Xbox Sustainability

Audience

Casual and hardcore Xbox gamers, Microsoft stakeholders

Teams

V-Team: Maxwell Crabill, Mario Lin, Alfredo Miro
Xbox Devices Design (Managed by Orvar Halldorsson)
Xbox Support Design (Managed by Efus Richman, Karlo Reyes)

Contributions

General UX and UI Design
Research and Literature Review
High-Fidelity Prototyping
Microinteractions

Oct 2021—Oct 2022

Meeting climate goals by changing the way millions of Xbox players set up their console.

In October 2021, the vast majority of Xbox consoles had been set up in a power mode called Connected Standby (CS), which would increase power consumption twenty-fold while the console was off.

I was given ownership of the Xbox Devices Design team's sustainability efforts and placed on a V-Team consisting of myself, one researcher, and one developer. We set out to discover how best to migrate this majority of Xbox players from CS mode to its environmentally-friendly sibling, Resource Saving (RS) mode.

We audited Xbox's existing out-of-box and settings experiences and conducted research to understand the relationships between Xbox users, gaming, and sustainability. We implemented a reworked out-of-box experience, user incentives, and a re-imagined approach to power modes.

How might we increase the amount of Xbox consoles set up in Resource Saving (RS) mode, as opposed to Connected Standby (CS)?

Background

01
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Two Power Modes: Understanding the Problem

To meet Microsoft's ambitious climate goals, Xbox needed to reduce it's scope 3 emissions by 50%. It was determined that the most significant lever we could pull was in Xbox power settings.

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Modern Xbox consoles have two power modes: Resource Saving (RS) and Connected Standby (CS). These had previously been known as "Energy Saver" (RS) and "Instant on" (CS).

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In CS mode, consoles never fully shut down, drawing 20x as much power. This enables multiple "next gen" features, and patches up a particularly grievous painpoint of older consoles—their lengthy boot time—by allowing them to "start up" significantly faster.

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Many design choices had been made to purposefully encourage users to select CS mode and "get the most out of their console," such as the appealing name "Instant On."

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As a result, over 75% of consoles had been set up into CS mode, and their idle energy draw had been accounting for over 30% of console emissions.

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It became our goal to convert as many of these CS users to RS as possible.

02
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Example: A Harmful MOOBE Experience

A prime example of harmful existing UX was in the MOOBE (Mobile Out-of-Box Experience).

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Users were defaulted into selecting "Instant On" (CS).

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All users, including those who had selected "Energy Saver" (RS), would be asked to enable remote features two screens later.

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RS users selecting the emphasized "enable" button would be ambushed by a screen informing them they had made the wrong power mode choice, and would be pressured into switching to "Instant On" (CS) in order to continue.

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To make matters worse, CS was not actually required to enable remote features, only to enable one crucial remote feature: remote wake.

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As a result of this pattern, the vast majority of consoles set up through MOOBE were set up in CS mode.

Crucially, consoles set up through OOBE (console Out-Of-Box Experience, as opposed to MOOBE) had better, nearly inverted metrics. The majority of users setting up in OOBE (who were not asked to enable remote features) chose RS mode, indicating that user's power mode preference might be more suggestible than thought.

03
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Example: Settings

I mapped the various features affecting Xbox power consumption, and found them scattered across mulitple pages.

The "Sleep mode & startup" page of Xbox's settings.

Xbox's settings experience was emblematic of an old way of thinking of power modes.

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Options effecting power consumption were scattered across multiple pages.

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Power modes, the most significant choice a user could make, took up a small amount of real estate in the second column of their very own settings page.

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It was unclear to users—and even, as we would find out, developers and Xbox employees—which features CS was truly needed for.

Research and Strategy

04
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UR: Understanding Xbox users relationships with sustainability

The logo for HITS, Microsoft's Human Insights Library. Research and figures across Microsoft are subject to tighter restrictions. Throughout this case study, numbers are obscured and details of studies are omitted.

While creating personas from our audience research, I noticed that user sentiments could be modeled along five common spectrums of motivation.

Responsibility: Personal <--> Systemic
Does one conceptualize sustainability in regards to "their role" in mitigating emissions, or their society's: corporations, policy makers, and figures more powerful and impactful than them?
Mindset: Individual <--> Community
Is one motivated by feelings of individuality and autonomy, or feelings of belonging and connection within a greater community of humans?
Impact: Financial <--> Ecological
Is one motivated toward sustainable behavior more by the impact to their wallets, or the impact to their environment? (Literature review confirms that this spectrum is correlated with the person's political beliefs!)
Scope: Immediate Surroundings <--> Big Picture
Is one more concerned with their convenience and immediate surroundings, or the big picture of their environment?
Lifestyle: Gaming as Priority <--> Gaming as Luxury
How important is it to a person to have access to games and get the most from all of the features of their console?

