Elliott Hsu, one of the foremost hardware designers, created the Surface Pride Type Cover. His inspirational prompt came from Fedorov, who introduced Hsu to the flags of the many LGBTQIA+ communities that span many gender identities, gender expressions, and sexual and romantic orientations. And every year, she and the teams they worked with found that more people resonated with the design.
“We love the rainbow flag. I love it,” says Fedorov, who along with others who worked on the design wanted to focus on the idea of intersectionality coming together between communities. “At the same time, we must understand that the community is not a monolith. Everyone’s experience is different and there are many communities under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella.”
Every year, Hsu and Fedorov wanted to challenge themselves and the teams working on Pride products (like the Surface Skins that shipped in 2020) to make the designs more meaningful and keep the momentum going.
“We wanted a way to show our commitment through a Microsoft product and use our design skills to build it,” says Hsu. “It was a very creative project that appeals to a lot of people.”
Ultimately, this design would lead to the Pride controller, a project that appealed to people across the company and attracted hundreds of people to help develop, refine and bring it to the attention of the public – a monumental effort with many moving parts over the years. to.
“The goal here was to make the game world a more inclusive space and Pride was an opportunity to take a good step in that direction,” says Ruiz.
In 2021, with the pandemic still hitting the supply chain and many other constraints, this collective decided to put the flags (at the time 18) on an Xbox wireless controller – an idea that has been seeping through since 2019. mass-produced under the circumstances of the time, they created a limited edition controller that they wouldn’t sell, but sent to about 100 players and creators in the LGBTQIA+ community.
The response was unexpected – people loved it, but were unhappy that they couldn’t buy their own controllers, lighting social media with both praise and dismay. This response ultimately proved to be the internal argument for a wider audience, leading to more conversations with engineering and marketing teams committed to the project. These and the other teams working on the controller were energized by the amount of attention the prototype received and how people wanted more. June 2022 became the target for the large entry and availability of the Pride controller. This would give the teams plenty of time to develop the design, as it is usually a one to two year process to produce a custom controller (which includes tests and proofs, as well as a host of color adjustments).
“While some fans were super disappointed that they couldn’t buy the Pride controller, the creators who actually received the controllers were super excited,” says Ruiz. “They were very happy to be recognized in their community. So our biggest takeaway at the time was that the gaming community was hungry for a Pride controller to buy.
Jen Nichol, a senior program manager for business development and partnerships at Xbox, was part of the collective effort that led the proposal and strategy to bring the Pride controller to Xbox Design Lab. She was also embedded in the Xbox community (through her previous work at Microsoft Mixer and as head of community management for Xbox Studios) and was part of the LGBTQIA+ community both as an ally and as a parent of a daughter who identifies as trans .
“My understanding and connection to that community is personal. It’s my family. It’s my people. So it wasn’t hard to know how important it was,” she says. “By gaming you build very strong relationships with people on the other side of the world for years. It’s community. And there is no way you can embrace the community without embracing everyone and recognizing that people have value.”
For her and the rest of the team, this project was a love letter to the community; a way of saying, “We see you and we want you here.” She has also forged a path to give back to that community. Complementing the way Microsoft supports LGBTQIA+ communities, the teams have upfront charitable contributions totaling $170,000 to multiple nonprofit organizations that support these communities.
“It would ensure that we do this in a way that shows real support – not just words – and that we donate whether we sell them or not,” Nichol says. “We all agreed that it’s better to do it this way than not to do it at all, because it’s important for positive, real change to happen.”
While the Surface Type Cover and Skins were flat, the 3D shape of the controller proved much more challenging from a design perspective – especially when the “+” part of the community was so huge – and the team wanted to keep expanding its representation.
“What you design here affects someone who can see themselves on a product,” says Hsu, who had experience designing previous custom controllers, such as the one associated with “Space Jam: A New Legacy” and the Elite Series. 2. “You have to fit every flag in it and still make it look like a flag. It’s hard to have 34 elements. Usually we try to reduce elements in the design.”
But everyone on this project agreed: the controller needed to maximize inclusion through those flags.
“All the little things are important to increase acceptance and inclusion for the LGBTQIA+ communities. We know visibility is important, representation is important,” says Fedorov. “When people see their flag represented, it changes lives. We have 34 flags and some are not often seen, they are not mainstream.”
The teams kept working on it, kept balancing and recalibrating. Hsu and other designers made sure that each flag would fit and still look like a flag. Fedorov says the intent of the design is to showcase many communities (to try to give fair treatment) and to draw attention to those who are often the most marginalized. The end result exemplifies intersectionality within and between communities, while at the same time creating a sense of unity of people coming together across groups.
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