Xbox ONE
In 2010 the Xbox organization began work on Xbox One, a Next Gen leap for Microsoft’s most exciting product and strongest consumer brand. We were charged with regaining the number one position in the gaming console business and more importantly, becoming a world class entertainment ecosystem experience that appealed to a vastly broader and global group of people. Because I had successfully lead the Xbox 360 and ZuneHD design projects in 2008 and 2009, I was asked to Creative Direct the UX Design, Aesthetic Design, Interaction Design and Brand Design and get Xbox One off to an inspired and aggressive start. While we had a directional change in product strategy we also had a brand to both further embolden and grow in terms of its UX vocabulary. How does the spirt of Xbox instantiate on iOs or Android? Can our grid flex and our type ramp elegantly across all our screens? How does Xbox One accommodate robust entertainment services like Hulu and Amazon? How can we use our huge new technology powers to create a fantastic entertainment experience for gamers and non-gamers? How can we get people to lean back and say "whoa"?:)
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The Xbox One design opportunity/problem space was vast and unique. My first move was to immerse the designers and the Xbox team all up in the emerging product dynamics. This included the Xbox content ecosystem and marketplace (Music, Games, Movies) the Xbox app platform, Xbox Live (our 50 million person multiplayer network), Kinect-enabled NUI interactions, mobile and second screen experiences, Windows Phone and Windows Desktop Xbox experiences, iOS and Android apps, and even cable TV.
Xbox is an aggressive product on all fronts: technology, content and customers. And we’ve gained some high ground over the years as a robust and inviting developer platform. But as it often happens with modern platforms that seek to compete by aggressively adding services and features, the Xbox experience and story were a mess and the UX in particular was fracturing under the weight of so many features. Through product design and brand we had to bring something singular and simple to people, something they felt both comfortable with and fascinated by and something a person could hold inside their imagination.
This was a tall order. While I had plenty of designers who could dream up heroic moments, most the group couldn’t innovate in terms of the holistic Xbox experience and that’s where we had to be.
I felt strongly that what we really needed (and the industry also needed) was a new kind of design sensibility, one inspired by and at ease with these new product dynamics and big complexities. One also obsessed with creating big beautiful and invisible it-just-works moments and with what I call if/then design or the aesthetics of algorithms. And finally a sensibility keenly aware that everything from micro interactions to sweeping scenarios is an expression of the product and should be treated like the brand moment it is.
Eventually I changed the team DNA accordingly with a few new hires but mostly by cultivating this approach of a holistic system sensibility in myself and others and of course in the products.
Next I directed the teams to go broad with holistic concepts, proof-point prototypes and brand themes spanning console, mobile and even web. I also directed the effort to create maximum user flow by combining thoughtful UX articulations with a singular design language (interactive and aesthetic) across the system.
I believe we created some amazing work. At that time it was the some of best of my career. Largely that’s because of the kind of designers we’d become and the culture we’d created. I’ve always been a very aesthetically focused designer and that’s still true. But from the Xbox One project I really learned to craft that aesthetic beyond how something looks, feels and behaves to how it affects everything around it and especially how it flows with other screens and across networks and services.
In 2012, a year before Xbox One shipped, I was asked to join what would become Microsoft Analog and create HoloLens. It was an opportunity to work with Alex Kipman, founder of the Kinect and HoloLens and a friend whose vision resonated deeply with me. The project artifacts presented here include work up to that point.
Details
My Role :
Creative Director, Design Leader, Team Manager
Key Team Disciplines :
UX, Interaction, Aesthetics, Brand, Prototyping, Storytelling
Team Size :
20-40
My Key IC Contributions :
Conceptual Development, UX/Visual Development, Brand Development, Project Direction, Art Direction, Storytelling
The Xbox Design Language had always stood on its own apart from the Microsoft Design language. For Xbox One it was time to bring the two together into an all up responsive, interactive and brand-focused system that celebrated content and connections.
For Xbox One, cross-screen design meant more than just being responsive, we also optimized for each form factor working together. For instance in the Xbox Music experience, when the tablet and TV are connected the 10ft screen is used for a high definition ambient visusalization or playback whereas the tablet is used for command and control or augmented second screen activities.
We were hungry to bring Microsoft Surface into the Xbox One story. This concept, which also lead to Xbox Smart Glass, exploited Xbox Video’s ability to scrape media for the actors faces and serve up corresponding details in real time. The elegant UX and layout were some of our best moments. This video and accompanying prototype were successful in getting 3rd party partners like HBO to develop on our platform.
Early on Xbox One had an on-demand interactive TV-first strategy that was compelling but lacked any real product thinking. My team and I created this product concept video to bring the features and capabilities into one cohesive story.
With Kinect enabled voice command + control, gesture, personalization and cloud-based search our UX opportunities opened up considerably. We made several UX prototypes such as this one exploring search-based navigation and the hardware's new capacity to “fast switch” between all apps and modes. I personally loved the "co-verbal" interactions between gesture and voice which later informed our work on HoloLens.
