Switch UI: The Good and the Bad

Nintendo’s UI was honestly a bit surprising to me. They came out of the gate with a pretty strong UI. It’s not perfect, but it’s not awful. Let’s take a look at the UI and break it down by section.

Naturally I chose Link as my profile picture. 🤓

The top section features your profile picture, the time, wifi signal strength, and battery information (I’ve chosen to show % on mine). Consoles tend to use the top section for navigational purposes. Nintendo chose to place this elsewhere. It feels more like a phone OS or tablet OS, which makes sense for the handheld. For the TV? I’m not so sure. I think a bigger profile picture presence and stronger use of the top space is something worth exploring.

BTW- Zelda BotW is 💯

The middle of the UI features a horizontal column of cards. These cards represent software/games the user has recently opened or played. I’m a huge fan of a card system. They’re easy to organize, and allow third parties to incorporate their designs with consistency to the UI. What I don’t love is the horizontal scroll, and the way they handle the game title. Zelda’s title is currently bleeding over into Snipperclips. This section could be cleaner, and better utilized for the user.

I’ve dubbed this section “icons.” The icons section feels slick and modern at first glance. However, there’s a few icons that I have some trouble with. For example, the power icon. Not only is it unnecessary, but it’s also a different stroke weight than the rest of the icons. The “news” icon (first one) looks more like messaging. I love the colors, but I wish they’d continue throughout the rest of the icons. I think we can trim some unnecessary fat here, and build on a system that isn’t far from working.

Part of this section doesn’t feel necessary. The Joy-Cons on the left is absolutely necessary, so that you know when your charge is running low (they learned from Xbox on this one), or a Joy-Con becomes disconnected. I think always displaying the button map isn’t hurting the user experience, but most of the users playing the Switch are tech savvy and know “A” is select, and “B” is back. The only place these options are expanded are when you’re selecting a tile in the middle section. I think there’s a more simple, and lean way to educate your users on their button options.

Nintendo Switch UI Redesigned

As I said before, the UI that Nintendo debuted with the Switch isn’t horrible. I wanted to redesign the UI with respect to the things they did right, and I wanted it to still feel “Nintendo.” I also wanted to ground myself in the reality that this is a console UI, and not a website or an app. I’ve never designed a console UI before, so I had to approach it as a gamer, instead of the typical app or web user. Luckily, I have a lot of experience as a gamer! So without further ado…