CASE STUDY:
Leading Consumer Design
Halo is the multi-billion dollar flagship franchise for Microsoft's Xbox, but at 10 years old it was struggling to remain relevant and grow its customer base as new franchises emerged and innovated.
Millions of Halo fans spend billions of hours engaging with the franchise every year and the games are only one element of the Halo ecosystem; the team needed to understand what was motivating our users so we could design for their needs.
- Used data-driven insights to pivot the business away from a product customers didn't want and delivered an entertainment platform that opened multiple new profitable lines of business
- Rallied a team of 40+ around a creative vision and North Star that had industry-wide impact
- Partnered with engineering to clear complex technical hurdles while maintaining focus on customer experience
- Connected user journeys across platforms and devices, delivering Microsoft's first successful transmedia franchise
After 10 years as the leader for AAA first person experiences on gaming consoles Halo was starting to show its age - although the fan base remained loyal, growth was fairly flat and emerging cross-platform franchises like Call of Duty were competing for the same audience and proving more willing to take risks to innovate.
In the years following the release of the first iPhone, some AAA video game franchises began experimenting with releasing mobile versions of their games. Hardware was fairly limited at the time with tiny screens (by today's standards) and processors that couldn't handle the kind of load AAA 3D games required, but that didn't stop studios from testing the water and the Call of Duty team had begun releasing games on mobile.
The Halo franchise leadership team felt a strong reflexive desire to maintain feature parity with Call of Duty, and I was tapped to be the Creative and UX Director for Halo Mobile.
Before I agreed to take the role, I asked the leadership team at Microsoft if they'd allow me to do some investigation to make sure we took the right approach; as it turned-out, that investigation fundamentally changed the direction away from a Halo mobile game.
I started by embarking on a journey to learn more about the relationship fans had with Halo when they weren't playing the games: we knew Halo was a major force in the lives of millions of people, but we didn't know how that force manifested outside of games and the game-focused activities at conventions.
We had a decade of research available that was previously only used to inform game design decisions, but when we started exploring we discovered a range of recurring and surprising themes that went beyond game design considerations and indicated that for many people Halo existed as a rich, multi-dimensional experience.
When the team started analyzing the years of user data, we were blown away by how much Halo content fans consumed throughout the day outside game experiences: from time spent chatting during lunch breaks on forums about storylines and the growing library of books in the Halo universe to fan-created videos to scheduling multiplayer events on bus commutes and Halo-themed vacations, the franchise had become a lifestyle.
Some of the insights we learned:
- Over 50% of fans consumed Halo content in the form of gameplay videos, fan art, fan fiction, and online forums, with a growing number of people accessing from mobile devices
- User-generated Halo video content was viewed multiple times a week by almost every kind of Halo fan
- Fans felt like they were part of the Halo universe and were eager to deepen that connection
- Even fans who didn't play the games kept track of what was happening in the multiplayer community
I synthesized these insights into a set of experience pillars to guide the team through exploration and ideation exercises. At this point we didn't know what direction we might be heading in, but it was starting to seem like there might be better near-term opportunities to reinvigorate the franchise other than releasing a mobile game.
As we reviewed existing user research and continued talking with customers it became clear that there was no interest in a mobile Halo game at that time; we shared some early concepts with people and saw the lowest interest we'd ever experienced for a Halo game - less than 10% said they'd be somewhat or very interested. Halo was a big screen visual feast specifically tuned for a console controller, and both current customers and Halo fans that didn't play the games were clear that Halo on mobile wasn't interesting.
We also realized at this time that the overwhelming majority of current interactive Halo experiences taking place outside the games were targeting hardcore multiplayer users although this group comprised only about 15% of Halo's customers. When we shared the numbers the team was surprised to learn that such a significant amount of our product development resources were targeting just 15% of our customers.
