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Is the Xbox One UI terrible?

OP.

I think MS needs the tutorial videos easier to find, because they tell you how to use the xbox one with those videos.

I actually forgot where they are or else i would have told you how to get them, see what i mean? lol
 
OP,

the xbox one is getting a new UI this year, similar to the Windows 10 UI, albeit it might not be drastic:

Windows-10_Product-Family.jpg


http://az648995.vo.msecnd.net/win/2015/01/Windows-10_Product-Family.jpg

and

http://news.xbox.com/2015/01/xbox-o...-gamers?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
 
Stoffinator said:
I personally find it terrible.
Click to expand...

This for me, I know some people like it but I find it EXTREMELY unintuitive. It's a huge step back from the 360.

No way to turn off Snap by default, they should be ashamed of themselves. Snap fucking sucks. It's beyond terrible.

And just in general I do not like the layout.

Maybe Windows 10 / New Xbox UI will fix it for the better.
 
To me, it just lacks that "punch". It does the job i guess, but its also incredibly boring to look at and for me, Its not very pleasant to move around in. I just find it really really ugly and also annoying to use. I guess maybe im just so used to the 360 one that this one just isnt doing it for me. Ive had it since launch and although ive gotten used to using it, i still dont enjoy using it at all.

I dont like the double tap to get the to stuff i need to use the most, it should be the opposite. One press to have that menu appear and 2 to go home. Its the little things like that that i just dont like about it.
 
I'm not a fan either. When i got my system almost at launch, i thought the UI was one of the worst ever but it got better with time but it's still a mess.

The thing i hate the most is it's slow, has input lag, store is confusing, to much text, feels too busy and not minimalist enough. The good thing is, it has a lot of features and is rich with options but for the average joe, this shit is mostly useless.

For all the shit the PS4 gets, i believe its UI is the best. It's easy, fast, minimalist and straight to the point.
 
I think the ultimate weakness of the XBO's UI is that while snapping is an awesome addition, especially for people who aren't me and can't have a browser or second screen right by their TVs... the 360 dashboard of yore was faster for switching things like parties, messages, and sending invites; basically, anything that doesn't need to be persistently on your screen would be better served by a proper dash overlay like the previous gen.

That said, while I think the blades were a far more effective launch for the 360, it took years for them to get the system polished. I'm happy that they continue to make progress.

I definitely think it's obvious they sort of leaned on Kinect as a crutch so they didn't have to make some things easy to access; and while the voice commands work well, the fact that it's faster is partially blunted by the fact they made getting to it with the controller very slow.
 
mrklaw said:
I have kinect, I just don't often use it for settings etc - I probably should but it just feels odd when I need the controller to change settings anyway, to be speaking to it.

I do use kinect for things like 'go to TV' or changing channels, pausing etc. Things when I'm away from a controller.
Click to expand...

I use Kinect as often as I can, that's why they made it. Just say Xbox got to settings and do the rest with your controller, easy.
 
FonkyByNature said:
I'm not a fan either. When i got my system almost at launch, i thought the UI was one of the worst ever but it got better with time but it's still a mess.

The thing i hate the most is it's slow, has input lag, store is confusing, to much text, feels too busy and not minimalist enough. The good thing is, it has a lot of features and is rich with options but for the average joe, this shit is mostly useless.

For all the shit the PS4 gets, i believe its UI is the best. It's easy, fast, minimalist and straight to the point.
Click to expand...

The store was great on 360, every arcade game had trials, they were separated in such a way that you knew where to look for what. It was perfect. Now that they've made all games the same, the store usability suffers imo. Plus theres hardly any trials and demos. And that layout, who thought that was a good idea? Its ok now, but in a few years from now when there's 100 plus games? I just dont get it.
 
VincentMatts said:
The store was great on 360, every arcade game had trials, they were separated in such a way that you knew where to look for what. It was perfect. Now that they've made all games the same, the store usability suffers imo. Plus theres hardly any trials and demos. And that layout, who thought that was a good idea? Its ok now, but in a few years from now when there's 100 plus games? I just dont get it.
Click to expand...

Agreed, i sometimes think about how did Microsoft go from the awesome 360 UI, store and features to Xbox One. It's like a totally different company.

I used to love "Summer Arcade", demos for all arcade games, easy access to friends etc. with the home button, speed, minimalism... what the hell happened ??
 
I think the UI is awful. I pretty much feel forced to use kinect because i can't find anything in this UI. I tend to keep stuck in the store often. I'll click on a game page, hit the back button at the top left but it takes me to the dashboard instead of the previous page in store. I have to fiddle around with it until i get back to the main store page.

