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.

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.