Additionally, through our audience research, we learned:

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Power mode matters more to players with Gen 8 (Xbox One, One S) consoles: Users whose consoles were newer and thus less impacted by startup time were generally less aware of which power mode they had selected. Users whose consoles were older more impacted by startup time were much more aware.

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Consumers are vocally eager see leadership and top-down solutions. The myth of individual responsibility for climate is rapidly regarded as just that: myth.

05
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LR: A brief primer on sustainable UX principles

I accumulated an annotated bibliography of over a dozen external resources, including the Wuppertal Institute's Sustainable Design Guide, and Nya Van Leuvan, et. al's Making Shift Happen. These resources taught valuable sustainable UX principles:

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Social equilibrium: People find it easiest to change in lockstep with their surroundings. For example, once two homes in a neighborhood begin using solar panels, more homes rapidly follow suit.

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Normalcy: Due to the principle of social equilibrium, sustainable options should be framed as normal, default, and expected, rather than special, new, or unusual.

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Reduce detail, invite comparison: Detailed sustainability information provides no helpful effect on behavior change.

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Introduce normative frames: Numbers mean little to a human brain, but comparisons mean a lot. Comparing a consumer's water use to that of their neighbors, for instance, can result in robust behavior change.

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Encouragement, not persuasion: The majority of consumers care about sustainability. Sustainable design isn't about changing minds, it's about reducing friction between users and the behaviors they want to embody.

06
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Our principles

Synthesizing primary and secondary research led us to the following principles:

Normalize and Harmonize

Use sustainable defaults and social motivations to create consensus and “behind-the-scenes” normalization of sustainable actions. Implement changes on every level of the MSFT ecosystem.

Entice and Reward

Sustainable actions must feel rewarding, whether by making the options themselves vivid and enticing, or distributing actual, tangible rewards.

Action Before Info

Prioritize showing the user what they can or should do over why they should do it. Keep additional information minimal and contextual. Hard numbers don’t mean much.

Timing is Everything

Prompt usersduring opportune moments when their mindset is permeable and the desired action is only a reasonable step away, such as during console setup.

07
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Our strategy

We developed a multi-pronged strategy, designing top-down from the power settings page.

Rethink the way Xbox frames power modes, and design a new power settings page to match.
Use the new settings page as a basis for a tweaked out-of-box experience, removing existing UX patterns which strong-arm consumers into CS mode.
Negotiate with stakeholders additional ways to move existing CS users to RS mode, including notifications, wizards, or a global "opt-out" migration campaign.
Integrate incentives, such as dynamic backgrounds, for RS users.

08
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Testing hypotheses

Before and after of the copy used to describe Xbox's two power modes in out-of-box-experience and settings.

Small, fast tweaks to copy in OOBE and MOOBE helped us test our hypothesis that power mode choice was happenstance for most users. In addition, we drew upon a prior effort in which users were asked to switch power mode on Earth Day 2021.

If these changes resulted in meaningful, persistent differences in user settings, it would give promise to the idea that we could achieve meaningful change in the majority of Xbox users power settings.

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The name of CS "Instant On" was changed to "Standby" to reduce appeal

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Along with the name change, the perk of reduced startup time was de-emphasized

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"Energy saver" (RS) was made the default choice, where "Instant on" (CS) had been default before

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Results: Success! In MOOBE and OOBE, the rate consoles setting up in RS over CS nearly doubled, with more significant changes in newer consoles which were less affected by startup time. Meanwhile, a majority of users who switched from CS to RS on Earth Day remained in RS mode afterwards.

Development and Prototyping

09
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Prototype 1: Shifting Norms

The north star prototype, with a more ambitious restructuring of information.

A conservative prototype, applying design choices from the north star to information layout similar to what already existed in settings.

We chose the power settings page to be the tentpole of our design. After many iterations, I developed two interactive prototypes of a potential settings page for testing, a "north star" design (displayed prominently here) and a conservative design based on said north star. I designed this prototype to embody our principles in the following way:

Normalize and Harmonize: I grouped power settings into three, rather than two, presets. Only the "high power" preset would utilize CS mode. The "Eco" and "Energy Efficient" presets would both utilize RS mode, creating the impression of CS as an outlier feature.

Action Before Info: This design collapsed various power options into three presets which could be easily and quickly toggled between.

Entice and reward: The eco option on the left features a subtle, animated background, previewing a dynamic background which would be gated behind the mode, and creating visual appeal.

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Additionally, the "energy bar" element above the presets emphasized the feeling that with each choice you were changing the console's literal "under the hood" behavior, and guided users eyes to normative comparisons of their energy use.

10
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User research and feedback

These prototypes were put in front of test subjects for feedback, alongside a third prototype, representing the north star composition without the power bar.

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Positives: Users felt the prototype was clear, easy, and satisfying to use, and found the energy bar element especially engaging and helpful. Users broadly appreciated the simplification of the "three defaults" model and had little trouble figuring out how to customize their settings in greater detail.

