Exclusive: How Sony improved the PS5 dashboard

The recently added PS5 "welcome hub" is the result of a new approach at Sony to PlayStation system updates

The PS5’s configurable, data-rich Welcome Hub, introduced to players in September. Screenshot: Game File

Back in September, PlayStation 5 users began noticing a new screen when they booted up their console.

Initially in the U.S., and then elsewhere around the world, they were greeted with a “Welcome Hub,” a customizable collage of widgets that displayed key information about the system.

• One widget showed a multi-colored band, representing how much of the PS5’s storage was occupied.

• A larger rectangle showed a player’s progress in unlocking game trophies.

• A slim capsule counted the progress of any active downloads, with a circle that turned green for active downloads, red for those that were halted.

You could pick which widgets to use, how big they appeared and how they’re arranged.

This is the new default starter image for the Ps5. It’s what you’ll first see when turning on a PS5. Some were especially helpful, as they brought data to the fore that was otherwise buried multiple menu clicks deep. The new dashboard welcome screen seemed, to me, to be a pretty good upgrade.

If you own a game console, you’re used to this kind of occasional overhaul. Every so often, between Nintendo console launches or during the lifecycle of an Xbox or PlayStation, a system’s architects will change their console’s user interface, or UI. You probably know this, but I’m not sure you’ve ever read much about how these dashboard updates came to be, because you’d be hard-pressed to find interviews about them. That’s something I’ve wanted to change,

I recently asked some folks at Sony if the PlayStation team would be up for an interview about how they design—and re-design—the user interfaces for their consoles. Who does it? How long does it take? What were the goals for the PS5’s UI? Did they change at all? And how did this Welcome Hub come to be?

They agreed to an e-mail interview, which I’m running nearly in full below.

Some key takeaways:

• Sony’s done some behind-the-scenes work to enable the PS5 to get new system features more rapidly than PlayStations did before—faster than the old twice-yearly pace.

• The new Welcome Hub began was conceived by a small team during a PlayStation group “hackathon” and has become a point of pride at SIE for germinating new ideas.

• Half the people using a PS5 put it in rest mode; half shut it down. Which are you?

On with the interview…