Project Overview

Meta partnered with Material+ to conduct strategic experience innovation research aimed at accelerating VR/MR adoption through deeper understanding of user behavior and platform optimization opportunities. Rather than developing immediate product solutions, the project focused on uncovering actionable insights that could inform Meta's long-term strategy for breaking mainstream adoption barriers in the virtual and mixed reality space.

The initiative required translating complex research findings into strategic frameworks that Meta's leadership could leverage for informed decision-making across product development, platform optimization, and market positioning efforts. The challenge centered on addressing the fundamental gap between VR/MR's transformative potential and current adoption limitations through data-driven strategic recommendations.

The Challenge

VR/MR faces a fundamental research problem: how do you study user behavior when most users have limited experience with the technology? Traditional research methods fail because participants lack reference points to provide meaningful feedback about immersive experiences they've barely encountered.

Meta needed insights that could simultaneously address user archetypes, experience phases, engagement patterns, and ecosystem dependencies while identifying what drives sustained platform engagement versus abandonment.

Design Strategy and Execution

As the sole designer on a research-heavy project, the role meant taking Material's findings from 50 participants across 1,500 immersion minutes and turning that into something Meta executives could navigate and understand.

The solution was an interactive experience map prototype that made abstract research tangible. The map detailed four primary VR user archetypes across five experience phases, revealing engagement drivers, user preferences, barriers, and behavioral patterns. Visual design used Meta's VR aesthetic—sophisticated gradients and game-centric elements—while maintaining brand consistency and enhancing data comprehension.

The research methodology itself broke new ground by using wearable technology to monitor participant engagement during VR experiences, then conducting targeted interviews based on observed immersion patterns. This approach solved the fundamental challenge of limited user reference points by leveraging physiological responses as baseline data for more informed qualitative feedback.

Impact & Recommendations

The experience map transformed complex research into ten actionable recommendations that address Meta's core VR/MR adoption challenges. The key insight: traditional market research fails in VR/MR contexts because users simply don't have enough experience to provide meaningful feedback.

Key Recommendations:

• More segmented studies for granular demographic and psychographic insights

• Diary and life studies for real-time contextual understanding

• Center of Excellence to standardize VR/MR best practices across Meta's ecosystem

• Developer relationship models to enhance collaboration and content creation

• Immersion measurement integration for personalized marketing and product development

• Mixed Reality Experience Personalization (MREP) framework for adaptive content

• Comprehensive universal onboarding to reduce user frustration from first interaction

• Price sensitivity studies to optimize adoption strategies and profitability

• Universal coaching overlays with real-time guidance to build user confidence

• Cross-Meta integration experiences leveraging audio and visual generation

  
  

The research transformed abstract insights into a practical roadmap that Meta can actually use. By solving the fundamental problem of understanding users who don't yet understand the technology themselves, the project created a foundation for making VR/MR feel natural and intuitive from day one. Equally important, the work demonstrated how thoughtful design makes complex data valuable—turning dense research into insights that anyone at Meta could understand and act on.