Evaluating the Nintendo Switch UI as a UX Designer

The Nintendo switch console was released a couple of days ago. This class provides a good opportunity to evaluate the UI of a modern, interesting device from the perspective of a UX Designer. We won't focus on functionality and instead dedicate our efforts on the use experience.

When we start up the console, this is one of the first screens we are met with - this is a screenshot of the menu screen:

From the start, it is apparent that the UI makes good use of minimalism and Fitt's law - the user is not presented with a huge amount of information or a lot of buttons and everything is large and visually appealing and sufficiently separated to prevent any wrong presses. Everything is quite natural- things react how you would intuitively expect them to and there is very little waiting - the UI is fast and responsive and doesn't test the users' patience.

The UI also makes good use of color and graphic design - colors are complimentary and everything seems consistent - the buttons have a cartoonish feel that makes sense for the target user-base and the whole UI has a 'flat' design, somewhat like current generation iOS iterations, which is a trendy type of UI that is seen a lot in 2017. The color scheme uses similar colors within the same feature (for example within one button) or contrasting colors between different features (such as between different buttons).

However, there are some shortcomings. For one, the keyboard isn't consistent with present day designs of touchscreen keyboards - the predictive touch isn't very accurate and the spellchecker is also quite unsophisticated compared to present day offerings. Also, some things aren't obvious. For example, given the above menu, how do you start the browser? One of the trade-offs to having a minimalist UI is that sometimes, obvious actions are no longer obvious.

All things considered, I am quite pleased with the UI. As someone who has used previous Nintendo consoles and was extremely frustrated at certain things, such as the lag, the inconsistency, the blocky text etc, I am glad that Nintendo focused on user-centred design and addressed many of the issues that people might have had with previous consoles.