Cut the Cord: Xbox 360 Wireless Headset

A while ago I sat down with John Ikeda, Industrial Design Lead for Xbox® and Zune™. We chatted it up about the design process for the Xbox 360 Wireless Headset, and I thought I'd share what I learned. Like anything with a great design, the headset is attractive, simple, and easy to use, and really gives no clue about the tremendous amount of effort that went into making it that way. 

Design Goals
When design began on the headset, one of the first things the design team considered was what they call the design language. Design language is the established look and feel of a product, which in this case is Xbox 360. It had to look like it belonged to Xbox 360, yet retain its own distinct appearance.

Other factors come into play as well. For instance:

• Ease of donning and doffing: The headset has to be easy to put on and take off. (Isn't doff a fun word? Doff doff doff.)
• Stability: It has to stay on as you rock on.
• Looks easy to use: Not only does it have to be easy to use, it has to look that way.

The headset also had to be compact, lightweight, ambiaural (able to be worn on left or right ear), and it had to be comfortable enough to sit on the ear for long gaming sessions, too.

This is a headset concept sketch.

Designing the headset is more like designing the controller than, say, the HD DVD Player. Products that sit on a table or shelf have to be functional and look good, but items in contact with a person's body also have to feel good. You're not going to use a controller that hurts, are you? Same goes for the headset.

Plus, your perception of the controller is the same whether it's sitting on a table or resting in your hands. With the headset, though, your perspective changes between seeing it in your hands and wearing it on your head. Try it sometime. Look at it in your hands, then put it on and look at yourself in the mirror. It's almost like it becomes a totally different thing.

Reality Hits
The team started with more than fifty design ideas. When they narrowed it down to about six designs, the team began usability testing. They went through eight rounds of human testing with mockups, then more after they had working parts. They tested various earloop configurations, and ended up learning more than anyone wants to know about heads and ears.

These are some early designs.

Once the team found a direction they liked, industrial design began. They studied battery size and weight, boom length, and optimal placement for vocal reception. During the studies, for example, they found that people didn't want to see the boom or have it touch their face. But if the boom extended too far, it picked up excessive ambient noise. The boom also had to be adjustable to accommodate different head and jaw shapes.

The design team worked closely with electrical and mechanical engineering to make sure all the guts fit and worked within the design parameters. They knew people would be using their headsets for hours at a time, so the design had to accommodate a larger battery, yet not be so heavy as to be uncomfortable or unstable.

The team also examined controls. They found that it's more natural to push buttons into the side of your head than to fiddle with controls on the sides that might push the headset off your ear. The plus symbol on the control that increases volume is raised so you can feel it, and placed so that it's almost instinctual to use.

One Size Does Not Fit All
One of the great challenges in designing the headset was the earloop. It might not look like it, but that little rubber beauty was the cause of much consternation for the design team. It's like trying to design a one-size-fits-all shoe, for both left and right feet.

One problem is that you guys all have unique heads and ears. Did you know that smaller heads generally have ears that stick out more, due to a tighter curvature of the skull? Conversely, huge noggins generally have a flatter curve, making ears flatter against the head. Human ears also grow throughout life, so what fits you now may not fit you ten years from now. Plus, people have hair, glasses, and all sorts of other accoutrements. The team did their best to work with them all.

They developed around 25 different sizes of earloop, each with three variations on curvature. Rigorous testing brought them to the two current medium and small sizes. The snaps that hold the earloop to the unit are an ingenious piece of work, too. They're teeny tiny, but very stable. Notice also that they only go on one way, to make sure you can't accidentally reverse the loop and make the headset uncomfortable to wear. Next time you have the earloop off, take look at the snaps themselves. One side is darker than the other, to help you align the earloop with the snaps. 

Undoubtedly Xbox 360
I brought up design language earlier, but I think it's worth expanding on here. The design team really puts a lot of thought into the expression of every product we put out. When you look at the headset now, you know it's an Xbox 360 accessory even before you read the name on its side.

The final product.

John speaks of design language as a thing that evolves. If you look at your Xbox 360 console, you'll notice white parts and gray parts. The design team thinks of this as an outer shell that's cut away to expose an inner core. On the headset, they had to adapt that. How do you translate something that sits on a shelf to something you wear on your head? The gestures are the same: The white outer shell enfolds the gray innards ("Like a taco," John says).

Some parts seem almost organic. The earloop reaches out from the headset to embrace your ear. The speaker mound protrudes. The console's power button dish is repeated in the volume controls, and the chrome of the DVD tray is echoed on the power button. It's undeniably the console design, transformed into a headset.

Another aspect to the design language is not in how the headset looks, but in how it sounds. Yes, the design team also took cues from the Xbox dashboard when designing the beeps that the headset uses for volume up, volume down, and other cues. It may be subtle (we are talking about beeps, after all), but if you listen carefully, it's there.

Delivering on a Promise
When Xbox 360 came out, we made a promise. Wireless, we said. This made the inclusion of the wired headsets a little odd, but it worked, and you still had the wireless controller. With the release of the Xbox 360 Wireless Headset, we deliver a little more on the promise of wireless. Go on, cut the cord. Fly. Be free.

Article by Elle