The Xbox 360 design team has been compared to the builders of Disney World. Not the ones responsible for the rides themselves, but the ones responsible for building the layout of the different lands around the park, and for the tunnel system running underneath the complex and for all the wires and plumbing in and around the "Happiest Place on Earth". By designing the system, everything from the shape of the console to the now familiar "blade" style of the interface, have created a place where game developers can build the rides and make the process of navigating around the park a fun and simple process.One great advantage that the team had was substantially more time and manpower then they had for the original Xbox. Just 1 year and an internal team of 4 were used for the original Xbox, compared to 20 months and an internal team of 19-not to mention 4 external design teams, for the Xbox 360. Many of these teams were spread out in different parts of the world to better understand cultural differences between different markets and regions. Teams in San Francisco, USA and Osaka, Japan, for example, were primarily responsible for coming up with the theme of the system itself. After many designs and much collaboration between these two teams, the approach was finalized.
The team had very specific goals when they approached designing a next-generation system. First and foremost, it had to be approachable and accessible for traditional non-gamers, but still give off that certain aura respected by the hardcore gamers. The team started by taking a look at the original Xbox system, which had the theme of "The Hulk", the big green super-hero that is filled with raw, brutal power. They decided fairly early on in development to modify this theme so something more restrained-"Bruce Lee", the great martial arts performer: all that power, but hidden just below the surface.
Even the Xbox360 logo got this re-branded treatment. The original Xbox logo was pulsing with power and even would tear out of the screen on occasion to demonstrate the ferocity and power that it contained. The 360 logo, on the other hand, still bears the familiar green "X", but it is in the core of a metallic sphere, which holds this power within and appears ready to unleash it when needed.
The design of the console itself is meant to resemble an inhale; breathing in just before unleashing its power. However, the team knew all along that customizability was going to be central to the system so had to design to allow for different faceplates to be added. This was not only important for the gamer, but also for game designers who can now use these faceplates to help brand their games. In fact, all sorts of face plates have started showing up, including some with NFL teams emblazoned across them. While the controller and some of the peripherals didn't keep with the "inhale" that the box had, they did keep the same feeling; more restrained and subtle and even a bit sexy.
The user interface was one of the more difficult designs to accomplish. While the original Xbox had 250MB of space to utilize, the Xbox360 had only 4.5MB uncompressed or 1.5MB in total! Not only this, they expanded on the original Xbox's 45 screens and grew it ten fold to 450 screens! Several iterations were gone through with the end result being a combination of several of these schemes. Through extensive testing, both from a heuristic standpoint and for usability, the team decided on using the inhale method with the different blades and even added accents on them to resemble the hard-drive accessory attachable on the side.
By starting with art renditions and then testing their creations in Flash, the team was able to refine the design before applying it to the console itself. However, one issue still remaind. In the "HD-Era", televisions are widescreen and bear a 16x9 aspect ratio while older televisions maintain a more square-like 4x3 ratio. What the team ultimately decided upon was to design the interface in a 14x9 ratio. This allowed for them to create just one set of menus which not only saved on time and money but also the precious memory envelope they had to work with. By squeezing the 14x9 into 4x3 and stretching and cropping it to fit the wider 16x9, they found a suitable compromise.
The idea for the navigation was "2 clicks away". This was not in a literal sense because the team quickly realized the best approach was to make things accessible in as few steps as makes practical sense, but not fewer.
In the end, they encouraged everyone to embrace the constraints of your space and design within them. Perfect is impossible and so called "perfect" designs never ship since they are continually being played with. As has been shown, they seemed to have done a pretty solid design job with the Xbox360.
I've been playing games ever since I was a wee lad. My favorite games as a child were the classic Pitfall and a game called SNAFU, which was a sort of puzzle game along the lines of Tron Light Cycles. I've had most of the major console systems since the early days and have a wide range of tastes of games and I'm always eager to give a new one a try.
