Working at Roblox: Meet Zhang Ruofan

Zhang Ruofan is the chief designer of the Roblox Studio Foundation team. She focuses on making Roblox Studio a world-class “metaworld editor”.

Describe your role in Roblox.

The Studio Foundation team is committed to making Roblox Studio a world-class “metaverse editor”. We provide “a powerful set of free tools that allow developers to quickly build, publish and manipulate their experience.” As the designers of Studio Foundation, we combine holistic and systematic thinking with a user-centered design process. Enable the team to balance long-term goals and immediate needs.

What is one of the most interesting aspects of working in Roblox’s team?

Solving complex problems through evidence-based methods is an interesting challenge. Roblox Studio itself has grown exponentially in the past decade. It’s interesting to see how it evolved from the original “physical editor” on the web to today’s integrated and complex platform. The ever-expanding user base, growing product demand and evolving technical requirements have all contributed to unique design challenges. We are not building a set of different functions, but an extensible system. Similar to mathematics and physics, it is worthwhile to be able to propose simple and elegant solutions to describe and help deal with complex scenarios.

How is your experience in the Roblox team different from other roles you have held?

The unfettered growth opportunities and outstanding colleagues in the team left a deep impression on me. In the past four years, I have been able to explore different roles and fields that interest me. This is also a super supportive environment-whenever I seek feedback to grow, my manager and teammates always share their honest and very helpful feedback. In addition, they are a very inspiring team. Designers, product managers, engineers, data scientists-everyone helped me gain new perspectives and knowledge in different fields.

During your work at Roblox, what are the most interesting projects you have participated in and what have you learned?

The most interesting projects are those that I work directly with our developer community. It is always interesting to hear their stories and understand their experiences-how they learned about Roblox, how they started building in Studio, and how they encountered challenges in the experience and how they felt in these scenarios. By contacting developers, we can validate ideas and discover new opportunities. This also hints at my biggest gain during my work at Roblox: solving the problem correctly is very important, but the most important thing is to solve the right problem.

What is one thing you like about Roblox culture?

I like that one of the company’s core values ​​is “respect for the community”, and I can feel it integrated into our daily work. In meetings, you often hear people say, “Does this solve the user’s problem”, “What are the real user needs here”, or “Imagine you are a developer: even though it is really painful.” These Comments come from everyone, no matter what role or title they have. We build products for users, not for ourselves or the users we imagined.

Are you interested in joining Roblox’s product design team?We are always looking for new talents, so come and see us corp.roblox.com/careers/ See if there is a suitable role for you.