OnLive is a company that provides cloud based video games on demand. The games run on OnLive’s high performance servers and the video is sent to your client. Since the client only has to play video and send controller input, it has very low hardware requirements. The service is usable through a browser plug-in on your computer or through OnLive‘s MicroConsole attached to your TV.
I worked on the UI for the OnLive service portal where users can buy and play games. When I started, the company had already decided on a space theme for the UI, with a “sun” made up of video tiles as the main visual element. The work you see here shows the evolution of that idea.
One of the more interesting challenges of working at OnLive was designing a UI that was optimized for use with a game controller, yet still usable with a mouse and keyboard. Aside from the obvious differences in interaction, we also had to account for the different monitor sizes and viewing distances typical of PC and game console use.