When the Xbox One launched two years ago, it brought with it a set of expectations that didn’t align with a loyal consumer base. Since then, Microsoft has made enormous strides rebuilding customer trust and listening to fans about feature improvements.
The New Xbox One Experience (NXOE) arrives on November 12, bringing with it one of the most anticipated new features: backward compatibility with some Xbox 360 titles. But the new dashboard also includes improvements and refinements that reflect the reality that a significant portion of users don’t have the once-bundled Kinect.
We spoke with Richard Irving, partner group program manager at Microsoft about the road to the NXOE and what’s still ahead. The new user interface was born from updates that Microsoft simply couldn’t fit into one of its monthly feature releases. These needed more time to get right.
The Challenge of Multitasking
“We had this vision for Xbox One how multitasking could work on a living room device,” Irving recounts. “If you think back to 2013, the notion of multitasking on your TV was a foreign concept that had a lot of potential. We went into the launch of the Xbox One with a perspective on how multitasking would be great, and in some ways we did it really well.”
Unfortunately, users tend to defy designer expectations. Microsoft quickly found that some of the features weren’t being used as intended, which gave the team places it knew it could pivot.
One example is how players are using the app snapping feature. While you’ll find people snapping TV while playing, other apps get largely ignored.
“I’ll use the party app as an example. It was being used a lot, but not for a long period of time,” Irving explains. “People were launching the party app, sending a party invite, and dismissing the party app and letting it go in the background rather than keeping tabs on the party status as they were playing a game. That was a really good signal to say that persistent snap mode for party probably isn’t the right approach. We’re doing a bunch of optimizations to keep it running concurrent with the game, but that’s not how people are using it. So we knew we should just revisit that architecture.”
Adapting to an Absent Kinect
The new user experience takes into account that many users don’t have a Kinect. The original dashboard was built with an expectation that all Xbox One owners would be able to navigate with voice. The decision to unbundle the sensor created a need for change.
“We did a lot of optimizations for Kinect just based on the assumption that it was going to be in the box,” Irving says. “It’s super easy to launch a game by saying, ‘Xbox go to the name of the game.’ Or its super easy to snap party by saying, ‘Xbox snap party.’ Because we had shortcuts available, we didn’t optimize the path via the controller as much as we could. Our fans sort of picked up on it. Once we unbundled the sensor, the feedback around how we optimized for Kinect started to gain steam and volume with our fans. So it was really important going into the NXOE that we go through and re-optimize these paths for the controller, so people who are controller-only have the fastest, most efficient, delightful experience possible.”
The NXOE doesn’t lose any of its voice or biometric Kinect features. Irving indicates that was important given the data on how those that do own the sensor use it. He likens the reaction to Kinect to how a popular Xbox 360 feature was received in its early days.
“We found that with people who own Kinect, usage of Kinect is very high,” Irving tells us. “Whether they’re using speech or playing Kinect games or using the great biometric recognition for personalization, Kinect usage is really high. If you remember in the Xbox 360 era when we introduced Avatars. It was a hot-button issue. People said, ‘Oh, they’re trying to chase the Wii.’ By the time we launched that holiday, every one of the people who were complaining in the Xbox forums had updated to have an Xbox Live Avatar. There is a similar thing with Kinect. It was a hot-button following launch. If you own a Kinect, you’re using your Kinect a lot for a lot of the things we hoped you would. That was a little bit of a surprise given the bumps in the road we hit with having the Kinect bundled. That’s how we knew that Cortana was going to be a cool thing that our fans love. You look at Kinect owners and they like their Kinect.”
Cortana, a virtual personal assistant (like Apple’s Siri), is available on other Windows 10 devices. She will be coming to Xbox One in 2016. Before she arrives though, users will have plenty to get used to with the new dashboard.
“What was important to solve was how users get to that content simply and easily,” Irving explains. “We’ve done various UI refreshes over the years to improve that. Our model on that is to bring more of that to the surface. The horizontal scrolling goes between categories the way it has for many years now. The addition of a vertical scroll to really get you deeper within that category of content became a really important element for us.”
Read on to find out how the Xbox platform team is tackling some of the biggest challenges of a new dashboard.