XBOX MOTION DELIVERABLES
At Xbox, I design and build motion for Game Assist, the in-game assistant that helps players with whatever they are playing. The work spans the assistant's surfaces, from the newest Xbox handheld to the PC Game Bar, and ranges from interaction design to branded end cards. This page brings together three of those deliverables. Each one includes the live, interactive prototype I built to design it and hand it to engineering.
COMPOSER BUTTON ICONS
In the Xbox Game Bar on PC, players talk to Game Assist through its composer, the bar where they type or speak to the assistant. Its buttons are built on Xbox Design System containers, so pressing, hover, and focus are already handled by the system. What the buttons were missing was life and clarity at the icon level, the small moments that tell players what each control is doing.
I designed and built the icon microanimations that layer on top of those containers. The new chat button arrives with a soft spring and a two-step settle, the dictation mic grows a listening glow while it captures speech, and the primary button morphs between voice, send, and stop so a single control stays in step with the conversation. Each animation has its own timing and easing, uses Xbox Design System color tokens, and falls back gracefully when reduced motion is on.
I delivered the full set in Rive and as a coded reference, with a live preview and complete motion specs (every state, trigger, duration, and easing) so engineering could build each button exactly as intended.
This set shipped. The icon microanimations are live in the Game Assist composer today.
PUSH-TO-TALK
On the newest Xbox handheld, players can hold a button to bring up Game Assist, an in-game assistant they can talk to by voice for help with whatever they are playing. It lives as a small overlay at the bottom of the screen, with states for when the player is speaking and when the assistant is responding.
The problem was accidental activation. Players were holding the button without meaning to, and the assistant would appear unexpectedly, which felt abrupt and pulled them out of the game.
I proposed solving it with motion. As the player holds the button, an anticipation animation builds and fills over roughly 800 milliseconds before the assistant activates. That one build does three things at once: it signals that something is loading, it gives players a window to let go if the press was unintentional, and it shows how much longer the hold will take if it was. I built the interaction in Rive with two input modes, controller and keyboard, where only the controller carries the hold-to-confirm gesture since a keyboard shortcut is already deliberate. I delivered it as a developer-ready file with the full state flow, live voice-amplitude inputs, and integration specs.
The wider push-to-talk feature was later cut from the product, so the work never shipped. Even so, the proposal drew strong positive feedback, and it stands as a clear example of using motion to turn an accidental, jarring moment into one that feels deliberate and forgiving.
GAME HIGHLIGHTS BUMPER
Highlight Reels automatically turns a player's recent gameplay into a short highlight reel. My task was to design the end card that closes those reels, the bumper that signs each one off.
The brief was to lead with Xbox branding while working in the Game Assist sub-brand, and to feature the player's own gamertag so every reel ended on a personal note. I designed four motion directions, and built each as an interactive Rive prototype rather than a flat render. Anyone reviewing could type in any gamertag and watch it appear and animate correctly in place, which made the directions easy to test with real names and showed exactly how the personalization would behave.
Version 3 was selected as the final design, and it ships in Highlight Reels today. The interactive previews made it easy for the team to compare directions and feel the personalization with real gamertags before committing to the one that shipped.