They made it so that the disk is required to boot up the game and it’s required to run the game, even though it is entirely on the HDD, it’s kind of like having a power point on the ceiling, very nice to have, but utterly useless, you will need to get up on objects to plug it in, keep the cord held so that it doesn’t fall out while using the device that is plugged in.

Thank you Microsoft, handy but not exactly what we wanted… actually let’s just say DO NOT WANT!

I was really more focused on the features I’d want than the overall design. And I tried to stay relatively close to the aesthetic of the current blades. If I were to blow it up and start over, I’d certainly do it differently (but probably not quite like MS ultimately did it).

Thanks for the comments!

ORRRR you could even make that the “in-dashboard guide” and just pull it up whenever you’d like to switch pages. (Somewhat counter-intuitive but who knows how it would actually work.)

Of course this is all just a pipe dream since Microsoft’s focused on their new form over function Dashboard. It’s a Frankenstein monster made out of PS3 and Wii parts. Ah well.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to expand upon what you’ve already thrown together if I ever get kinda bored. (I’m in the design field myself.)

But this post is not a criticism! The design is well thought-out and I respect that. I prefer the PS3’s interface to the garbage MS calls ‘Blades’ and I wish the work and features you’ve created (hot keys, very nice!) could somehow have been used. It looks great.

The article overall was very well written and I even liked the pre-liminary design ideas he had… but it was just one mans ideas, it will be interesting what the new dashboard will be like, it may even be good!!

and has achievements.
and chat.
and doesn’t crash whenever anything changes.
etc etc etc.

hahaha!

There are some who are over blowing the situation and claiming that the Blade system is unusable, you really can’t take their opinions very seriously. It has its advantages over Sony’s XMB. In fact, your solution seems to keep with the Blade’s method of organization, (ie. a blade for media covers all media functions).

While I love the concept and execution of your design, there are a few things MS considers that weren’t considered in your design. In some cases, MS takes these considerations too far. Some are mentioned in the above comments, but I thought I’d go into a few more details…

Firstly, they require a solution that is quickly and effortlessly adaptable to both 4:3 and 16:9. The wasted space to the left and right of the blades, a large portion of the “unused space” is there because the relevant portion of the screen is in a 4:3 format. Your solution makes excellent use of a 16:9 screen, but it would be hard to adapt to a 4:3 screen.

Secondly there needs to be a buffer of at least 20 pixels around the screen due to TVs with overscan issues (Harry, who posted a comment here, mentions a 10% safe zone). Whatever the number is, it should be accounted for.

Personally I think at the very least, some tweaking has to be done to the existing interface. I’ll try to make a blog post in regards to what sort of tweaks I would do.

Again, thanks for sharing…the only big hurdle would be tweaking this so it would be easily adaptable to a 4:3 setup. Perhaps the easiest and best solution would be to add horizontal black stripes to the top and bottom? The only concern then is if your text is too small, but to me it looks large enough on my 19″ monitor.

I’d also love some really neat screensaver for my xbox, for when I leave the TV on, so it looks pretty.

However, the only items i would like to see added to this is to have my music selection somewhere near easy to access and fully functional so i can swiftly change songs with-out having to exit the marketplace etc.

The last thing i would like to address is a “menu” for in game use. I would be interested and pleased to watch someone like yourself design the in game menu when i press the guide button.

Theese are only suggestions from my point of view. Hope to see ur design on my xbox soon.

-G0DS F1N3ST-

Are they more focused on shoving ads in your face then they are helping you find the content you’re really interested in? Seems like it. It’s been long enough without a keyword based searching function, that should have been priority number one a year ago.

Mik, your ideas are wonderful and your design suggestions are a step in the right track. Bravo!

“Dash Skins” are the solution many choices for many types of players.

As you say, it would be nice if they came out with a layout designed for HD, but then they would have to develop and test for 2 different designs. UI design is a crossroads of marketing and engineering, and there are often surprising constraints involved.

I’d love to see you work on a scalable design that could somehow accommodate both HD and standard definition. There has been some interesting work with “zoomable” interfaces. Maybe something to that?

We’ll likely have this same problem in future consoles, with the Super-HD crowd complaining that they are limited by the poor 720p souls.

Your redesign also ignores the still large percentage of xbox owners with a non-HD TV.

It baffles me that some of you think this is an improvement over the current dashboard, or that MS would have any interest in hiring him.

Your design, in HD, I think would be better that the current one, or PS3’s.

You make valid points for the direction MS should look into going, but your mock up looks too much like a web site design and that is not appropriate for televisions IMO.

To everyone saying the PS3 has a better interface, I can’t say it’s better at all. I do like how the XMB organizes movies, photos, and games, but finding system settings is more difficult than it should be since it just throws everything into one gigantic line of icons.

There’s a reason why over half of the screen’s surface is “unused,” as you put it. Look at your computer screen, right now. I’d wager that if you broke it down into used and unused space, you’d find that well over half the screen is empty. If it weren’t like this, and followed the principles of design you put forth above, it’d be too busy for anyone to actually use in a productive way.

It was with good intentions, but your vision is terrible - you’re obviously not a UI designer. Even looking at this website, you’ve not covered up obvious problems with the WordPress template’s CSS (see the white bar underneath the footer?).

How can anyone think this silly mockup is a good idea?

I will give MS credit. The blade system is brilliant and intuitive. Unfortunately, it has outgrown itself and that is apparent in your outstanding analysis. That said, I think there is a consideration problem.

You are assuming a 16:9 HDTV is being used. What are the percentage calculations for a 4:3 SDTV? The blade system has to be scalable to fit the different TV’s. Yours doesn’t seem quite as scalable.

Nonetheless, excellent work!

It’s some really great work, and more importantly, great information on your thought process to the UI design and functionality!

I agree with others, I’m sure they’re way too tied to the blades concept to give it up for a more functional UI, but there’s no doubt they can actually make it work if they’d just lighten up on ads and give the player more space for content that’s relevant.

I put down a disagreement card, however, to your comment about there being talented folk who could make it work. I’m sure they’re talented, but seeing as how they’ve been injecting more and more crap into the UI and making slight tweaks here and there that are more like band-aids than actual fixes, it seems they either don’t have the talent to make it work or there are forces that simply won’t let them take away their advertising $$$$.

Here’s hoping, though.

1. I don’t consider my pair of mocked-up screens to be the answer to what ails the blade interface, by any means. Microsoft has plenty of talented designers, great agency partners, and a slew of UI experts that could put their heads together and really make big improvements to the interface. My intent was really to point out some issues that I think are holding the dashboard back, offer some possible solutions, and, most importantly, spark some discussion. I’m frankly most satisfied that I accomplished that last point. The fact that we’ve received so many page views, links, and comments on this article demonstrates that Xbox 360 owners largely feel some of the same frustrations.

2. I took the approach of evolving the look of the dashboard, so you’ll see the signs of vestigial colors, shapes, and stylistic conventions. It would be interesting to consider scuttling the entire thing and starting from scratch, but that seems even more unlikely than the pipedream presented.

3. I had no intention of creating any sort of System Warz™ with this (to be fair, this really happened on other sites that picked this up—y’all were perfectly well-behaved). Just because it’s pointing out areas for improvements in the 360, don’t take that as tacit approval of all things Sony. They have their own issues that aren’t related to this discussion. I love the 360—just check my embarrassing gamerscore.