Nintendo & designing humanly
I remember this one time, I was about 9 or 10, and I was with my brother in my room, reaching the end-game of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team. If you played the game, you know where I’m about to go with this. I won’t spoil the ending, but I still remember crying, and I remember how truly heartbroken I felt over the ending. To this day, I’ve never felt so immersed and attached to characters in a game.
The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series accomplished a hard feat: it managed to make its players feel like everyone in the game were our good friends, with tons of shared experiences and hardships overcome together. Nintendo, as it does in many of its flagship games, brought you into a fantasy world through their immaculate ability to reflect our shared human experience within them.
In this way, Nintendo has captured the hearts of many over the years, myself included. Not only are they insanely good at storytelling, but they design their interfaces to be intuitive and delightful as well, connecting with us in a remarkably human way as a result. And make no mistake, this isn’t on accident. Throughout every step of the customer journey, Nintendo maintains that same strong, empathetic user-centered design and brand.
Perhaps I’m being a bit sentimental about Nintendo’s influence on my beliefs and design work, but I really think we can use Nintendo’s design choices to remember to improve our connection to humanity in our design projects.
In other words, if we want to design something that makes people feel happiness or joy, perhaps we can simply remember how something ‘Nintendo’ made us feel.
Excluding perhaps the feeling of frustration with their online, or not being able to use Airpods with the Switch. I digress there.
Crafting a ‘human‘ experience
In a world obsessed with using words like “market”, “user”, and “buyer” to refer to the people we affect with our businesses, a lot of the people in the trenches within these companies suddenly find themselves completely separate from the people they work for. Growing up, I always felt really repulsed by the business jargon I heard, and it contributed to the fear I had of growing up; do I just die inside and disconnect from everyone? They all seem like robots! Is that what I’m doomed to become? No. We work for people, for each other. Not for ‘our management’, not for a ‘market’ to be exploited.
Is that an unpopular opinion? The old rhetoric claims there’s no other way to run a business, but maybe not — things are changing. We should stop with the odd attempts to commodify and simplify the complex beings that we do business with and instead remember that “the users” are simply just, well, us.
Do we like flyers being shoved into our hands? Do we like calls from solicitors robotically asking for our money? Do we like being tricked into scams? I’ll answer for us all — not really, no, not at all. I may be young, but I’m pretty sure that’s a universal annoyance. So why do we perpetuate it at work?
I’m not sure what company has managed to avoid this today, Nintendo included. However, ever so slowly, the way of thinking is changing, and I hope to be able to name a company soon! I think the growth in UX positions in the past few years, a position literally based on solving others’ problems, is a symptom of this change.
In our current society, most of us have gained a perception that we are just an asset for businesses to exploit, and depending on how bad it is, we may dread interacting with certain businesses as a whole. So, when we get a chance to ‘break away’, or interact with a business that focuses on listening to us and solving a problem of ours, it’s refreshing and we ironically end up giving money to them instead.
It’s the difference between someone starting a company because they think they can get rich off of convincing us to buy something, versus someone starting a company to solve a problem and help others feel better. Yes, they’re both trying to make money as a necessity, but the motivator is different. And, typically, we are pretty good at telling who’s being genuine and who isn’t, and we’ll feel differently interacting with each company as a result.
This is where I think Nintendo shines: they pay attention to how they design their interactions and UI to make you feel good, which simultaneously helps their business and those who interact with them.
Visual cues of happiness where it makes the most impact
From personal observation, here are the general visual design principles that Nintendo has used over the past 15 years or so:
- Consistently rounded everything
- Thoughtfully-minimal interfaces in games, consoles, and web
- Bright, engaging color choices that either invoke feelings of harmony, energy, and/or cheerfulness
- Characters with intensely relatable personality traits and storylines
Nintendo’s brand is undeniably trying to feel happy and bright! From their ads, to their website, to their console UI’s, everything feels very ‘human’, if you will.
When I think of gaming as a general whole, the first things that come to mind are confusing controls, UI’s with lots of clutter, dark color choices, and generally cult-like heights of barrier-to-entry.
Nintendo, as a general rule, seems to manage to avoid that image, and that’s one of their greatest assets. They keep the visuals simple while keeping games and characters wonderfully deep and complex; this is not an easy feat.
There’s a reason why most interfaces of games are cluttered and overbearing to look at; making a game intricate and visually simple is hard. Aside from maybe a stock-trading app, I think games are the ultimate information architecture challenge. When creating a world for a game and giving the player all the options in the world to interact with it, how on earth do you display those options to the user on a single screen?
In order to cater to the lowest common denominator of their market — gamers with little to no experience — Nintendo had to consider that user’s willingness to overlook bad UI’s (read: none at all) and invest a lot of time in being user-centric to cater to the lowest common denominator. Any gamer attracted to their platform with more experience would instantly be catered for on top of that, and may perhaps appreciate the change of pace (read: me).
From my observations, this is how they seem to do it: the more widespread an experience is, the easier they make it to use. For example, their console UI’s and flagship games are simpler and brighter than their products for more dedicated fans such as Fire Emblem Heroes and perhaps Bayonetta 2.
The reason for this is similar in many product lines across consumer industries. You attract people with simpler, joyful experiences, until they’re so satisfied and enthralled with your product that they’re willing to learn to enjoy your more niche products! Woot! We gotta teach ourselves to ride a bicycle with training wheels before we feel ready for the big guns, you know?
While I want to focus on their UI and branding, I can’t ignore the many exceptions to the rule within some of their games. As I mentioned earlier, Nintendo doesn’t always keep things simple because in some games it’s better that way.