Our discovery team was feeling confident that there was an opportunity to deliver a cross-platform interactive experience that wasn't a game per se but that could be situated within the Halo universe and capture the imagination and interest of a wide range of current and potential customers; first, however, I needed to reorient our leaders away from a laser-focus on mobile.
During this time I was socializing the Explore, Share, and Anchor Experience pillars across the leadership team and raising awareness for three key insights we'd pulled from the data:
- Halo-themed user generated content was exploding, and content creators like Rooster Teeth were producing weekly Halo-themed YouTube shorts and getting millions of views from players and non-players alike, with increasingly high views coming from mobile devices
- Halo fans of all types loved feeling like they were a part of the Halo universe and had been consistently asking us to create a persistent identify that crossed individual games and experiences
- Halo is social by design and users wanted to be able to connect with friends and communities across platforms and share the content they loved
I was given 60 days to come back with a conceptual prototype that would capture the imagination of Halo fans and also be available on mobile.
We were feeling confident that our hypotheses about what people wanted from cross-platform experience were far enough along that we could define our vision and start getting low fidelity prototypes in front of users.
"We're building the gateway to the Halo universe and the persistent center of the Halo experience on every screen, for every fan.”
We identified two priority focus areas: a persistent, shareable personal identity situated within the Halo fiction that grew with users over time as they interacted with Halo content, and an experience that allowed users to view and share user generated content as the two most important problems to solve.
As mentioned earlier, the product team was already delivering a Halo "career" that tracked a wide range of personalized stats for multiplayer games with progressively increasing ranks recognizing accomplishments over time. Unfortunately the existing features were relevant for only about 15% of users, but we believed there was an opportunity to make the Halo career into something much more widely accessible and relevant to a majority of users.
We'd also been hearing from content creators in the community that they'd love to collaborate on video projects, for example giving us exclusive early access to content in return for promotion across Halo channels.
Armed with this information, we began exploring a new kind of Halo career that would be foregrounded and accessible to every type of user and a hub for viewing and sharing user generated content, all contained in a single experience we named HALO WAYPOINT.
How might we: create a player identity that persisted across game titles and was interesting and easy to understand for most users?
How might we: create an experience where users could connect with each other and access non-game content across mobile, desktop, and console?
We took a "mobile first" approach to designing across platforms; although mobile devices were just starting to become a first class content platform and responsive design was still largely experimental, the team quickly realized two things:
- life would be easier for us if we didn't need to totally reinvent layouts between platforms
- designing for mobile-first required us to get very serious about not throwing the kitchen sink at large screen UIs just because we had the space
We'd already clearly seen in testing that the cognitive load users were comfortable with while navigating consoles was not the same as the load they were comfortable with while on a PC; our theory was that our brains weren't used to information-dense experiences on big screen TVs while navigating with controllers instead of mice and keyboards.
I created a modular content system called "3 on a screen", referring to the maximum number of content blocks we'd show users at any given time. This kept things clean and simple for phone and console users and allowed for the creation of content modules that could easily be reconfigured for 16x9 and vertical layouts.
The team's hard work paid off and we launched the Halo Waypoint public beta MVP after 9 months of development, starting from when I asked our leadership team for some time to make sure we understood what our customers most wanted and needed.
The Waypoint MVP launch was regarded as a landmark moment for the franchise and met or exceeded all of our business goals:
- First time sign-ins for Halo games increased by 15% immediately following launch and remained higher than historical averages for a year after release, signaling that Waypoint was attracting new users
- Total online hours increased 20% in the first 6 months after release and remained 10% above expected trendlines YoY
- Legacy title sales increased by 10x for a year after release
- Waypoint was in the top 5% highest rated Xbox releases each year for 3 years after its release with over 3 million registered users after the first year
- Waypoint changed the way game developers thought about customer ecosystems and drove a wave of transmedia projects across the industry, serving as one of the igniters for user generated game content
Waypoint was the first of its kind experience for a major game franchise, and instead of playing catch-up with our competition we listened to our users and delivered something that differentiated Halo from everyone else.