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Negatives: Some users had trouble understanding the meaningful or functional differences between the three power modes. Users found the wattage figures and normative comparisons confusing, and had doubts and questions about their veracity. Subtle changes could be made that did not effect power consumption, raising the question whether or not they would switch users to "Custom" mode.

11
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Adaptations

Responding to feedback from user studies and internal stakeholders, we pivoted our design philosophy:

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Feature-Forward: Future designs would help users perceive and understand power options in the barest terms of console features. The previous design suffered from "information padding," including unnecessary comparisons and a third power preset which was largely superfluous.

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Activist Design: Xbox would experiment with taking a more activist role in design. For instance, we considered the necessity of offering players using more recent consoles a choice in power mode at all during console set up. Additional efforts are unrealeased and under NDA.

12
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Further iterations

Below is a selection of additional iterations based on this "feature-forward" change in strategy.

Above: A "features-first" presentation of information which attempted to do away with "power modes" entirely, sorting CS-dependent features in their own column beneath a power-consumption bar which would extend and change color when one of these features was active.

Above: A second iteration on a features-first presentation superficially eliminating power modes. Also experimented with here was renaming CS to "always on," a brutally honest description of what CS was.

Above: A left-field iteration adopting design patterns from elsewhere in settings.

Release

13
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Settings

After several more iterations, we released simultaneous updates to power settings, MOOBE, and OOBE. In settings:

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The power options page has been retooled and is now, definitively, the "power modes" page. Additional options have been hidden one level deeper behind a "more options" button.

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We incorporated the card-like buttons from earlier prototypes, keeping the colored treatment for "Full shutdown," to increase appeal, with considerations for contrast and accessibility.

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The power bar persists, thanks to positive user sentiment in earlier testing. Its new placement was made with concern for visual hierarchy and accessibility factors such as screenreaders.

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The power bar is now a nearly-proportional representation of power consumption rather than a stepwise abstraction. It animates and changes color with selections like before to establish the feeling that the user is changing something about the way their console works under the hood with each choice.

Above: The settings page with RS (named "Shutdown (energy saving)") active.

Above: The settings page with Sleep active, and the power bar element changed accordingly.

Above: The L3 hidden behind "Customize your power options." The second column activates when in Sleep (CS) mode.

14
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MOOBE and OOBE

At long last, the notorious MOOBE pain point is resolved, in slightly different ways for different users:

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Generation 9 and up consoles (which are not severely impacted by startup time changes offered by CS) are no longer asked to select their power mode, and are automatically set up in RS.

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Slower Generation 8 consoles are still provided the choice, but users who select RS are no longer strong-armed out of their choice when activating remote features. Instead, they are informed that they will need to take additional action later, in settings, to enable remote wake.

15
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On Copy and framing
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The customer-facing names of the two power modes changed multiple times throughout this project. "Standby" was not a valid name choice for CS due to oversea regulations. For our final choices, we wanted to avoid making CS feel attractive or, on the flip side, shameful, and I pushed for RS to feel "normal."

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My stake: My suggestion was for RS to be named "Full shutdown" and CS "partial shutdown." This would create two names which clearly related to each other and described the behavior in neutral terms, framing RS as "normal" and CS as unusual, but, thanks to very literal copy, not shameful.

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Compromise was reached with the final names, "Shutdown (energy saving)" and "Sleep." "Shutdown" was chosen for the literal description it provided, with (energy saving) in parentheses linking the mode to prior incarnations. "Sleep" was chosen to evoke consistency with Windows' "Sleep" function.

Endnote

16
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Lessons Learned: Activism and the Death of Imposter Syndrome

Having a lifelong engagement with issues of environmentalism and activism, I was elated to accept this position. I imagined myself falling into the role of an agitator, pushing for dramatic solutions like proactively migrating existing users between power modes.

However, owing partially to my position as contractor, I quieted down and became more sensitive to the sentiments of users and stakeholders. Midway through the project, to my simultaneous delight and humiliation, stakeholders suddenly became very interested in pushing these same activist, risky agendas that I had previously championed and quietly abandoned.

I don't feel ashamed of myself for opting for caution, but I can, in hindsight, understand that I was in a much safer position to advocate for dramatic changes than I realized.

Good design requires the fearless advocacy of ideas, which itself requires a sense of confidence and belonging that I plan on carrying with me into future projects.

17
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Cimate justice and equitable design

The following are thoughts on equitable design sculpted by my time at Xbox:

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The impulse, seemingly foundational to the profession of design, of tweaking experiences to favor convenience and gratification is tangibly related to our escalating climate crisis. We as a society designed ourselves into this mess by taking paths of least resistance and greatest reward.

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We, as design professionals, need to examine, and encourage our partners to examine, our relationship with user gratification anywhere where climate, justice, or activism is concerned.

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Systemic solutions will eventually induce discomfort in both consumer and producer. It is our job to understand, confront, and mitigate this discomfort, not to avoid it wholesale. Designers are not meant to be yes-people, and everybody benefits when we feel secure enough stride confidently over eggshells.