RANDOM: Xbox Series X team visited people's houses with mock-up boxes!

Aside from the customary memes about the consoles looking like a fridge or speaker, the Xbox Series X and Series S console have widely been praised by the gaming community for their sleek, simplistic design.

This perfect aesthetic was not simply down to chance. In an interview on Medium with Joline Tang, Xbox designers disclosed sections of the design process from the past few years as they wrangled with multiple console mock-ups.

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Interestingly, the design team even visited the homes of Xbox owners, to ensure they would create an appealing console for the consumer. Here's what they said.

Taking Xbox boxes into the home

According to the interview, the Xbox design team took a collection of black boxes into the homes of players across the USA, and asked people to place them inside their gaming setup accordingly.

"We asked them a lot of questions, and they gave their unvarnished opinions," stated Xbox's principal designer, Chris Kujawski. Various boxes were described as looking like VCRs or cable boxes, but one design - a tall rectangular box - stood out to fans, and thus became the design of choice for the Xbox Series X.

Nicolas Denhez, the senior design director, told Tang that "device placement and furniture orientation informed all of our design choices," with the team even testing out consoles in popular bookshelf designs to ensure it fits in perfectly.

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About the fans...

When the Xbox Series S' design was revealed, fans became split over the black circular fan that appears on the front of the console, with some preferring an all-white design instead.

Erika Kelter, a senior designer, admitted that they did test this design out, but ultimately went in a different direction. "We actually tried all black and all white, but it looked a little boring," she admitted. The cooling fans were instead made to be a standout part of both consoles, turning a crucial hardware component into an aesthetic design.

The Xbox Series S's design was first officially revealed in September following leaks of the digital-only console. Both the Xbox Series X and Series S will release on November 10, competing with Sony's PlayStation 5 range that opted for a more futuristic design.

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