CASE STUDY:
Leading Consumer Design
Halo is the multi-billion dollar flagship franchise for Microsoft's Xbox, but at 10 years old it was struggling to remain relevant and grow its customer base as new franchises emerged and innovated.
Millions of Halo fans spend billions of hours engaging with the franchise every year and the games are only one element of the Halo ecosystem; the team needed to understand what was motivating our users so we could design for their needs.
- Used data-driven insights to pivot the business away from a product customers didn't want and delivered an entertainment platform that opened multiple new profitable lines of business
- Rallied a team of 40+ around a creative vision and North Star that had industry-wide impact
- Partnered with engineering to clear complex technical hurdles while maintaining focus on customer experience
- Connected user journeys across platforms and devices, delivering Microsoft's first successful transmedia franchise
After 10 years as the leader for AAA first person experiences on gaming consoles Halo was starting to show its age - although the fan base remained loyal, growth was fairly flat and emerging cross-platform franchises like Call of Duty were competing for the same audience and proving more willing to take risks to innovate.
In the years following the release of the first iPhone, some AAA video game franchises began experimenting with releasing mobile versions of their games. Hardware was fairly limited at the time with tiny screens (by today's standards) and processors that couldn't handle the kind of load AAA 3D games required, but that didn't stop studios from testing the water and the Call of Duty team had begun releasing games on mobile.
The Halo franchise leadership team felt a strong reflexive desire to maintain feature parity with Call of Duty, and I was tapped to be the Creative and UX Director for Halo Mobile.
Before I agreed to take the role, I asked the leadership team at Microsoft if they'd allow me to do some investigation to make sure we took the right approach; as it turned-out, that investigation fundamentally changed the direction away from a Halo mobile game.
I started by embarking on a journey to learn more about the relationship fans had with Halo when they weren't playing the games: we knew Halo was a major force in the lives of millions of people, but we didn't know how that force manifested outside of games and the game-focused activities at conventions.
We had a decade of research available that was previously only used to inform game design decisions, but when we started exploring we discovered a range of recurring and surprising themes that went beyond game design considerations and indicated that for many people Halo existed as a rich, multi-dimensional experience.
When the team started analyzing the years of user data, we were blown away by how much Halo content fans consumed throughout the day outside game experiences: from time spent chatting during lunch breaks on forums about storylines and the growing library of books in the Halo universe to fan-created videos to scheduling multiplayer events on bus commutes and Halo-themed vacations, the franchise had become a lifestyle.
Some of the insights we learned:
- Over 50% of fans consumed Halo content in the form of gameplay videos, fan art, fan fiction, and online forums, with a growing number of people accessing from mobile devices
- User-generated Halo video content was viewed multiple times a week by almost every kind of Halo fan
- Fans felt like they were part of the Halo universe and were eager to deepen that connection
- Even fans who didn't play the games kept track of what was happening in the multiplayer community
I synthesized these insights into a set of experience pillars to guide the team through exploration and ideation exercises. At this point we didn't know what direction we might be heading in, but it was starting to seem like there might be better near-term opportunities to reinvigorate the franchise other than releasing a mobile game.
As we reviewed existing user research and continued talking with customers it became clear that there was no interest in a mobile Halo game at that time; we shared some early concepts with people and saw the lowest interest we'd ever experienced for a Halo game - less than 10% said they'd be somewhat or very interested. Halo was a big screen visual feast specifically tuned for a console controller, and both current customers and Halo fans that didn't play the games were clear that Halo on mobile wasn't interesting.
We also realized at this time that the overwhelming majority of current interactive Halo experiences taking place outside the games were targeting hardcore multiplayer users although this group comprised only about 15% of Halo's customers. When we shared the numbers the team was surprised to learn that such a significant amount of our product development resources were targeting just 15% of our customers.