Kinect in my exeprience works about 20% of the time. I know it works better for some people, but for me it doesn't. In fact I am more frustrated with the whole xbox experience when I use kinect. I repeat commands 10 times, using different volume levels from whispering to yelling to exaggerating my annunciation... I just have a bad time with it. So with an OS i feel forced to use kinect with, i am frustrated everytime I use my xbox.

No, I don't "just need to learn how to use it". Took me 5 minutes to figure out the playstation 4 UI right out of the box. Its simple, easy, and i can do everything i need to with it.
 
sinnergy said:
I use Kinect as often as I can, that's why they made it. Just say Xbox got to settings and do the rest with your controller, easy.
Click to expand...
I think his point was, it makes no sense to talk to kinect when you have the controller in your hands anyway, and i agree.

Not saying you are wrong, but for me the UI is bad cause it's kind of a mess.

Also, everytime i turn on my Xbox it freezes and i have to restart it, it's been doing it since a couple of weeks ago, literally everytime, it sucks.
 
sinnergy said:
I use Kinect as often as I can, that's why they made it. Just say Xbox got to settings and do the rest with your controller, easy.
Click to expand...

Same here and even way faster in my opinion
I can´t understand the hate about the UI , it´s not that intuitive so they should add a tutorial on how to use snap center and how to use the option button to open additional stuff but the rest is fine for me
 
ShapeGSX said:
You guys complaining about the slow GUI should look into changing your default DNS to Google's DNS. Chances are that this is your issue.

Info:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=904073
Click to expand...
Right, cause that's really intuitive.
I don't need to change anything in my other consoles and they were fast out of the box.

I'm sorry but Microsoft dropped the ball with this OS, is unintuitive and slow, the only thing it does great is multitasking.
 
It's has gotten better. It used to be terrible. Now it's just unintuitive.

It used to be very Kinect oriented, with lot's of little menu's hiding options. It was practicly a maze. Finding certain options was a hit and miss egghunt. I remember searching stuff in th eoptions menu, then trying the menu-button, before finding it behind the Xbox button. etc. Now it's a bit more organised.

Only thing I like about it is the pinning. But only because it's cumbersome to access your games otherwise.

Still prefer the XMB. That thing was clear and easy...
 
I don't think it's awful but it isn't very intuitive. It does make the platform feel like a community, something the PS4 is seriously lacking.
I think there is still a lot of baggage of expecting people to have Kinect and the design decisions they made around that notion.
It's clear MS is working around making the UI easier to navigate, the monthly updates are more than welcome, esp after the terrible PS4 OS updates, not only length in time in getting them out and how unpredictable the results have been.

My biggest beefs with the XBONE ui thus far:
1) instability - I still weekly have to hard-reboot the box to get it to reset. I love resume so much but they need to work on how it can bring the console to it's knees after several days of playing
2) snap - snap is a great feature, but there just isn't enough use of it yet, lots of things should 'snap' but don't, or don't do it well
3) smartglass - still isn't implemented well enough, it still feels like an afterthought
 
I've only tried it a few times, but in that time I didn't get the hang of it. I tried to download a demo and play it, and I had a lot of trouble getting from one screen to another, and even after I figured it out when I went back I couldn't remember. It's extremely unintuitive.
 
alterno69 said:
Right, cause that's really intuitive.
I don't need to change anything in my other consoles and they were fast out of the box.

I'm sorry but Microsoft dropped the ball with this OS, is unintuitive and slow, the only thing it does great is multitasking.
Click to expand...

Just trying to help, man. Take it or leave it.

The Xbox GUI gets a lot of its content from the internet, so a slow DNS can apparently really slow down the GUI.
 
Kssio_Aug said:
Thats gonna be good! *-*
Click to expand...

Really? Looking at the Xbox One portion of that photo makes me think of the god-awful mess that is the What's New section on PS4. It's a good UI if used via touchscreen, but navigating irregularly sized icons all mashed together like that with a controller would suck.
 
Derpyduck said:
Really? Looking at the Xbox One portion of that photo makes me think of the god-awful mess that is the What's New section on PS4. It's a good UI if used via touchscreen, but navigating irregularly sized icons all mashed together like that with a controller would suck.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it may work just like metro, where you can choose the icon size of your apps!
 
It's not good or bad really. As a new XBOne owner I thought it was weird how the UI for the XBOne had a learning curve for whatever reason. Whereas with the PS4 I immediately knew what to do (though this may be because it's basically an expanded XMB if anything).

I think it's great that I can snap stuff to the first page cause that helps me get to Forza faster. But there's so much they can do to improve.

This is also awkward because they are most definitely going to give the UI a big overhaul later this year to make it more in line with Windows 10.
 
ShapeGSX said:
Just trying to help, man. Take it or leave it.

