social UX, server, matchmaking, and instancing to identify root causes.

  • Cross-Team Alignment:
    Brought together stakeholders from four teams to build a shared understanding and resolve conflicting assumptions.

  • UX Breakdown:
    Analyzed failures from internal playtests and live user reports to define what successful navigation should feel like.

  • Competitive Benchmarking:
    Reviewed party systems from comparable platforms to guide intent-based design patterns.

These efforts established a foundation for clear, reliable party navigation — and created team alignment where none existed.

Design Direction

Once teams were aligned, I defined clear requirements for a new party travel model:

  • Shared Intent:
    All party members must confirm a destination before travel begins.

  • No Party Leaders:
    Navigation had to support equal control — a core org constraint.

  • Fast Shipping:
    UX needed to work within existing systems and ship quickly.

  • Design Goal:
    Make party travel feel intentional, reliable, and transparent.

UX Exploration

  • Prioritized critical info: where the party is going, who’s invited, who’s accepted

  • Introduced the Ephemeral Party Leader model — a rotating, invisible lead role for initiating travel without explicit hierarchy

  • Explored delivery surfaces: inline UI, interactive toasts, and modals

  • Designed for speed and clarity under platform constraints

Rapid Prototyping

  • Designed and iterated directly in build to maintain speed and alignment

  • Partnered closely with engineers and PMs to balance clarity, feasibility, and urgency

  • Prototyped the Ephemeral Party Leader — a novel UX pattern that allowed travel initiation without explicit hierarchy, not found in any competitive platform

Delivery & Impact

  • Shipped in 3 weeks, unblocking a platform-critical issue that had lingered for over 3 months

  • Improved party travel success rate from 25% to 99.75%

  • Restored internal playtest velocity, saving over 200 people-days per week

  • The Ephemeral Party Leader model set a new UX precedent for collaborative travel without hierarchy

  • In December 2024, Roblox introduced a similar party system, validating the approach

  • Established new internal standards for intent-based navigation and cross-team system alignment

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