Our discovery team was feeling confident that there was an opportunity to deliver a cross-platform interactive experience that wasn't a game per se but that could be situated within the Halo universe and capture the imagination and interest of a wide range of current and potential customers; first, however, I needed to reorient our leaders away from a laser-focus on mobile.
During this time I was socializing the Explore, Share, and Anchor Experience pillars across the leadership team and raising awareness for three key insights we'd pulled from the data:
- Halo-themed user generated content was exploding, and content creators like Rooster Teeth were producing weekly Halo-themed YouTube shorts and getting millions of views from players and non-players alike, with increasingly high views coming from mobile devices
- Halo fans of all types loved feeling like they were a part of the Halo universe and had been consistently asking us to create a persistent identify that crossed individual games and experiences
- Halo is social by design and users wanted to be able to connect with friends and communities across platforms and share the content they loved
I was given 60 days to come back with a conceptual prototype that would capture the imagination of Halo fans and also be available on mobile.
We were feeling confident that our hypotheses about what people wanted from cross-platform experience were far enough along that we could define our vision and start getting low fidelity prototypes in front of users.
"We're building the gateway to the Halo universe and the persistent center of the Halo experience on every screen, for every fan.”
We identified two priority focus areas: a persistent, shareable personal identity situated within the Halo fiction that grew with users over time as they interacted with Halo content, and an experience that allowed users to view and share user generated content as the two most important problems to solve.
As mentioned earlier, the product team was already delivering a Halo "career" that tracked a wide range of personalized stats for multiplayer games with progressively increasing ranks recognizing accomplishments over time. Unfortunately the existing features were relevant for only about 15% of users, but we believed there was an opportunity to make the Halo career into something much more widely accessible and relevant to a majority of users.
We'd also been hearing from content creators in the community that they'd love to collaborate on video projects, for example giving us exclusive early access to content in return for promotion across Halo channels.
Armed with this information, we began exploring a new kind of Halo career that would be foregrounded and accessible to every type of user and a hub for viewing and sharing user generated content, all contained in a single experience we named HALO WAYPOINT.
How might we: create a player identity that persisted across game titles and was interesting for most users?
How might we: create an experience where people could connect with each other and access non-game content across mobile, desktop, and console?
We took a "mobile first" approach to designing across platforms; although mobile devices were just starting to become a first class content platform and responsive design was still largely experimental, the team quickly realized two things:
- life would be easier for us if we didn't need to totally reinvent layouts between platforms
- designing for mobile-first required us to get very serious about not throwing the kitchen sink at large screen UIs just because we had the space
We'd already clearly seen in testing that the cognitive load users were comfortable with while navigating consoles was not the same as the load they were comfortable with while on a PC; our theory was that our brains weren't used to information-dense experiences on big screen TVs while navigating with controllers instead of mice and keyboards.
I created a modular content system called "3 on a screen", referring to the maximum number of content blocks we'd show users at any given time. This kept things clean and simple for phone and console users and allowed for the creation of content modules that could easily be reconfigured for 16x9 and vertical layouts.
The team's hard work paid off and we launched the Halo Waypoint public beta MVP after 9 months of development, starting from when I asked our leadership team for some time to make sure we understood what our customers most wanted and needed.
The Waypoint MVP launch was regarded as a landmark moment for the franchise and met or exceeded all of our business goals:
- First time sign-ins for Halo games increased by 15% immediately following launch and remained higher than historical averages for a year after release, signaling that Waypoint was attracting new users
- Total online hours increased 20% in the first 6 months after release and remained 10% above expected trendlines YoY
- Legacy title sales increased by 10x for a year after release
- Waypoint was in the top 5% highest rated Xbox releases each year for 3 years after its release with over 3 million registered users after the first year
- Waypoint changed the way game developers thought about customer ecosystems and drove a wave of transmedia projects across the industry, serving as one of the igniters for user generated game content
Waypoint was the first of its kind experience for a major game franchise, and instead of playing catch-up with our competition we listened to our users and delivered something that differentiated Halo from everyone else.
