I’ve been using the Switch for a few months and I can’t stop thinking about its user interface. Nintendo’s newest console is in the golden era of its UI. The base features you would expect out of a game system are covered, but cruft has not yet been added to the experience. I’ve heard a lot of people say they long for more from the Switch’s UI, but I love the bare bones simplicity.

Speed

The first thing you will notice about the interface is its speed. You can power up the device from a cold start in at about ten seconds. Waking the device from sleep is about as fast as waking your cell phone. That speed feels fantastic on a mobile console where you might need to start and stop playing quickly during your commute. Being able to grab the device and dive right back into a game as dense as Breath of the Wild with no load time feels magical.

System wake to game time.

The animation choices also reinforce the feeling of speed. Every UI transition is rapid. Almost imperceivable in some cases. Fades, pulses and bounces occur so fast the whole system feels like a sugar rush. Check out my avatar ready to play the currently selected game. It’s eager and ready to go!

Let’s play. Come on. Let’s go. Let’s do this now!

Visual Hierarchy

First layer: Games

Games

The first layer of priority is games. They are laid out horizontally as squares. They take up the majority of the screen ordered by the recency of what you played last. Developers seem to make maximum use of this space with lush colorful graphics representing their titles.

Second layer: Non-game navigation

Non-game navigation

The secondary items are noticeable but defer to the visual weight of the game tiles by being significantly smaller. The purpose of this layer is to provide navigation to non-game surfaces in the UI. In the upper left corner is your profile and friends list, which has a number above it when friends are online.

One player is online right now.

The rest of the options are laid out horizontally below the games. This includes News, eShop, Album, Controllers, Settings, and Power.

Nintendo has placed News and the eShop at the front of the list. It could be argued that a user’s content and settings are more important than new games, but this order is a common paradigm for systems like this. Power and Controllers could be placed within Settings for logical hierarchy but are accessible from this level of interface because Nintendo expects them to be used often.

Color is used in this layer mainly to draw attention. The iconography is not particularly obvious at first due to the somewhat abstract outline style, but the shapes become easy to identify after using the system for a short bit. No text is displayed with the icons unless one is currently selected while using a controller input. The user has to learn what resides behind each section by exploring them one by one.

Third layer: System information and control assistance

System information

At the third level of priority on the main screen you have system information in the top right corner (time, wifi, battery) as well as controller status in the bottom left corner and action options in the bottom right. These are all presented as simple text or icons to display information you may be looking for without distracting.

This main interface view could be designed a zillion different ways with various advantages and disadvantages, but I love how what Nintendo settled on is clear to the user. When I open the console I am more than likely doing so to play a game. It is immediately obvious if anyone is online to play with and my secondary options are all available to me with one extra tap or click. The interface contains a lot of navigation and information, but it’s completely approachable and lighting fast. I think they nailed this.

Input & Display