Wolf’s Little Store

As a designer, it is of utmost importance to realize the possibilities and limits of the platform you are designing for.

Take the Nintendo DS for example. The DS is a handheld gaming device, much like an advanced version of the well-known Nintendo Game Boy. The Nintendo DS has two screens. The top screen is just an LCD screen, but the bottom screen features a touchscreen. Like Sony Ericsson (with their high-end cellphone series) and Apple (with their iPhone and iPod Touch), Nintendo realized touchscreens can add a new dimension to how the user interacts with their device.

What inspired this blog post is my experience with 3 games for the Nintendo DS. Each of them ask you to set up an account when you start the game. Everyone’s who’s ever played a video game knows this: almost every game out there asks you to enter a username whenever you start a new game, so the game can save your data, high scores and progression, so you can continue where you left off when you start a new gaming session.

First my experience with Geometry Wars: Galaxies. This game uses a classic interface to enter your username: you see a keyboard with all keys mapped out on the top screen. You type in your name by selecting the right combination of letters with the D-pad (this would be arrow keys on a keyboard), confirming each letter by pressing the A-button (which would be clicking). When you’re done, you place your cursor on the done button (using the arrow keys again) and confirm with A.

That’s how it’s been done forever. Almost every console game handles entering your username in a similar way as the one described above: the solution for the lack of a keyboard is adding a virtual keyboard.

But why would you do it this way if you have a platform that supports touch? In the game Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, we see the same interface, but it moved to the bottom screen (the one that supports touch). Instead of navigating your cursor to the correct letters, you just tap whatever letters your nickname consists of, hit the done button with your stylus, and your account is set up. The user experience is so much better then in Geometry Wars. It’s faster, easier to fix potential errors, and feels more like the way you would use a real keyboard.

The finest piece of interaction design I found so far is in the o so popular Brain Training game. Brain training is game that lets you solve puzzles, riddles, sudokus and the like on a daily basis. Based on your performance, your “brain age” is calculated, which vastly improves over time, giving you a goal to play the game.

That little piece of information aside, the process of entering your name in Brain Training is simple, yet elegant. You just scribble your name down in a blank text field using the touch interface. Just like you would write your name on a piece of paper. Example B below shows you how this would work. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a screenshot of the actual “enter your username”-interface, but I’m pretty sure you get the picture.

I gave my mother my DS and she set up her Brain training account with ease, following the clear onscreen instructions. My mother has trouble with computers and electronic devices in general, but she did this in a matter of seconds. Praise for the Brain Training team!

Note: because some games need to know your name (and not a “picture” of your name) it’s understandable why many games utilize the interface used in Castlevania in favor of the Brain Training one. For RPGs and the like, the name of your character is often used in dialog, so with this scenario in mind it’s advisable to use the Castlevania style interface.

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