The Xbox GUI gets a lot of its content from the internet, so a slow DNS can apparently really slow down the GUI.
Click to expand...

Way too much of the XB1 OS is based on having an internet connection, a fast and stable one at that. A fast and stable server as well. When one of them is messed up, the OS becomes just a wee bit broken.

An OS shouldn't go to pieces when your connection does.
 
The ui on the xbox one is terrible. Hopefully with the redesign with windows 10, they address some of these issues. First of all, snapping apps is such a painful slow process. Half the time, when I go to start a party, i snap, and i get a spinning whell with a black screen, 50 percent of the time it loads but very slowly, other times i get unpatient and try to relaunch. Before anyone chimes in, I have done a cold reboot. I own 2 xbox ones and a ps4. Next problem, joining a party . We have a group of 5 to 6 guys that play daily. Its rare we can all join the party and heart each other, without someone having a problem, which requires a cold reboot.Its almost as if the channel for chat doesnt change and you see their mic still in game. Finding items is scattered, seem to change places, even though pinned. How many people that have a new console can find settings ? I like that xbox one is bringing new apps to the fray, but why cant i play custom music in the background ? In so many ways the xbox one os, is a huge step back from the 360.
 
I wonder if the level of comfort one would have with the UI depends on how comfortable one is with mentally "context switching".

A lot of the "why is everything an app!" comments make me think of that. A lot of the options don't really take much longer, and still depend on an internet connection just like on the 360, but since the guide menu on the 360 was a smaller menu that still had your game showing behind it, I think some people feel more comfortable with that. You still had to hit buttons to "load" your friends, or "load" the party interface, but since there was the game sitting quietly and faded out in the background, it was easier for some to keep track of. There was always only ever 1 "main" thing to keep in mind, and that was your game or your dashboard.

Now with the Xbox One, a lot of things you load into now are fullscreen. Even though the game is still running in the background as before (or on the side in the case of snap), the action of going fullscreen into something else, or seeing two things side by side seems to throw people off, because you can mentally lose track of "home". In addition since "home" may not actually be "home" now (the dashboard is now just another layer on the stack), you get the "why does mashing B on the home screen taking me back into a game??" complaints. On the 360, mashing B would either taking you back to your game, or back to the top level of the app, because the 360 could only ever run 1 thing at a time. So it was more restricted in that sense, but more "comfortable" because it only kept the user thinking about 1 thing at a time, and there was always a "home" to go back to. Xbox One can run 4 different apps, and also keep track of your entire history of loading stuff, so even though it's cool that it can do this, this also means more for the user to mentally track.

It also makes me think of a lot of the Windows 8 issues people were having. A full screen start menu still effectively worked the same as the old start menu, functionality wise, but a lot of the complaints were "why is this throwing me into some full screen menu". The feeling was that it was taking you to some completely different place, which a lot of people don't like, and the screen covering up your desktop made one lose track of "home".
 
soul creator said:
I wonder if the level of comfort one would have with the UI depends on how comfortable one is with mentally "context switching".

A lot of the "why is everything an app!" comments make me think of that. A lot of the options don't really take much longer, and still depend on an internet connection just like on the 360, but since the guide menu on the 360 was a smaller menu that still had your game showing behind it, I think some people feel more comfortable with that. You still had to hit buttons to "load" your friends, or "load" the party interface, but since there was the game sitting quietly and faded out in the background, it was easier for some to keep track of. There was always only ever 1 "main" thing to keep in mind, and that was your game or your dashboard.

Now with the Xbox One, a lot of things you load into now are fullscreen. Even though the game is still running in the background as before (or on the side in the case of snap), the action of going fullscreen into something else, or seeing two things side by side seems to throw people off, because you can mentally lose track of "home". In addition since "home" may not actually be "home" now (the dashboard is now just another layer on the stack), you get the "why does mashing B on the home screen taking me back into a game??" complaints. On the 360, mashing B would either taking you back to your game, or back to the top level of the app, because the 360 could only ever run 1 thing at a time. So it was more restricted in that sense, but more "comfortable" because it only kept the user thinking about 1 thing at a time, and there was always a "home" to go back to. Xbox One can run 4 different apps, and also keep track of your entire history of loading stuff, so even though it's cool that it can do this, this also means more for the user to mentally track.

It also makes me think of a lot of the Windows 8 issues people were having. A full screen start menu still effectively worked the same as the old start menu, functionality wise, but a lot of the complaints were "why is this throwing me into some full screen menu". The feeling was that it was taking you to some completely different place, which a lot of people don't like, and the screen covering up your desktop made one lose track of "home".
Click to expand...

I don't understand why when I hit friends...it's not instant. Why do I need to see a friends loading icon? When I hit play a Blu-ray...it's a freaking app too. A game title loading screen makes sense, it's loading the game, but internal things like friends, parties, etc...why are those separate apps?
 
