Recent Comments:
Blow explains dilemma of Braid's price to 1Up {Joystiq}
Aug 7th 2008 9:13PM This game is easily worth $15 dollars. I'm about half-way through and currently feel it is one of my favourite games of all time. It is an extremely engaging puzzler.
If it helps put it into perspective. This is about a 6 hour game. There have been $60 dollars games in and around that play time (some without any multi-player).
What do you want to know about the 'new Xbox experience'? {Joystiq}
Jul 14th 2008 6:33PM Also, can you put pictures out of what it looks like browsing a big list, or demo'ing some form of search interface?
What do you want to know about the 'new Xbox experience'? {Joystiq}
Jul 14th 2008 6:30PM For the more hardcore among us, can we please have, say Master Chief avatars, or our Fable 2 characters as avatars? Like Gamerpics, these could be unlocked.
Wishful tinkering: Redesigning the 360 Dashboard {Joystiq}
Jul 1st 2008 5:03PM Thanks NATO, I've been running teams building a ton of software from client apps to mobile and computer web sites. Usability is more important than people think and sometimes you don't know how bad something is until you see the alternative. Part of that is because companies tend to put the emphasis on graphic design instead of usability.
Wishful tinkering: Redesigning the 360 Dashboard {Joystiq}
Jul 1st 2008 3:08PM They can redesign the dashboard BUT keep the blades. I don't think the blades are bad, it is just better managing the data within it and easing the ability to find content.
Wishful tinkering: Redesigning the 360 Dashboard {Joystiq}
Jul 1st 2008 3:05PM Hey RC
On the PS3, things like having video clips of all the video's is interesting and certainly technically cool, there is just a ton of moving elements competing for your attention.
On top of that, as you select elements, previous menus will escape to the background creating residual noise that looks similar to what you are already looking at that.
Then, in cases where you have options you get this right-side panel that asks questions. The panel doesn't 'feel'/'flow', hard to describe.
On top of that is just the sheer amount of stuff you tend to see on the screen. Having lots of options to configure is great for the exploratory person, or the hardcore, but distracting for more users and that is worsened by seeing all the menu options that have nothing to do with what you are using still on the screen. I know they did it so that you can understand where you came from BUT it is just too much data.
Anyhow, it is the prettiest/sexiest of the UIs.
Wishful tinkering: Redesigning the 360 Dashboard {Joystiq}
Jul 1st 2008 2:58PM Hey Obie,
The Wii user inteface is definitely the easiest to grasp right away and navigate through. What may be more limiting is how to scale to lots of channels to easily find what you are looking for.
I'm not a huge fan of their graphical design however. People compare them to Apple, but Apple's graphical designs are more elegant.
Don't mind me ... I deal a lot of the UIs, so tend to be pretty opinionated :).
Wishful tinkering: Redesigning the 360 Dashboard {Joystiq}
Jul 1st 2008 2:43PM Sorry to be blunt, but I'm afraid I dont' agree with the design here. While some interesting ideas, on the whole it doesn't work.
First, the UI needs to work on SD and HD screens, which this won't. Even on HD screens the amount you can see is variable. You cannot ignore the SD, they are the majority.
Second, using buttons to choose the tab is cumbersome.
Third, there is too much information, particularly on the blades tab. Related is the excessive use of color for everything (including icons). The dashboard DID have color icons in some areas for awhile but MS took them out in the last dashboard update because it was just too distracting.
Fourth, the blades tabs have too much space, relatively speaking occupied by the non blade information.
Fifth, search is tough and mostly likely wouldn't be used by most people. The header spinner MS used is a fairly good primary solution as long as you have options (including ratings, either globally or friends only). Search is potentially doable BUT only as a secondary measure. Remember too, that the console is international, so doing that well for characters spaces of thousands of characters is needed (ie Japanese).
Sixth, it is generally considered a bad design pattern to have a ton of different flows (up/down vs left/right) for UI.
I think the analysis of space occupation is a good one, and something MS should consider heavily, but generally your designs aren't the direction to go.
It is hard to determine which is worse, the PS3 or 360 dashboard, they both have issues. I find the PS3 interface more distracting than the 360, though it is 'prettier'.
So again, I agree the dashboard could be better, something like this is even more distracting than the PS3's interface. Take a look at Apple's interfaces...while I don't agree with everything Apple does, they don't give UI's that suffer from overload. They are stream-lined and purpose built for a short number of tasks.
Video Marketplace Weekly: it's Sunday edition {Xbox 360 Fanboy}
May 25th 2008 11:28PM Actually I recommend The Orphange. Good film from a good director. Watched it last night (same director that is doing The Hobbit).
I also recommend The Life Aquatic, though not everyone likes that style of humour.
N+ Interview: MS hates User-generated content? {Xbox 360 Fanboy}
Mar 1st 2008 11:15PM As a software system designer, sounds to me the reason they don't allow it is pretty simple. MS is probably missing a few things in the system and I'm guessing they are frantically trying to address this quickly. They are missing a way to uniquely identify content and a way to mark content as inappropriate (which in essence would shutdown all uses of that content). I'm guessing they just hadn't thought of it in the latest iterations of Live. For managability issues this has to be a Live wide system, not per game. Otherwise that is just too much work for both MS and/or the game makers (e.g. Turn 10).
This isn't the same as, say, YouTube videos. Microsoft CAN uniquely identify and pull down games (say bad demo, or so)...that is more like YouTube. User generated content in game is different. What MS will do is create some libraries that all games with user generated content MUST implement. That library will properly wrap the user generated content with unique identifies and ability to pull (maybe even allow gamers to rate the appropriateness of the content).
SO, I don't believe MS is trying to prevent anything, they just need to build the system and tools for it. What is more curious is why they aren't talking about the issue and letting people know more openly that the issue is in fact being addressed.
And let's be clear, as much as everyone says the PS3 is more open, there are more games on the 360 that allow for user generated content than on the PS3. Yes, it is more restricted (ie no Unreal 3 mods), but MS DOES want it, they are just figuring out how to do it in an appropriate fashion. Which brings me to Halo 3 and the Forge...remember MS has commonly used Halo as the game to test new Live features. Expect their learnings from Halo 3 (and Forza 2), to be strong learning/starting points.
