Costume Party for Messenger

My favorite project at Facebook Messenger was an augmented reality experience that let people try on silly outfits during a real-time video call.

GAMEPLAY

The rules are simple, players take turns leaning their head left or right to select costume items. In this example, player two is selecting the mustache icon...

MUSTACHES!

...causing mustaches to magically appear on everyone's face! Players can mix and match costume items and taking funny pictures along the way.

Now let's take a look at how this was all created!

THE TEAM

Producer - Lauren Toosevich

Tech Artists - Joshua Law, Alex Guillard

Artists - Cody Drake, Wendy Wong

Game Designer - Adam Simpson

BRAINSTORMING

I was inspired by character flip books and the drawing activity Exquisite Corpse. I wondered if there was a way to translate these concepts into an interactive filter...

PLANNING

I wanted to leverage popular filters that had already been created. This scary cat filter was very popular during Halloween, so it was a great candidate!

STORYBOARD

I created a storyboard that detailed out the flow of the experience. In the initial design, players took turns leaning left or right to grab moving icons. If the head, eye, and mouth items match, a special animation would play.

PAPER PROTOTYPE

I constructed a paper prototype that emulated the entire experience, including the icons and costume pieces.

USER TESTING

During testing session, I noticed participants enjoyed making other people wear silly outfits. The positive feedback encouraged us to take the design to the next level!

FLOWCHART

I made some revisions to the design based on all of the feedback I received during testing, and I fleshed out the design in more detail.

DEVELOPMENT

I passed the design off to the tech artists, and they began constructing the full Costume Party experience. But it wasn't all easy... We ran into a few complications!

CONFLICT #1

We had limited space for art materials within each effect. This caused us to make artistic sacrifices to the quality of some of the art pieces, and we had to swap out some parts for new ones. Luckily we were able to come out with 12 costume items that looked great in game.

CONFLICT #2

Some of the costume pieces were causing glitches when paired with other items. Through extensive testing, we were able to identify and alter any pairings that caused glitchy facial distortions.

RESULTS

Costume Party was one of the most-used interactive effects on real-time calls for Messenger!