Mixer Console Update

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

The Mixer mission is to bring streamers and viewers together with the world's fastest and only interactive streaming platform. Mixer is known for its accessible personality and community. This partnership would align two community-first platforms. Xbox brings 40 million new users to Mixer. Mixer is a great extension of the Xbox mission, adds value for its customers and provides both with increased retention. 

THE TEAM & DELIVERABLES

Working with a design studio lead and a visual designer, I focused on interaction and visual design. I partnered closely with the Mixer design team, Xbox product management and user research partners to understand, plan, design, test and communicate our Mixer console update. 

While I worked with a team, I personally created technical and user flows, wireframes, visuals and presentations. All presentations and share-outs mentioned here were driven by me.

POWERED BY MIXER

The underlying technology of "Powered by Mixer" is how the Xbox ecosystem would capture, manage and share media such as screenshots, game clips and broadcasts. I surveyed the potential discovery points in the system. Then from a screen-level investigated the design implications. 

CRAFTING THE STORY

Viewing the screenflow from the carousel to above

You've just captured some awesome gameplay and you want to share it with your friends. You easily navigate to your Recent Captures and choose the clip.  However, upon learning about a new clip management feature, decide to check it out. After learning about Capture Bank, you see all of your recent captures with rich metadata.  You choose your clip and make some edits and select where you want to share the clip. 

CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS

Capture Bank mental model
In the legacy model, game content captured by users is automatically shared to their Activity Feed and stored on the Xbox Live servers, with a cap and overflow to OneDrive. Less than 1% of that content is ever edited or receives intentional views. Content that is intentionally edited has significantly higher engagement. A new model, "intentional content," would drive engagement and significantly reduce the cost of storing content on Xbox Live.

Intentional content is content that a user edits in some way. Content is no longer automatically shared. Intentional content shared to the Activity Feed would be saved in a user's "Capture Bank", up to X-GB, for up to 14 days. The exceptions are 4K content (stored locally) and broadcasts. After 14 days, the content will move to their local machine. The challenge: How is this communicated?

Iterations for both web and console

Although the model of 14-day broadcast expiration is well-understood with Twitch streamers, it was new to the Xbox community. The goal was to point users toward a new version of an existing experience and show them the model had changed. Working with the team focused on the new UI for Xbox One X, we collaborated on emerging patterns. Specifically, introducing new content types to their overall pattern library.

Having worked on the success of first-run/teaching moments within the Xbox App for PC, I also partnered with them to leverage their work with teaching moments in the new console UI. While release schedules overlapped somewhat and resources were scarce, we were able to negotiate support for our own work.

Communicating new paradigms and terms
Introducing new paradigms and terms is ripe with opportunity to work with user research and copy to test for clarity. We did this early and often. Clarity being key for user retention.

What's Next?

Refinement and iteration.

Designs were shared with the larger design, development, user testing and partner teams for feedback and quick iteration. And ultimately, leadership for buy-in. The leadership presentation was led by our product management partners.

The Mixer console update is currently live. However, the "Powered by Mixer" story is still awaiting its green light.