New Xbox dashboard layout is on the horizon, and it’s looking good. 😍
It’s not an overhaul, but it addresses feedback you’ve all been asking them to address.
@JezCorden
In the 2nd half of 2022 Xbox started testing an alternate dashboard layout that focussed heavily on dynamic Game Pass content.
Generally speaking, Xbox fans rejected the entire premise of this experiment. In fact the majority of the most popular requests for improving the dashboard experience have gone unanswered for a long time.
It seems they are (for now) rolling back that experiment, and have instead decided to action one of the most common complaints: The dashboard is too busy, and no one can see their dynamic backgrounds.
So what will this new dashboard look like?
Anything that breaks the constraints to “look prettier” is kinda just operating in fantasy land – which is fine, but gets a bit much when all the fans jump in a ridicule the Xbox designers/dashboard engineers for not just ‘doing whatever’.
@wrysanity
Any fan redesign should, in my opinion, always include a few baseline requirements that we can currently observe in the live dashboard, and that we also saw in the more Game Pass focussed experience:
- Font sizes and icons must stay the same size (screen size and DPI considerations).
- Game cards can’t be smaller than the smallest live example in production (this is ~200×200 pixels at 1080p).
- No horizontal scrolling (In my example above: That’s a no no).
- Must design for function (My games/apps should be one click away, must show most recent games/apps)
- Must conform to the existing UI affordances and best practises (like overflowing a ‘peek’ of content below the fold so the user knows to scroll down).
With all that in mind – and considering Jez states the new version is not an overhaul but addresses the common feedback around visibility of the background – I think we can guess the following potential results:
- The dashboard UI might auto-hide or dim after a few seconds, revealing the full background.
- The entire UI may move down a row to reveal more background on first load.
- We might see a simplified top row, that moves “My games and apps” further long the row, and uses the smaller game card size for more density.
- And we might see the removal of the enlarged ‘most recent’ game card to make room for one or two more cards at the expense of the second row.
I’m interested to see just how far they do, or don’t, go. You never know, we might still end up with this one…