Microsoft Xbox needed a seasoned Creative Director partner to help bring their ambitious, design-led customization platform to life—ensuring the final experience was not only visually compelling, but also performant, usable, and accessible. Timed alongside major marketing and product releases, the pressure to deliver on vision, brand, and technical excellence was high.

About Xbox 

Microsoft Xbox Design Lab is a customization platform that allows users to design their own personalized Xbox wireless controllers — choosing colors, finishes, and even personalized engraving. Estimates indicate  Xbox Design Lab generates $100-$300M in annual revenue. 

My Role

• Creative Director

• Usability Strategy

• Accessibility Strategy

• Design System Implementation

• UX & Performance Optimization

As the Creative Director, I led the collaboration and transition between the Microsoft design team and my team of designers, developers, strategists, and analysts. With a long history of implementations on Adobe Commerce, I needed to interpret the designs for my developers, break apart the nuances of the interface, interactions, and motion design to ensure the final product would make both teams proud of our accomplishment. I also delivered expertise as subject matter expert on ecommerce, usability, accessibility, and performance optimization. 

The details are what set the experience apart, while also creating unique technical challenges requiring a design partner to bridge the art with the tech. In particular, the multi-select, multi-step workflow of the user and the customizer's visual feedback required an extra attentive UX eye to carry through the vision while ensuring broad usability.

The design system needed to be a complete package of reusable components that uniformly adhered to the determined requirements.  I led my team through implementation to ensure the design system was utilized correctly across all ecommerce pages and templates to stay true to the Xbox brand, in-turn generating confidence and trust for the user.

The final result was a robust, on-brand, and emotionally engaging customization journey that successfully delivered on Xbox’s creative ambitions—while performing at scale across a global user base. The Community gallery grew quickly at launch and saw sustained continuous engagement, which serves as both inspiration and a starting point to the customization journey for others. The Design Lab sees spikes of traffic coinciding with game releases and limited time, exclusive controller designs.