Roblox Connect

In 2022, Roblox was growing fast and users were asking for one thing it didn’t have: a way to talk to each other inside the app. Developers wanted the same. Roblox Connect became the private calling layer the platform was missing.

I was part of the Social & Communications team and responsible for the experience strategy and design of Roblox Connect across mobile, desktop, and web since January 2023. I led the UX work and ran biweekly reviews with stakeholders all the way to launch in November 2023.

The problem

Roblox had no native private voice

Users routed conversations through Discord, FaceTime, anything but Roblox. Every time they left for a tool that worked better, it told us something. The fix had to live inside the platform.

The discovery

Lasagna uncovers the social gap

A Chicago mom used Roblox to remind her daughter to take the lasagna out of the freezer. Externally it was charming. Internally it exposed a real problem. Users were forcing the platform to fill communication gaps it wasn’t designed for.

It also accelerated a shift inside the company. Leadership saw that real friendships translated into co-play that lasted past a single session. Social became the priority, not the side project.

The framework

The hardest part wasn’t the design. It was getting alignment across every team that touched communication on the platform. We were also adopting Chrome, the new system framework unifying platform and in-experience UI. We were the first team in the company to use it.

I learned quickly that the only way to move work this big was to anchor it in principles. My team agreed on a shared set early, and those became the filter for every decision after.

• Extensibility over Rigidity.

  Prioritize a flexible system that can adapt with user needs, rather than a rigid one-size-fits-all approach.

• Expressive over Realistic.

  Allow users to express their personalities and emotions through avatars, rather than a hyper-realistic representation.

• Delightful over Utilitarian.

  Provide an enjoyable experience making interactions fun and memorable, rather than solely functional.

• Native over Standalone.

  An integrated experience that blends effortlessly into the broader platform, rather than a standalone feature that feels disconnected.

Research approach

Before we ran any studies of our own, I pulled from existing research on voice communication products. There are many established players, so we used that as a baseline for common behaviors, expectations, and gaps.

From there, I partnered with UXR to run six rounds of biweekly research with both users and developers. We built questionnaires together, sent out surveys, and held recurring interviews. Because one of our goals was to let developers build their own communication apps on Roblox, we approached the work as if we were developers ourselves. That mindset kept conversations honest. No theory, just direct feedback about what they needed and what wasn’t working.

These sessions became the backbone of the project. Developers gave straightforward, unfiltered opinions every two weeks. That constant loop helped us cut through assumptions and stay focused on what truly mattered to them, not what we imagined they wanted.

Finding the real direction

Calling isn’t the product, it’s the foundation

My early UI explorations mapped the basics: host and member flows, entry points, persistence, notifications. This was the fastest way to surface friction and test patterns. It didn’t take long to see the direction was getting bloated. The flow was becoming heavier instead of simpler.

From there I explored squads, grouped calls, and lobby models. I tried everything from experience lists to chat-based entry points. The more I pushed, the more obvious the issue became. These models locked us into rigid patterns that would never scale across Roblox’s ecosystem. More importantly, they didn’t give developers any freedom. We were accidentally building an opinionated social product instead of enabling developers to design their own.

That was the turning point. Calling had to be the foundation, not the entire product. Once we reframed it as an API-first system, everything clicked. Calling became the base layer. Developers could build their own social structures on top. It was the only approach that gave developers room to build, and gave Roblox a model that could scale.

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Calling into Roblox

Two systems running at the same time

The first challenge was figuring out how calling should enter the Roblox ecosystem at all. Roblox isn’t a single UI. It’s two systems running at the same time. The platform controls app-level navigation. Developers control everything inside their experiences. Designing a calling framework meant working inside both systems without breaking either one.

The next step was clarity. The API model was flexible, but that also meant it could become confusing fast. I needed a simple way to show developers what was core, what was optional, and how pieces fit together, without forcing them to read a novel to get started.

Call Bar placement and Developer Experiences

The Call Bar lives in platform space, but developers also place their own Dev UI in the same regions. This created real collision problems where interfaces could overlap and compete for attention.

To fix this, I introduced No UI Zones. When a call is active, these zones prevent developers from putting UI where the Call Bar lives. It protects both layouts and keeps the experience predictable.

Cinematic Camera

Roblox experiences use a free camera, which makes cinematic moments hard to pull off without custom engineering work. The Cinematic Camera API solves that. It lets developers track multiple actors in 3D space and create immersive shots without writing complex camera logic. The goal was to give developers a tool that made their experiences feel polished without forcing them to reinvent basic camera behavior.

Prototyping

Prototypes were the fastest way to get meaningful feedback and keep the team aligned. Early on, they helped expose bad assumptions and test new interaction patterns before engineering spent time on them.

They also made executive reviews far easier. Instead of walking leadership through static screens, I showed them how the product actually behaved. That cut through ambiguity and helped us get faster decisions. In the later stages, prototypes became a communication tool for engineering. They clarified edge cases and timing in ways documentation never could.

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Dogfooding & live testing

One of Roblox’s core values is to take the long view. Our team didn’t have that luxury. We had a fixed launch date for RDC 2023 and an aggressive engineering schedule. The only way to hit the deadline while keeping quality high was to open up the work early and let the entire company test it and tell us what wasn’t working.

We started biweekly open dogfooding sessions where anyone at Roblox could try the builds or prototypes and give direct feedback. Showing the work early forced us to fix real issues instead of polishing around them and helped build genuine alignment across teams.

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The execution

Roblox Connect lets users call a friend on mobile, desktop, or web and end up inside an experience together. That same calling framework is what developers use to build their own social features.

I have to confess a deep secret. While the camera did track facial motion, the lead engineer had to push the limits to simulate “gyro tracking” as the camera panned around the body. I worked closely with him to bring our vision of camera tracking to avatar animations to life. It works. The avatar mirrors what your body and camera are actually doing.

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The launch

RDC 2023 keynote → November 14 ship

On September 23, 2023, the Roblox Developer Conference went live, with us as the headliners alongside the Roblox PlayStation announcement. During the live demo of Roblox Connect, we also revealed our launch date of November 14th. We had a code freeze and locked down all marketing assets. The reveal and launch went off without a hitch.

We launched in November 2023 on iOS, Android, Desktop PC, and Web.

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Project learnings

Building bridges

Working with developers taught me a lot. They are direct, technical, and they know exactly what they want. This was one of the first projects where the audience wasn’t guessing. They had clear expectations and strong opinions. Staying open and listening without getting defensive helped me align our goals and avoid designing in a vacuum.

Some developers were unhappy with our APIs. The frustration wasn’t about the APIs themselves. It was about Roblox investing in social and communication tools instead of the game-specific features they wanted. They made their feelings known on social media, and none of it surprised us. We heard the same concerns during our interviews.

We responded by publishing clear documentation and educational material as fast as possible. We also opened up channels so developers could submit feedback and get direct answers. That didn’t solve everything, but it helped shift the conversation. Those conversations are still happening, and they keep shaping how Roblox and its developers set expectations with each other.

Long-term vision

Roblox Connect was never meant to be the final product. It was the foundation. The work laid the groundwork for what eventually became Roblox Party, the system that lets users group up, message, and voice chat across the multiverse. Connect was the proof.