Here’s an example —first, here’s how to teach a skill to my New Year’s Laegjarn in Fire Emblem Heroes.
Not so simple, is it? Look at all of those options! Nintendo can’t always be simple and playful. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense. A certain level of difficulty can actually be good in order to provide more serious users with an agreeable product.
Here’s an example of how simplifying a user experience too much can actually alienate people:
Of all things, the invention of cake mix experienced this! In the mid-20th century, companies had to make their cake mix more difficult to use in order for the wives who baked to feel like it was worthy of using. Crazy, right? To that end, Fire Emblem Heroes seems intentionally designed to seem complex to attract the ‘right’ people to play it.
(A note: As pointed out in a good comment, icing also had a very large influence on the success of cake mix! It was, quite literally, the icing on the cake for the product. I want to make sure I nuance that, while maintaining this point of advanced users wanting to be more involved in the processes they are familiar with.)
The takeaway with Nintendo’s UI designs that although they morph in difficulty depending on those who would use it the most, their platform is a bright experience at the baseline, and that’s what I want to point out.
Nintendo is uniquely playful and humanly simple. Although each brand in the game industry has its market fit, something can be learned from the way that Nintendo really nails being human throughout every touch of the customer journey. Whether it’s watching an ad, buying a plushie, using a console, or playing a game, everything feels inherently empathetic and intuitive.
Nintendo looks happy to make you feel happy; but what about how you interact with those happy screens? What can we learn from that?
Making simple interactions fun
In many UX books, the same thing rings true: UX is a pretty intuitive process. When we learn new psychological phenomena, the resounding reaction is almost always a “Oh, wow, I knew that was a thing. Why didn’t I think of that?” There’s a reason for this group reaction: although we’re all different, we’re all still human. We all “know” because we all “do”.
In fact, are you at a coffee shop? In the subway? Look at the person next to you!
Congrats, you share 99% of your genes with that person, and, you know them better than you think. I hope you feel comfort in thinking about that.
What’s something we all universally like? We like fun!
It’s common knowledge that paying attention to designing micro interactions boosts user delight, especially along user journeys that you want people to return to over and over. When you check off a task on a to-do list in an app, should it just gray out the task, or should it pop confetti, have a character pop up with a congratulatory expression, and have a fishing hook appear into the string, hooking onto the task and reeling it out of the screen?
Nintendo has made their micro-interactions addicting and delightful, so I feel they can serve as a good reference for making our designs more fun. Of course, use with discretion in relation to your project. But if you think you can spice things up, do so. Make a story where it seems impossible. Be a kid again, use your imagination. Push the boundaries.
Hover over Nintendo’s links and buttons, and see how they react to you. Log into your account on my.nintendo.com, and watch your Mii pretend to paint you on the home screen, or play video games while you roam the site. Pan through the options on the Switch’s home screen, and listen to all the sounds. Click the “Album” button, watch how the icon animates on-click, and watch/listen to the sounds and animations that they use to fill the screen with your photos.
Click your avatar in the upper-left hand corner and notice how the sound is different than other options to provide richer context to your action. Look and listen to the loading screen while the Nintendo Shop loads.
Unless you’re specifically a UX, product, or interaction designer, do you ever notice how these sorts of interactions make you feel and why? It mostly affects us under the hood — so wild!
It’s all there to make your actions feel fulfilling and satisfying. It’s all there to make you feel like you’re doing the right thing. This sort of design almost mimics that feeling of praise that you got from a loved one for decorating a cookie well as a kid; that “you did it” sense of accomplishment.
TLDR: Be human more, man.
Whether intentionally or not, Nintendo’s bright playfulness through their UI choices and interaction design makes using their products more fun. Although they are able to use all of their characters and industry type to be more playful and interactive, this sort of satisfying, fun experience can be applied in so many other ways. Something can be learned from the way that Nintendo really nails being human throughout every touch of the customer journey. Whether it’s watching an ad, using a console, or visiting a Nintendo store, everything feels inherently empathetic and intuitive.
As a waiter, you use a computer to input orders. What if the software was brightly-colored, with lots of photos/illustrations, and fun popping interactions? Perhaps you would be more excited to come to work to take care of people, because part of your job has become more enjoyable. Maybe it would be a source of bonding amongst the employees, which boosts employee morale, and reduces employee turnover in an industry with such high turnover rates.
Being a student, I was worried about this article not being informative enough , or being too narrow-sighted. I was worried that it wouldn’t consider enough perspectives, or offer enough insight. But, after talking with a close friend, he told me that I wasn’t trying to teach something new — I’m just trying to reach you, the reader.
Be imaginative, be creative, don’t be blocked by convention. Listen to what people want, solve their problems, and help make life easier and more fun for everyone — just like Nintendo did for me as a kid and continues to do for me today.
We don’t have to make things so cold, we don’t have to disconnect so much! Push the limits of what “business” entails. Fulfill business goals through design in new ways, or, better yet, change the narrative at your company. If we can stop making things so “adult”, and make everyday processes and objects more fun and useful simultaneously, I think we’ll all be happier for it!
Create a story around your app or product when it seems impossible to implement. Be a kid again, use your imagination. Humans love stories! Maybe don’t make people cry, but foster a sense of connection and humanity in your designs and the content you give.
There’s a lot of lonely, scared people in society nowadays — help us all feel less alone in your own way. Don’t make more kids fear growing up like I did. Make life fun outside of childhood, so we can all be more optimistic and ready to help change the world. Tap into what makes us human, just like Nintendo does.
Thanks for reading :)
(Update: Curated onto the front pages of UX, Gaming, and Design? Thank you all for sharing this. I’m so happy that others resonate with this. 😭)