CASE STUDY:
Leading Consumer Design
Halo is the multi-billion dollar flagship franchise for Microsoft's Xbox, but at 10 years old it was struggling to remain relevant and grow its customer base as new franchises emerged and innovated.
Millions of Halo fans spend billions of hours engaging with the franchise every year and the games are only one element of the Halo ecosystem; the team needed to understand what was motivating our users so we could design for their needs.
- Used data-driven insights to pivot the business away from a product customers didn't want and delivered an entertainment platform that opened multiple new profitable lines of business
- Rallied a team of 40+ around a creative vision and North Star that had industry-wide impact
- Partnered with engineering to clear complex technical hurdles while maintaining focus on customer experience
- Connected user journeys across platforms and devices, delivering Microsoft's first successful transmedia franchise
After 10 years as the leader for AAA first person experiences on gaming consoles Halo was starting to show its age - although the fan base remained loyal, growth was fairly flat and emerging cross-platform franchises like Call of Duty were competing for the same audience and proving more willing to take risks to innovate.
In the years following the release of the first iPhone, some AAA video game franchises began experimenting with releasing mobile versions of their games. Hardware was fairly limited at the time with tiny screens (by today's standards) and processors that couldn't handle the kind of load AAA 3D games required, but that didn't stop studios from testing the water and the Call of Duty team had begun releasing games on mobile.
The Halo franchise leadership team felt a strong reflexive desire to maintain feature parity with Call of Duty, and I was tapped to be the Creative and UX Director for Halo Mobile.
Before I agreed to take the role, I asked the leadership team at Microsoft if they'd allow me to do some investigation to make sure we took the right approach; as it turned-out, that investigation fundamentally changed the direction away from a Halo mobile game.
I started by embarking on a journey to learn more about the relationship fans had with Halo when they weren't playing the games: we knew Halo was a major force in the lives of millions of people, but we didn't know how that force manifested outside of games and the game-focused activities at conventions.
We had a decade of research available that was previously only used to inform game design decisions, but when we started exploring we discovered a range of recurring and surprising themes that went beyond game design considerations and indicated that for many people Halo existed as a rich, multi-dimensional experience.
When the team started analyzing the years of user data, we were blown away by how much Halo content fans consumed throughout the day outside game experiences: from time spent chatting during lunch breaks on forums about storylines and the growing library of books in the Halo universe to fan-created videos to scheduling multiplayer events on bus commutes and Halo-themed vacations, the franchise had become a lifestyle.
Some of the insights we learned:
- Over 50% of fans consumed Halo content in the form of gameplay videos, fan art, fan fiction, and online forums, with a growing number of people accessing from mobile devices
- User-generated Halo video content was viewed multiple times a week by almost every kind of Halo fan
- Fans felt like they were part of the Halo universe and were eager to deepen that connection
- Even fans who didn't play the games kept track of what was happening in the multiplayer community
I synthesized these insights into a set of experience pillars to guide the team through exploration and ideation exercises. At this point we didn't know what direction we might be heading in, but it was starting to seem like there might be better near-term opportunities to reinvigorate the franchise other than releasing a mobile game.
As we reviewed existing user research and continued talking with customers it became clear that there was no interest in a mobile Halo game at that time; we shared some early concepts with people and saw the lowest interest we'd ever experienced for a Halo game - less than 10% said they'd be somewhat or very interested. Halo was a big screen visual feast specifically tuned for a console controller, and both current customers and Halo fans that didn't play the games were clear that Halo on mobile wasn't interesting.
We also realized at this time that the overwhelming majority of current interactive Halo experiences taking place outside the games were targeting hardcore multiplayer users although this group comprised only about 15% of Halo's customers. When we shared the numbers the team was surprised to learn that such a significant amount of our product development resources were targeting just 15% of our customers.
