Crafting The 360 Interface

MaxConsole writes "Over at Designinteract they have a very interesting feature running on how the Microsoft interface design manager (Russ Glaser) completed the Xbox 360 user interface. The feature goes into depths on the whole two year project for the Xbox 360, the problems they encountered, the testing phase, requirements for the interface as well as the animation and experience design. The feature concludes 'the Xbox 360 interface came in under 3MB. It is slick and fast and, its designers hope, successful.'"

Comments

What Microsoft can actually do

[alvinrod]

It's nice to see a little dose of careful planning and good execution from the people at Microsoft. I'll take things with a grain of salt until I can actually see and use the interface for myself, but it sounds like they put some thought and effort into it.

Microsoft is generally better known for (what most would call) the pile of crap OS known as Windows. Given how most of their products turn out, MS has gained a largely negative reputation. However it's nice to see the people working on the Xbox obviously don't suffer the same shortcomings as everyone else at the company does.

Considering that more and more people will likely begin to switch to Linux or Apple in the coming years, it's interesting to think that Microsoft will rely on the Xbox more and more in the future. In any event it's nice to see that there are a few competent people working there still.

Re:What Microsoft can actually do

[superpulpsicle]

You must be new. M$ only "begin" to care when they are in jeopardy of losing #1 or stuck at #2.

Examples of stuck at #2:
- PS2 sales always higher than xbox.
- Google more used than MSN.

Examples of losing #1:
- Firefox closing in on IE.
- Linux closing in on windows.

When M$ sit on top of the world by themselves, they really don't give 2 shits about quality or you as a customer.

Re:What Microsoft can actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

Examples of losing #1:
- Firefox closing in on IE.
- Linux closing in on windows.

What was the last time you have checked any numbers?

Re:What Microsoft can actually do

[badasscat]

t's nice to see a little dose of careful planning and good execution from the people at Microsoft.

Am I the only one that sees this as a collossal waste of time, money and effort? Am I the only one that just wants a game console to play games? Why do I need an interface with three years and millions of dollars put into it?

I want to turn the machine on, have it be instantly accessible, put a game in and be playing within ten seconds. That's all I need, that's probably all 90% of the world needs out of a game console. In fact, anything more than that is just clutter.

If I start the system with no game, I'd like to be able to manage saves. If I'm online, I'd like to do some basic account management. But these are tasks that would require maybe a week's worth of design by one guy (I work on web interfaces every day, so I'm not saying this without any knowledge of the subject).

Hearing that so much went into the design of the Xbox 360's interface frankly scares me. It does not make me look forward to turning the thing on for the first time. I swear to God, if the first thing I see when I turn the machine on is a dialogue box, it's going back to the store.

Also, whenever you see an interface described as "fast", that's code for "slow, but faster than we thought it'd be given all the crap we've loaded on." Ideally an interface for a game console is so fast that its speed doesn't need describing one way or another. You just don't even think about it. It should be assumed that a game console interface is fast enough to not even be noticed - why would it be otherwise? So this is really not encouraging - it's the opposite, in fact.

Very pretty but...

[It doesn't come easy]

It's just a tabbed dialog box revisited, moving the tabs to the side of the window and stretching them out to the height of the page. Looks nice but they will still have a problem if there are too many tabs needed...

Interface?

[Bellum Aeternus]

For an article about an interface on a web site about interfaces, the interface sucked!

Screenshots that cannot be enlarged, but are too small to see
The screenshot on page 1 links to page 2
The screenshots on other pages are not linkable.
And the damn ad at the top kept trying to talk to me; I'm at work! O_o

Otherwise, the 360's interface looks cool. Gotta play [no pun] with it a bit before I have any real comments.