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Case Study 01 — Monetization & Identity Research

Defining the Foundations of a Unified Metaverse Economy

No single team owned end-to-end Metaverse economy experiences. My research aligned four siloed teams around a shared framework for value, ownership, and interoperability — and it became the Metaverse Economy strategy, increasing TPV by 300% in one year.

$3M
TPV — exceeding predictions by +300%
12
Studies, one unified economy
25+
Countries studied
4
Economy roadmaps unified
Act I The Tension

We had the research. We had the right launch window. Meta Credits still didn't move. The problem wasn't our preparation — it was that the platform had outgrown the playbook.

Meta Credits was an in-game currency within Horizon Worlds — designed to power purchases, rewards, and creator economies across the platform.

Late 2024 · Holiday Launch Window

We launched Meta Credits timed deliberately to the holiday season — peak engagement, the highest-stakes window. The conditions were as good as they get.

Adoption was low. Even with the groundwork, even with ideal timing, users weren't converting.

That gap — between our confidence and the outcome — was the real research question. What we hadn't fully accounted for: Horizon Worlds was no longer a standalone game. It was becoming a platform for hosting other apps. Meta Credits wasn't just a game currency anymore — it was platform-level financial infrastructure. The stakes had escalated, and so had the complexity.

Past Research · 2024–2025
Psychological ownership model
Digital Ownership — How users form psychological ownership of virtual items across APAC markets. Ownership is multi-dimensional: possession, control, identity, emotional connection.
Mental model mapping
Mental Models — Mapped how gaming-native and non-gaming users hold incompatible expectations of the same currency. Same tool, two completely different frameworks.
Reward discovery journey
Reward Discovery — How users navigate Horizon Worlds to find and evaluate rewards. Social vs. individual goals drive entirely different discovery paths.
Path to purchase
Path to Purchase — Value perception shifts at every stage: intentional discovery → evaluation → trigger. Willingness to pay is lowest at the point the platform assumes it's highest.
Currency value models
Value Models — Monetizable value structures for virtual items. Utility, stickiness, identity, and acquisition method each drive different spending behaviors.
The gaming economy playbook
Gaming Playbook — Defined where the established gaming economy playbook applies to Metaverse — and where it fundamentally breaks down.
Jobs to be done
Jobs to Be Done — What users actually hire virtual items for. Functional, social, and identity jobs operate on different reward timelines.
Funnel drop analysis
Funnel Drop — Where and why users exit the economy funnel. Drop-off concentrated before first purchase — a trust failure, not a UX failure.
Research scenario comic
Research Comic — Used to build shared empathy across teams. Showed the real user experience of navigating four disconnected currency systems.
What the Meta Credits team was optimizing for

Improving adoption and comprehension of Meta Credits within each surface — one team, one tool.

Each product surface had its own currency logic, its own assumptions about trust, and its own team driving it forward.

→
What research revealed about the full ecosystem

Four surfaces. Multiple currencies. No shared ownership of the user's end-to-end economic experience.

This wasn't a product comprehension problem. It was an architectural and organizational one — spanning every surface simultaneously.

The Economy Ecosystem · 2024 Horizon Worlds Surface · Team Meta Credits Meta Points own rules no interop Meta Quest Surface · Team Meta Credits Quest Cash Gift Cards own rules no interop Metaverse Store Surface · Team Meta Credits Gift Cards own rules no interop Avatar Commerce Surface · Team Meta Credits Meta Points own rules Meta Credits appears on every surface — but with different rules, different assumptions, and no shared owner. A user navigating all four had no map.

The bigger problem: no single team owned the end-to-end economic experience. Users were navigating four systems that had never been designed to talk to each other. Research required alignment across fragmented organizational assumptions — not just fragmented user behaviors.

Act II The Finding
The core insight

Users weren't confused by "too many currencies." They were navigating conflicting mental models across gaming and non-gaming ecosystems — and the platform was asking them to reconcile the contradiction with zero help.

Mental Model Spectrum
Gaming Native earn → spend currency = status conflict Non-Gaming pay → receive currency = money Bridging both simultaneously = where trust breaks down The same user. Two incompatible expectations. the same user. two incompatible expectations.
Researcher
studying behaviors
→
Connective Tissue
aligning org assumptions

The structural disconnect was deeper than UX

The structural disconnect was deeper than UX. Rewards, identity expression, and behavioral reinforcement existed in separate organizational silos. My role shifted from researcher to connective tissue — partnering across Horizon Economy, the Metaverse Store, and Monetization teams to build shared understanding of how users perceived value, ownership, and transferability throughout the whole ecosystem.

I mapped how value formation changes based on acquisition mechanics. This helped teams distinguish between engagement systems and monetization systems — two things that look similar from a product perspective but operate on entirely different psychological principles.

Act III · What Changed

The research moved the conversation from "which currency should win?" to "how does the whole ecosystem work together?" — and that changed what four teams were building toward.

Strategic Impact

Research shaped the Metaverse Monetization Strategy and unified initiatives on 4 pillars

Twelve studies across 25+ countries surfaced the behavioral, emotional, and economic foundations of how users form value in virtual worlds. This became the backbone of Meta's Metaverse Monetization Strategy — adopted org-wide and organized around four unified pillars that aligned previously siloed teams.

01Trust-Based Economic Design
02Interoperable Currency Architecture
03Creator Economy Enablement
04Behavioral Foundation for Monetization
Long-term Framework

Principles for Interoperable Economy in the Metaverse

Beyond the immediate strategy, the research established lasting design and strategy principles — a framework for how virtual economies should be architected as Meta scaled the metaverse.

Design principles for interoperable economy in the Metaverse

The framework artifact — shared with Metaverse Economy leads

Tactical Outcomes · Design Sprint

What changed for each tool

Facilitated a 4-week Harmonizing Economy Tools Design Sprint with economy leadership — operationalizing insights into a shared decision-making framework. For the first time, four teams were working from the same map of the ecosystem.

Harmonizing Economy Tools Design Sprint

4-week design sprint — economy leadership, 4 teams, one map

01

Quest Cash → Cashback Wallet

Rebranded and redesigned as a wallet component convertible to Meta Credits — creating the interoperability loop users were missing. The gap between currencies finally had a bridge.

Ecosystem gap closed
02

Prevented a costly global rollout

Stopped a planned global launch of redundant Meta Credits gift cards. Redirected to redesigning redemption for existing Quest Gift Cards instead — saving org resources and eliminating a major source of user confusion.

Avoided duplicated investment
03

Meta Points repositioned

Shifted from standalone currency to creator branding tool for in-world economies. Enabled creators to build proprietary virtual economies using the platform's infrastructure — unlocking a creator monetization layer that didn't exist before.

New creator economy surface
04

4-Week Design Sprint → Shared Framework

Facilitated the Harmonizing Economy Tools Sprint with economy leadership — operationalizing research into a shared decision-making framework. For the first time, four teams were working from the same map of the ecosystem.

4 roadmaps unified
The metric that mattered at launch
$126K
3 months post-launch
$3M
12 months post-launch

Not because the product changed dramatically.
Because the trust did.

Next Study

When nobody uses the button that does everything

Optym · RouteMAX →

Get in touch

Let's think something through together.

dewal.manisha@gmail.com +1 (352) 631-4856 LinkedIn New York, New York