Xbox and Games

Designing the future of gaming.

The successful design and launch of the Xbox 360 game console and home-entertainment hub reveals a partnership between design, marketing, brand and the product teams.

"With this launch we were focused on not just a powerful gaming console that appealed to our hard core gamers but a more open and inviting environment that would be the catalyst for connected entertainment with a strong emphasis on social activity" says Shelley Armstrong Art director with EXG "The key here was to make the whole experience end to end feel like it was designed by one hand–collaboration and focus of purpose played a huge role in the success of this undertaking."

Traditionally, industrial design, graphic design, user-interface design, advertising, and so on have been separate disciplines, with a product essentially being handed off from one to the other in logical sequence. However, delivering the integrated customer experience demanded today requires a more cooperative and, in many ways, more difficult approach.

Don Coyner, General Manager, Design and Planning at Microsoft, "It is critical that you really have a team of people on brand and industrial design who understand the holistic customer experience and that it isn't thought of as piecemeal. This experience might start from the retail display and continue through purchasing a product, handling the packaging, opening the box and exposing the product, removing and then turning on the product for the first time, etc. This entire experience must reflect the message the brand statement is trying to make.

"A complex design challenge like this depends on breaking down barriers to understanding, bringing in senior management frequently in the process and making sure that everyone on the team understand the final vision, even changing the work environment to open collaborative space to foster the sense of camaraderie and purpose needed," says Shelley Armstrong. "Every detail was important and we always stopped to ask ourselves if this was the right thing to do from the customers perspective."