Katie Hughes Product Design

Unlockables

Driving Horizon app discovery, growth + retention through unlockable rewards.

Company

The challenge

"Unlockables" is a system where players can earn sticker rewards on Meta's family of apps via completing game quests in Horizon Worlds. Our team was tasked with scaling the system and driving additional monthly active users (MAU) to the Horizon Worlds mobile app.

The process

Discovery & strategy: Conducted a comprehensive UX audit and partnered with UXR to identify user friction and core JTBD. Aligned with product management to establish an experimentation roadmap alongside a core UI redesign.
Ecosystem alignment: Identified and led standing cross-functional working sessions across Horizon, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp to ensure a highly consistent, scalable cross-app user experience.
Economy & execution: Partnered with economy and engineering teams to integrate stickers into the in-game loop. Managed monthly content drops with art and game design, defended the design in platform reviews, and shipped 10+ rapid production experiments.

Screenshot of nametag designs associated with behavior states

Strategy + execution

An initial audit revealed missing steps in the user journey. I led the end-to-end redesign of the new user experience, natively integrating sticker rewards into the Horizon app with clear affordances for discovering, sharing, and re-entering the app.
I partnered with the Avatar team to design a new "Sticker Info" bottom sheet. Triggered via sticker taps, this created seamless entry points to the product landing page, giving players clear pathways to earn rewards or customize their avatars.
A/B testing showed that "locked" icons on media tiles degraded CTR. Navigating strict design system constraints, I removed the icon entirely—a minimal solution that perfectly balanced visual performance with metric goals.
Collaborated closely with Art, UXR, and Engineering to implement an ML-driven stack ranking system. By surfacing stickers based on qualitative user insights and player preferences, we significantly boosted overall engagement metrics.
I generated designs for 10+ experiments, cross-app promotions, and upsells to inform ship candidate decisions.

Strategy + execution

An initial audit revealed missing steps in the user journey. I led the end-to-end redesign of the new user experience, natively integrating sticker rewards into the Horizon app with clear affordances for discovering, sharing, and re-entering the app.
I partnered with the Avatar team to design a new "Sticker Info" bottom sheet. Triggered via sticker taps, this created seamless entry points to the product landing page, giving players clear pathways to earn rewards or customize their avatars.
A/B testing showed that "locked" icons on media tiles degraded CTR. Navigating strict design system constraints, I removed the icon entirely—a minimal solution that perfectly balanced visual performance with metric goals.
Collaborated closely with Art, UXR, and Engineering to implement an ML-driven stack ranking system. By surfacing stickers based on qualitative user insights and player preferences, we significantly boosted overall engagement metrics.
I generated designs for 10+ experiments, cross-app promotions, and upsells to inform ship candidate decisions.

The outcome

Drove 1M+ user acquisition and 508K MAU for Horizon "Unlockables" by designing a scalable, cross-platform UI architecture that exceeded target metrics and maintained a 16%+ Day 30 WAU rate.
Designed an Instagram companion experience that generated a 28x MAU increase through optimized cross-app interaction patterns.
Boosted mobile retention by 25% and added 546K mobile MAU by seamlessly embedding features into the core game economy loop.

Before

Four taps required
Inconsistent with all design systems
No way to promote priority quests
Difficulty locating completed quests

After

Minimum two-tap entry to Horizon
Cross-app UX consistency
Adherence to design systems
Dedicated area for high-vis quests
Updated quest IA

Before

Four taps required
Inconsistent with all design systems
No way to promote priority quests
Difficulty locating completed quests

After

Minimum two-tap entry to Horizon
Cross-app UX consistency
Adherence to design systems
Dedicated area for high-vis quests
Updated quest IA

The end to end user flows for the "before" and "after" designs

Unlockables

Unlockables

Driving Horizon app discovery, growth + retention through unlockable rewards.

Driving Horizon app discovery, growth + retention through unlockable rewards.

The challenge

The challenge

The process

The process

The process

Strategy + execution

Strategy + execution

Strategy + execution

The outcome

The outcome

The outcome

Before

After

Before

After

Next project

Next project

AI characters

Designing compelling end-to-end experiences with interactive, embodied AI game characters.

AI characters

Designing compelling end-to-end experiences with interactive, embodied AI game characters.

AI characters

Designing compelling end-to-end experiences with interactive, embodied AI game characters.