Xbox Timeshifted Comments

Design

I collaborated with Xbox Entertainment Studios to design a companion app for their original content on Xbox Live. As lead designer, I worked under Anthony Lagoon’s direction at Underbelly, alongside Elan Lee’s visionary team at Xbox Entertainment Studios and Robert Sweeney’s engineering team driving development.

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CREDITS
Creative Director
Elan Lee
Design Direction
Anthony Lagoon
Development
Robert Sweeney

GOALS

This tablet-based app lets fans engage with their favorite shows' big moments—live or anytime. Allowing users to comment, reply, and like others' activity, bringing the same excitement and hype of all those big moments to every watch.

The app also features a video browsing experience for Xbox Original Content, supporting both single-choice content like movies and episodic content with multiple seasons and episodes.

CONSIDERATIONS

Movies and shows capture attention for a set duration, but this app needed to extend the experience beyond the credits. It allowed users to express their joys and frustrations during a show and provided reasons to return later by enabling browsing, responding to, and interacting with comments even when not actively watching.

Connecting earlier plot points to big revelations is exciting once viewers reach those moments. However, for those arriving late—whether hours, days, or years later—an open browsing or timeline experience could easily spoil key plot points. The app addressed this by carefully balancing the browsing and interaction features to minimize spoilers while keeping the experience engaging.

With many shows still in production or pre-production, the release schedule for original content was uncertain. The browsing experience was designed to be versatile, accommodating a growing library while initially supporting just one show until more content became available.

SOLUTIONS

All non-synced show comments appeared in the "Post-Show Discussion" area, a catch-all for comments made after the credits rolled or while not actively watching. This feature allowed users to freely discuss the show without risking spoilers during or at the start of the program.

To further prevent spoilers or inappropriate content, the app incorporated a "flag" system. This allowed the community to blur potentially problematic comments, which users could choose to view only after confirming.

The show browsing experience was designed as a single-row layout to accommodate a gradual rollout of show options. As the library expanded, the design could scale horizontally to include more shows and eventually add vertical sections for genre-based sorting.

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