Xbox 360

In 2008 I was hired by Microsoft as Partner/Creative Director to lead the Xbox 360 product redesign. At the time Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo were fighting it out for the global gamer audience. Nintendo had pulled way ahead with the Wii by creating a new category of casual console gamers. But Xbox was obsessed with gaining the number one slot. I’d personally never seen an organization so driven to succeed. The culture was infectious and it was an easy one to join:) Xbox had many things to boast including Halo, lots of advanced technologies, Xbox Live and a content ecosystem. Unfortunately after years of feature-creep Xbox’s best assets had gotten lost inside a directionless and static interface which was as hard to navigate as it was to program and update. As Creative Director my strategy was 3-fold. First, design a singular and highly usable UI and UX system which embodies both the Xbox brand legacy and its aspirations. Second, make the system as procedural and dynamic as possible bringing live programed content and the 8 million-strong Xbox Live community to the fore. And third, use our advanced CPU and GPU power to up level our core Xbox experience to be as performant and aesthetically rich as our AAA games - creating an all-up brand continuity between both. Our final product called Xbox NXE shipped in November 2008 via network download as a total rewrite of the firmware. What were Xbox static “Blades” were now dynamic “channels and tiles” that were entirely programmable through a redesigned and rewritten CMS we deployed globally to all Xbox hubs. Post launch we moved into the #1 spot and quickly got out of our $1.5 billion hole. The NXE interface along with the addition of Netflix to our platform and the success of Halo are credited as being the main catalysts for our success.

Creative Director, Design Leader, Team Manager

UX, Interaction Design, Visual Design

UX conceptual development, Art Direction, Interaction Lead, Team and Leads Management, Budgets and Operations