Mixed Methods UX Researcher, Horizon Worlds Core Loop

The Horizon Team at Meta is building a social User Generated Content (UGC) platform where people can find people, places, and things they care about - a Metaverse without constraints where people have freedom of identity and expression and can experience living in virtual worlds that could not exist in the real world. Our vision is to build a global-scale UGC platform where the world’s creators, performers, and more will be able to create their place, and enable their communities to connect, engage and play in all kinds of ways. We are driven to create a safe and compelling Metaverse for never-ending exploration - our journey is just the beginning, come join us.As a UX Researcher on the Meta Horizon team, you’ll be at the forefront of helping the team concept, design, and ship VR-best experiences for the ever-expanding Horizon Metaverse. You will work with teams of PMs, designers, artists, engineers and more to explore innovative core mechanics and game loops for first-party content within and across Horizon Worlds. Most importantly, you will guide the team through the intersection of gaming and social research to help ensure the progression systems we create build fun experiences that also help people connect.Our work aims to understand the people who will use our products, gleaning insights to drive product direction and strategy. Our methods range from generative to evaluative, ethnography to experimentation, and involves close collaboration between researchers and our cross-functional partners.As we scale the team, we're looking for a researcher with expertise in the entertainment gaming industry and who is comfortable mapping out players’ motivations, defining/measuring fun, and working across different genres of social gaming content.The right candidates will be excellent communicators, knowledgeable about both product and game development and design, curious about the relationship between technology and society, comfortable in a fast-moving organization, excited to collaborate, and passionate about understanding and helping people. If this sounds like you, come join us as we work to solve complex and meaningful problems for people in the Metaverse!

Mixed Methods UX Researcher, Horizon Worlds Core Loop Responsibilities:

• Blend traditional gaming research approaches and best practices with social principles
• Design and execute end-to-end custom primary research using a wide variety of methods including qualitative and quantitative methods
• Work closely with product teams to identify important research questions
• Collaborate closely with other researchers
• Partner with design, product management, data science, content strategy, engineering, marketing, and other technical roles to conduct and share research
• Design studies that address both user behavior and attitudes
• Act as a thought leader in the domain of gaming research, while advocating for the people who could use our products
• Generate insights that shape how product teams think about medium and long-term product strategy
• Communicate insights in creative and compelling ways

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree with 10 years of relevant experience in user experience, applied research and/or product research and development or a Master’s degree and 8 years of relevant experience, or PhD and 5 years of relevant experience
• 5 years of user experience in applied research setting and/or product research and development
• Knowledge of qualitative, quantitative and user-centered research methods (e.g., interviewing, ethnography, survey design, log analysis, co-design, concept-testing, `etc.)
• Experience with gaming-specific research methods such as play testing, think-alouds, sentiment and ways to define and measure fun

Preferred Qualifications:

• Degrees in a human behavior related field, such as Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Sociology, Communication, Information science, Media studies, Computer Science, or Economics
• Experience conducting research with immersive or virtual reality products