I’m a huge fan of Nintendo, and lately it’s become less than a secret. I was browsing /r/nintendoswitch on reddit when I saw a post for a UI concept.

It looked really neat, but I noticed a few things I wasn’t fond of. So, I set out do some research and make my own Nintendo switch home screen concept.

I started with a basic sketch, before any research, to try and figure out placement. I decided to go with primary navigation on the bottom for two reasons.

I felt that horizontal navigation made sense in terms of UX, as it would be navigated with the triggers, which are horizontal. The top is typically reserved for things like signal, user information, and a clock.

I started with this basic idea of bottom navigation and made it a bold red, Nintendo's favorite color. I though the text should be just as bold, to make the bottom navigation stand out, and stand out it did, though not how I wanted.

I then added a white background, and settled on a games section to the right, and an area for friends and social notifications on the left. I decided Switch games should get a large card background with a light red gradient, and GameCube games the same with a purple one. For the friends section I made a card, gave it some shadow, and added some actionable buttons.

This first design did not last.

So, what went wrong? First of all, the notification cards completely lacked any form of decent spacing, and the bold stood out too much. The shadows also looked weird on the plain white background.

The game cards weren't very well aligned, and I wasn’t a fan of their aesthetic in general. Their large size also wasted a ton of space.

The bottom bar and “Friends” text also showed another problem. In making the design bold, I had gone way too far. The uppercase text was too harsh, and the complete lack of iconography made the whole design seem unfriendly, which is unlike Nintendo.

Back to the drawing board then. I decided to keep the navigation on the bottom for the earlier reasons. I also did some more research. First of all, I thought it would be a good idea to look at some examples of Nintendo’s recent UIs to work off of. They actually have one UI example that looks clean and modern, and works really well.

Super Mario Maker for Wii U

Super Mario Maker has a design language that works really well. It’s flat, but everything has a shadow. The background in this screenshot also has this frosted glass look and a pattern. I took some cues from this, and decided to give almost everything a shadow, and gave a diagonal dot pattern for the background.

A lot better. I shortened the width of the bottom bar, made it primarily iconography, and the text that did show was capitalized normally. It blended together to make a much more friendly menu. The shadow for the user picture pleased me quite a bit, too, as it stood out easily and you could tell it was your character.

Next, I set out to redo the friends section. I made the text capitalized normally, and kept the cards from before. Now, the cards were the bright Miiverse green and only had one action. Underneath the notifications, I added a section to see what your friends were playing, which I had planned to put in a menu, underneath these notifications.

Next, I moved onto the games section. I decided this area should consist of the last played game and some miiverse posts about it, as well as some favorites. I took cues from the Xbox One UI, with shadows.

There were a few problems. The box cut off the comments, which was confusing because of the shadows. I wasn’t very sure about the design after these changes, though. It was confusing and looked weird. I decided to focus on the tablet layout to give me ideas. I ended up going with a grid of apps that were functional enough.

I still wasn’t quite happy, but moved onto the game overlay screen for a change, as it was beginning to get frustrating. Originally the overlay was just the home screen with a blurred background of the game, but I thought it needed something new. I started by putting the game title at the top middle, and then adding over the “Favorites” section. I removed the text, as I wanted it to be able to scroll to show everything.This allowed me to add another row, and improve spacing. In fact, I liked this so much, I went back to the normal tablet home and made quite a few changes.

I added another column, and row, and made it somewhat scroll able, for more items. My attention then turned to the friends menu, which had remained relatively the same for most of this process. I decided I wasn’t a fan, and while working on the overlay, revamped it. I took the design from the old Zelda card’s miiverse post and made it a little different. This is where the overlay really came into what I wanted, as the posts were tailored to the game.