The success of the Xbox 360 is due to the leadership of the lead Designer, Shelby Armstrong as well as adherence whether intentional or not, to several of John Maeda’s laws of simplicity.
Designing the Design Process: Shelby Armstrong
Shelby Armstrong, lead designer of the Xbox 360, makes some interesting points as to what it takes for a product like the Xbox 360 to come to fruition. Armstrong’s twin concepts of Pixel to Plastic and Design by One Hand, are fascinating and reveal how a good plan can lead to a successful product many years later.
The concept of ‘Pixel to Plastic’ embodies the idea that the many stake holders involved in a design process, (in the case of the Xbox, the designers, branding, engineering and marketing departments) must work in tandem to produce a coherent design based on core design principles laid out far in advance. By following core design principles each department can work in different cities and even different countries while maintaining an efficient design schedule.
The concept of Design by One Hand is the end result of following through on the initial design principles. The Xbox 360 from case, to controller, box to peripheral, appears to be designed by the same person; in reality the Xbox 360 combines the efforts of many people over the course of several years.
Laws of Simplicity and the Xbox 360
The core design principles behind the Xbox 360 follows two of John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity to a tee.
Reduce: the simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
The Xbox 360 packs a lot of power under the hood, which was hidden intentionally. The menu system is designed around a ‘blade’ theme, with each blade revealing only what is needed, with most used items in the top layer.
Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
Again the Xbox 360 ‘blade’ menu system allows the gamer to access much information on a need to know, organized system. although there are 450 menu pages available on the Xbox 360, the gamer is only exposed to relevant information.
These two laws inform the design of the Xbox 360 and I assume they were considered as core design principles from the very beginning. The adherence to these two laws certainly contribute to the successful design of the Xbox 360.
Enter the Wii
The Wii’s design process is a mystery to me as I do not have access to the inside story of how it came to be. From the outside the Wii seems to follow a Design by One Hand principle. The entire unit is white and angular, the controller is white and angular, and the repetition of white simplicity can be seen throughout the menu system, package design and peripheral design.
Nintendo has capitalized on simple straight forward design and reduced the Wii to its essence as a gaming platform; even going as far as reducing controller complexity throwing out the multi buttoned monster controllers in favor of a simpler haptic controller based on intuitive movement. Following Maeda’s Law of Reduction, the Wii has distinguished itself from its competition and led to the Wii being the most successful among the three top gaming systems available today: Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii.
Although different in approach, both the Xbox 360 and Wii have followed sound design principles, finding success in the highly competitive video game market.
