My Nintendo
Case Story of an App propose
A new experience ahead
For my last semester on my postgradution in Digital experience Design i was challegend to design an iOS from zero. It could be an original idea, a redesign or even a mobile/app version of a plataform or site.
As a big Nintendo fan and a power user of Mario and Zelda’s world i decided to develop an App to integrate the most need of a user who plays those online games. Not just an app that could me allow to invite friends to play, but also a app that could improve my Nintendo’s exeperience, it includes eShop and MyNintendo areas.
Eshop as the name kinda says is the online shop for user to buy games for Nintendo Switch, 3DS and Wii U console. There you have access to huge library of games. That problem till now is that eShop in only avaiable on the consoles menu. Impossible to buy from desktop and even more from a App.
Otherwise, MyNintendo is the Nintendo’s program for user who buys and play cames. It works more like an archivemnets points. The diference is that with those Nintendo Points you can actually exchange for more games or get discounts on new ones.
The design process
As all the UI and UX projects, I started mapping the current website for Nintendo’s MyNintendo (https://my.nintendo.com). From there, I developed an User Flow of how the app could works. from the splash screen to purchasing a game and how the the app itself could start a game’s download directly to the console.
Following the User Flow, i decided to create a User Journey emphasizing the purchasing process of a game. Of course that app could offer a lot more nice options, but for this project i decided to create a task flow from the beggining to the end.
You know, when we are creating something new from zero, we pretty much lose our goals all the time, so it´s important that as you’r designing screens and taks try to do some notes besides. Nice ideas comes from nothing, and for this project wasn’t different. During my design process, I realized that some screens weren’t making sense, than i staterd drawing my sketchs on paper.
It may look old school, but i highly recommend to everyone to draw some nice stick man or some ugly sketchs on your notebook. it really helps.
For the screen’s design i wanted to show the real Nintendo’s mood. A helping tool was to create a mood board with all the elements that i could use, it includes images, text, colors and icons that could be a reference for the icons i was going to design soon.
After sketching, i design the main flow on wireframes, it helped to figure out how teh content woul be displayed on the interface. On this step i also includes some icons, and real content. It helps and make the mockup process a lot faster to do.
Designing for iPhone X wasn’t a easy task since i don’t have one (yet). So i used my iPhone 7 Plus to see if all the texts are in a nice reading size and if the images were well located. afterwards my teacher whose got an iPhone X helped me to fix some small issues on font size and some unnecessary information.
After i finished my mockups, I made a quick protoype on Invision and soon as possible i posted on a private Nintendo’s fan group on Facebook. As the time to develop the app was short, this was the best and fastest idea to check any insight or eventual problem.
Fortunaly I had a lot of engagement of the people from the group, as pretty much all the Nintendo’s fan, i had many compliments of my initiative and UX, UI logical. Of course and fortunately some people gave me nice tips about the information hierarchy.
With this quick test and with a thought that i had on mind since the beginning, i decided to focused not only on the game’s purchasing but the online chat and the whole app experience itself.
Finally after some adjustments based on what people told me on the quick test, and a conversation with my teacher i finished my App propose.
As i know myself of course i went beyond i designed some more screens of from I was first going to design. I made some interaction screen for user profile, chat with online friends to improve the App experience and Channel area, which users could see all the new apps for any Nintendo Console, check some reviews and game trailers.
After almost 1 month and half I finished this App propose and, I know still got some adjustments to do, but by now its a nice start for a bigger project. I was proud to myself that i could design a whole new app from zero, thinking about user experience and how it could improve more the experience of Nintendo’s fans.
You can check InVision prototype on the link below, i will be happy to hear any suggestions shortly.