TTUVAPOR said:
I don't understand why when I hit friends...it's not instant. Why do I need to see a friends loading icon? When I hit play a Blu-ray...it's a freaking app too. A game title loading screen makes sense, it's loading the game, but internal things like friends, parties, etc...why are those separate apps?
Click to expand...
This what drives me nuts - and the fact that it's reaching out to the internet and making DNS queries all the time slows it down even further.

Simple things like messaging friends, joining parties, sending party invites, etc. take absolutely forever compared to the Xbox 360. Switching parties and invites was something I could do in the middle of a game without getting killed on the 360, that's not the case anymore.

For example, if I launch the snapped party app, the only option is to start a new party. I can't browse and see what friends have open parties so I could rejoin them. No, that requires launching the friends app, which is giant, slow, and ungainly.

The Xbox One UI is a huge step back in terms of actual usability and responsiveness. It's probably my least favorite thing about the system.
 
TTUVAPOR said:
I don't understand why when I hit friends...it's not instant. Why do I need to see a friends loading icon? When I hit play a Blu-ray...it's a freaking app too. A game title loading screen makes sense, it's loading the game, but internal things like friends, parties, etc...why are those separate apps?
Click to expand...

The idea is that you'd be able to update apps separately without a large scale firmware update. So you could radically change the friends list features without worry for the most part. This is how MS has been able to push out monthly updates.

The downside to this is that you're always stuck with booting into apps, which will always perform slower than what we're normally used to. The console will never be fast on the OS level; that's not how it was designed. Whether that was the right choice or not really depends on how much value you've gotten out of all the monthly updates since the last year.
 
Duxxy3 said:
Way too much of the XB1 OS is based on having an internet connection, a fast and stable one at that. A fast and stable server as well. When one of them is messed up, the OS becomes just a wee bit broken.

An OS shouldn't go to pieces when your connection does.
Click to expand...

I'm on an 80/20 line and the OS is still slow. I doubt the DNS stuff is the issue.
 
I often read that the UI is not intuative.

Can anyone who feels that way can explain that ?

If I want to start a game or an app there is a tile called "games and apps"

On the Main page I have the main game windows, below the 4 recently used games/apps.

Swipe left => I have my pins for quick access of everything

Swipe right is the friends area, where I see who is online, leaderboards and can jump into the friends list for anything friends related

Another swipe right is the store organized in what I am looking for.

Settings can be accessed from everywhere which just a press of the menu button.

....

Sorry but I just don´t understand what can be inconvenient about this :-)
 
I bought an Xbox on day one (even have the achievement to prove it), and I will admit for the first week, I was confused at times. They have made massive improvements to it in the last 14 months though, and I find it super simple to use and not confusing anymore.

OP, perhaps you just need to use it more, or drop any preconceived ideas of what you think it should be and learn what it is?
 
Ape said:
But I don't like avatars
Click to expand...

I don't know about them, cause I did not have an X360. But why people gennerally hate it that much, and why are people "scary" that they will come back, when we can create an avatar already in the Xbox One? I think I'm missing something.
 
I think is great and has the best interface of the 3. When you use voice commands it just dissapears. Wii U UI is functional. And PS4 is ugly :P just my opinion
 
Kssio_Aug said:
I don't know about them, cause I did not have an X360. But why people gennerally hate it that much, and why are people "scary" that they will come back, when we can create an avatar already in the Xbox One? I think I'm missing something.
Click to expand...

I think people just don't want them front and center.

The original Xbox 360 avatars were clearly a response to Nintendo "Miis", minus the charm, plus microtransactions. I personally didn't like them but ymmv.
 
I'd say its maybe unintuitive however once you figure your way around its pretty amazing, especially if you have Kinect, there is a ton of great features it has.

I love that I can see who is online and what my friends are doing without actually leaving my game, I love having my TV plugged into it so I can switch to TV (and snap it), I love how twitch is integrated right into the game store so if I'm curious about I game I can quickly and easily pull up a twitch stream, I love how I can pin all my frequently used apps to the left and use my voice to navigate to any unfrequently used apps, I love that I can snap twitch streams and TV well I'm waiting for games to load up, and I love suspend/resume... it is sorely missed on PS4, I love how when you say "record that" it automatically does all the work for you and puts it on your activity feed, I love how I can control my cable TV, Reciever, and Xbox with a combination of my voice, control, and smartphone.

Even if some features totally miss (like no background music playing) overall its fantastic.

The PS4 is totally underwhelming feature wise but it is pretty straight forward. All though that media bar is a pretty dumb idea (you should be able to choose what shows up there instead of it being sorted by recently played) .
 
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