Microsoft has shared a new promotional video outlining the development of Xbox One.
They explain that they sought to use a consistent design language across their products, and Xbox One is no different. To make the best experience possible in the living room, Team Xbox arranged for a deep collaboration across different disciplines. (This is presumably justification for how Microsoft as a whole reorganized their company to avoid redundancies as well.)
The thrust is towards using simple design elements, to make the UX simple, intuitive, and immersive. Therefore the UI feels unified with the hardware.
The design did not have much going in the way of ornamentation, so instead of, say, the skeuomorphism espoused in Apple devices, you get a UI that’s filled with squares in basic colors, and using simple words and phrases. Microsoft paid attention to every single aspect of that experience, down to the icons and fonts used.
Microsoft claims that their software and hardware teams worked very well together in the development of the new Kinect (again, perhaps proof that their reorganization worked out). The combination of multiple technologies and algorithms come together to analyze large datasets. Presumably, it was precisely this kind of technology that powers Xbox Fitness.
In the end, though, they roll it back and explain that it’s not the technology that’s most important, but the experience that the user has.
Overall, it’s a very interesting video, revealing a side of Xbox One and Microsoft that we may not have known before. You can check out the full thing here.
