Super Smash Menu Redesign
Fixing something that shouldn’t have been broken
Super Smash Brothers is a universally loved franchise of Nintendo games. It is well known for its insane action between video game icons. This has stayed true from game to game. However, Smash is not well known for its menus. The main menu went from basic and functional, but it has turned messier and messier from game to game. With this project, my hope was to fix that and bring the menu back to its basics.
The Problem
So, I decided to focus on Smash Ultimate’s menu. This is the most recent game in the franchise; which, in my opinion, has the worst menu. To me, it is overwhelming and laid out very oddly. There is little to no context for the headers, and there is a sidebar on top of the menu. Again, way too much.
Also, it is laid out in a circle, which is strange for a controller that can only go up, down, left, and right in a menu space. It is hard to know exactly where you are going to end up when using the directional pad or control stick.
The Solution?
In order to fix the mess that the Smash main menu has become, I wanted to go back to the basics with my personal favorite menu. It is straightforward, minimal, and it leaves little to no questions to be asked. When opening the game, you know exactly where you are going from the menu.
However, with that said, the Smash Melee menu leaves a bit to be desired in regards to color and theme. It doesn’t necessarily look like it belongs to a Smash Brothers game. I am hoping to combine the functionality and also the graphical look of the new menus in order to create a more cohesive Smash Brothers menu.
I want people who have not played the game to not be confused or overwhelmed by the main menu.
The First Step
From the offset, I wanted to get people’s opinions in regard to both menus. In order to do this, I created a survey that I shared with 16 respondents; 9 of them smash players and 7 not.
What happened, though, was quite a surprise. More than half of the respondents preferred the Smash Ultimate menu. I think this was the case because I left my questions pretty non-specific. I simply asked in my survey, basically, “Which menu do you prefer?” Because of this, I think my respondents went solely off of aesthetic, rather than functionality.
Some of the comments consisted of:
“The use of colors and large fonts as menu choices makes it much more engaging.”
“It looked more visually appealing to me.”
Although this helped, to be honest, it was not the response I was expecting (or hoping for). Despite this bias, I was grateful for the results. However, with my next iteration, I wanted to focus more on functionality.
Functionality Focus
Now that I knew which aesthetic was preferred, I really wanted to get down to the actual usability of the menu. In order to do this, I had to have more of a hands-on test. However, Covid-19 shook this possibility up quite a bit. Rather than having the actual games on hand, I had to print off the menus, and have the test subjects use a pen as a cursor.
Rather than asking qualitative questions, I asked quantitative questions with a task within the menu in mind. I wanted to see how my subjects interacted with the menu rather than just seeing it. I asked the following questions: How would you start a multiplayer game? How would you start a singleplayer game? How would you access your settings/options?
With these questions, I observed how the test subjects interacted with each menu in order to complete these tasks. Despite the limitations of just using pen and paper, I was able to gather some very useful data.
I tested 6 subjects. None of them are avid Smash players, and considering the current virus, the subjects consisted of just members of my immediate family. Each of them preferred Melee’s menu. This is what they had to say:
“For someone who has never played, the (Ultimate) menu doesn’t really tell you anything”
“Why is there a sidebar on Ultimate? There is too much happening”
With this feedback, I had what I needed to design a menu of my own.
The Final Iteration
As stated before, my hope was to create a menu that combined the functionality of Melee and the aesthetic of Ultimate. With the data I had collected, I made a basic mock-up of a menu that looked very similar to Melee’s but also had some theming from Ultimate’s.
With this test, I used the same 5 subjects (1 was missing from the previous test) in order to maintain consistency between the subjects, their expectations, and their opinions. I did a similar test in which I asked my subject task-based quantitative questions regarding my newly designed menu and the Melee menu. Here are the questions I asked: How would you see how much time you have spent playing the game? How would you access your collectibles and awards? How would you start a story mode game?
3/5 subjects preferred the new menu. The subjects all mentioned that they liked the look more; particularly the moving background with the characters. They also mentioned that the “Next Screen” layout was more clear.
However, the 2/5 subjects who preferred Melee’s menu both stated that the wording was confusing on the new one in regards to the collectibles/awards question. “Extras” seemed vague.
With this newfound data, I decided to simply change the wording from “Extras” back to “Trophies” just like the Melee menu. I also made the background with the character brighter in order to showcase that aesthetic feature more.
Struggles/Limitations
As stated above, Covid-19 shook up this project quite a bit. I was hoping to be able to have more live test subjects in order to diversify my testing pool. Also, without a copy of Smash Brothers Melee, I was unable to actually test the menus in their most functional state. To my dismay, copies of Smash Melee turned out to be very expensive and rare.
If I were able to do this again, I would definitely diversify and largen my testing pool in order to get a wider variety of data. Also, I would have loved to dive into the prototyping of the new menu more. Although I am proud of the design, I feel like I could have made it even prettier; it is still pretty barebones.
Conclusion
This project showed me that despite the circumstances, a new product can always be made; or at least conceptualized. It was definitely interesting adapting to the changes with the virus, but it didn’t stop me from completing the project to the best of my ability.
Also, this has helped me realize how to go about testing and surveys. I feel like surveys are great in order to gain data in regards to a product’s look or feel, but in regards to functionality, a live quantitative test would be better. Even though having a bias in testing is discouraged, I was still shocked to see that the Ultimate menu did better than the Melee menu in the survey. After having done all the testing, though, it makes sense that those were the results from the survey.
Although my menu redesign is in no way the prettiest or best alternative, I think it is a step in the right direction in order to make the menu more intuitive while looking good at the same time.
