360 design process out of the box
Some members of the Xbox design team did a session with a usablity interest group in Seattle called SIGCHI and provided a bit of insight into the design process for the 360 interface and... styro-foam. Above are four design possibilities that were narrowed down to the "blades" we all know. ExperienceUCD.com crashed due to all the attention, but here's an excerpt (thanks to Xbox-Scene):
On the original XBOX there were 45 screens that needed to fit on 250MB while on the new design and complexity of the system there were 450 screens. These screens had to fit on 2.5MB. To accomplish this was quite a feat. The team had narrowed the core design to four interface
The next steps they conducted were usability testing of the four designs. Each of the designs had a flash interface designed and tested in four regions with around 6 participants per region. The top two designs were the top two (loop and concertina). The main reason was ease of use. The overall winner was concertina because of the unique interface coupled with the user feedback on how easy the interface was to navigate. The interface zoomed the user in and out giving them a spatial experience and relationship.
The team also acknowledged the importance of the out of box experience. How the user feels, when purchasing and opening their product . Apple does an outstanding job at this. A great reference was the Japanese do a great job at this with their packaging. You buy a snack that has 25 cents worth of product but $2 worth of packaging. They understand the importance of this experience. Would you rather open a brown box with black writing on the side per almost all of consumer electronics or have that experience be just as ritualistic as turning on your TV. I feel like I carry this torch every day at my job, but it isn't just about the end product, but how someone gets there and their experience along the way.
I would have liked to have seen a little less thought put into the pretty cardboard and a little more put into actually getting the packages on the shelves. Assuming you had a box to open, are you happy with the 360 "out-of-box experience" and interface design (at least it wasn't cribbed from Dell)?