Our discovery team was feeling confident that there was an opportunity to deliver a cross-platform interactive experience that wasn't a game per se but that could be situated within the Halo universe and capture the imagination and interest of a wide range of current and potential customers; first, however, I needed to reorient our leaders away from a laser-focus on mobile.
During this time I was socializing the Explore, Share, and Anchor Experience pillars across the leadership team and raising awareness for three key insights we'd pulled from the data:
- Halo-themed user generated content was exploding, and content creators like Rooster Teeth were producing weekly Halo-themed YouTube shorts and getting millions of views from players and non-players alike, with increasingly high views coming from mobile devices
- Halo fans of all types loved feeling like they were a part of the Halo universe and had been consistently asking us to create a persistent identify that crossed individual games and experiences
- Halo is social by design and users wanted to be able to connect with friends and communities across platforms and share the content they loved
I was given 60 days to come back with a conceptual prototype that would capture the imagination of Halo fans and also be available on mobile.
We were feeling confident that our hypotheses about what people wanted from cross-platform experience were far enough along that we could define our vision and start getting low fidelity prototypes in front of users.
"We're building the gateway to the Halo universe and the persistent center of the Halo experience on every screen.”
We identified two priority focus areas: a persistent, shareable personal identity situated within the Halo fiction that grew with users over time as they interacted with Halo content, and an experience that allowed users to view and share user generated content as the two most important problems to solve.
As mentioned earlier, the product team was already delivering a Halo "career" that tracked a wide range of personalized stats for multiplayer games with progressively increasing ranks recognizing accomplishments over time. Unfortunately the existing features were relevant for only about 15% of users, but we believed there was an opportunity to make the Halo career into something much more widely accessible and relevant to a majority of users.
We'd also been hearing from content creators in the community that they'd love to collaborate on video projects, for example giving us exclusive early access to content in return for promotion across Halo channels.
Armed with this information, we began exploring a new kind of Halo career that would be foregrounded and accessible to every type of user and a hub for viewing and sharing user generated content, all contained in a single experience we named HALO WAYPOINT.
How might we: create a player identity that persisted across game titles and was interesting for most users?
How might we: create an experience where people could connect with each other and access non-game content across mobile, desktop, and console?
We took a "mobile first" approach to designing across platforms; although mobile devices were just starting to become a first class content platform and responsive design was still largely experimental, the team quickly realized two things:
- life would be easier for us if we didn't need to totally reinvent layouts between platforms
- designing for mobile-first required us to get very serious about not throwing the kitchen sink at large screen UIs just because we had the space
We'd already clearly seen in testing that the cognitive load users were comfortable with while navigating consoles was not the same as the load they were comfortable with while on a PC; our theory was that our brains weren't used to information-dense experiences on big screen TVs while navigating with controllers instead of mice and keyboards.
I created a modular content system called "3 on a screen", referring to the maximum number of content blocks we'd show users at any given time. This kept things clean and simple for phone and console users and allowed for the creation of content modules that could easily be reconfigured for 16x9 and vertical layouts.
The team's hard work paid off and we launched the Halo Waypoint public beta MVP after 9 months of development, starting from when I asked our leadership team for some time to make sure we understood what our customers most wanted and needed.
The Waypoint MVP launch was regarded as a landmark moment for the franchise and met or exceeded all of our business goals:
- First time sign-ins for Halo games increased by 15% immediately following launch and remained higher than historical averages for a year after release, signaling that Waypoint was attracting new users
- Total online hours increased 20% in the first 6 months after release and remained 10% above expected trendlines YoY
- Legacy title sales increased by 10x for a year after release
- Waypoint was in the top 5% highest rated Xbox releases each year for 3 years after its release with over 3 million registered users after the first year
- Waypoint changed the way game developers thought about customer ecosystems and drove a wave of transmedia projects across the industry, serving as one of the igniters for user generated game content
Waypoint was the first of its kind experience for a major game franchise, and instead of playing catch-up with our competition we listened to our users and delivered something that differentiated Halo from everyone else.
