In the clothes shop you can select multiple items to buy, but only if they are not in the same category. So in the case the user wants to buy multiple colors of the same item or two types of T-shirts he can’t. To do so he needs to exit and re entering the changing room N times. On the left there’s a in-game video I shoot.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I spent 350+ hours on this engaging game, which made me notice areas where the UX of certain mechanics could be improved. Let’s explore them.
Case Study
April 17, 2020
The Issue
You can't buy same type of clothing together
Possible Solution
The fix for this features is pretty straight forward: being able to select multiple items, doesn’t matter that is the same category. Especially because there’s no risk of full inventory as all the shopped items get instantly delivered in your home storage.
- Multiple selection in the same category
- Last selected item is displayed in the preview
- Money total counts all the selected items
The Issue
You can't craft multiple objects at once.
In the game you can gather materials and then craft other objects with it. The issue is that you can craft only one object every time. That is fine if you are crafting a wardrobe, but not if you are need of 50 fishing baits, for example.
- Can’t craft multiple object without having to go through all the animations/dialogues every time.
- There are two slot options but one is useless as it says ‘Nah’ when just pressing B would nullify it anyway.
Possible Solution
To fix this feature, I would simply change the current option to a more useful one:
- Have two crafting options: Craft one, Craft Max.
- Options could be more for a better UX experience but the franchise prefer to keep the number of options per dialogue always low.
Retail version
Fix example
The Issue
You can't buy more than 5 objects at once.
Imagine the scenario in which you have to customize a lot of furniture to change the style of your home. You may need up to 100 customization kits but the game allows you to buy a max of 5 each time.
- You can buy only 1 or 5 stack
- Every time you need to go through all the dialogue and buy 5 by 5 to reach high numbers of objects.
Possible Solution
To fix this feature, I’ll just add a simple but effective extra option:
- Custom selection: the player insert the exact number of objects he needs to buy.
Retail version
Fix example
The Issue
Co-op feature is long and tedious
This feature allows the player to play in co-op. Let’s start by noticing a bunch of UX issues with the design:
- Every time I have a Nook Mile Ticket in the inventory (that item is not necessary to play co-op, it’s an offline feature), the NPC will state that I have a ticket in my inventory. It can be helpful the first times you play but already after some days of play it’s just a frustrating dialogue to skip.
- Local play option is on the top of the list instead of online. Odd choice considering that the possibilities a player has to meet another person physically that has the game and play in co-op are way less frequent than a player in his home wanting to visit somebody online. That prevents user to skip through the already long dialogue fast because he needs to select the second option.
- After telling the NPC that I want to play online instead of local, he forces me to go through another extra dialogue in which I have to confirm again that I want to connect to the internet (After already selecting ‘Online play’ in the previous dialogue)
Possible Solution
The fix for this feature is merely cutting some extra passages not needed and moving some more popular dialogue option on the first position on the list instead of second.
- Remove the dialogue that states every time that you have a ticket in your inventory. Absolutely useless to the purpose of playing in co-op.
- Play online needs to be first option against Play local.
- Remove the extra passage that asks you to connect to the internet after already selecting ‘I Want to play online’
- Respect the franchise structure of avoiding having too many options in one dialogue (Otherwise an alternative option would have been to remove the first filter I want to fly / I want visitors as well)
Retail version
Fix example
The Issue
Wrong code? You can't edit it
You can visit other players by inserting a custom code that is one time use each time, to visit a specific player.
- If you insert that code wrong, you get a dialogue saying that the destination is not found but the game doesn’t give you any way to edit the code inserted. Instead, it forces you to either re-try with the same code (useless if you misspelled a letter or a number) or to close the window and restart the whole process again (extremely painful).
Possible Solution
The fix for this feature is to add an extra option to edit the code inserted previously plus giving more information.
- Add an extra option to edit the inserted code, to avoid having to restart the whole process again (very long) just because a letter or a number was misspelled.
- Change the text by saying that also might be a misspelling problem, not just that the island destination is not available, because that explaination is not true in the case that the code was wrong.
Retail: The inserted code was wrong or the destination is not available.
Fix example
The Issue
Choices priorities as a host
Another option you have of co-op is inviting people on your island instead of traveling.
- The first phase of filtering is already asking me if I want to invite my friends, my best friends or invite via dodo code. I choose to invite via Dodo code, that’s the option basically to invite external people that are not in your friendlist. Despite that, in the next screen I am asked again if by using the code I want to invite again only my friends, best friends or everyone.
- Invite everyone is the LAST option out of the three even tho it’s probably the most selected one because I already stated in the previous filtering phase that I am interested in inviting external visitors that are not in my friendlist.
- There a remote option in which I might want to invite ONLY certain people of my friend list by using a specific code. Although, in my humble 130 hours of playing I invited hundreds of people by code that were not in my friend list and none of my friends with this feature. I used the previous feature ‘Invite friends’ to invite my nintendo switch friends.
Possible Solution
To fix this feature, I would simply change the order of the option of invites:
- Dodo Code is a feature designed to invite, in 99% of the cases, people that are not on your friendlist. That’s why ‘Invite the more, the merrier’ option should be the first choice in this dialogue and not friends or best friends, as I already NOT chose those options before.
Retail version
Fix example
Thanks for making it this far! Here's why I love this game:
In this article, I focused on UX improvements, but I still enjoy this game every day, and it gets so many small details right. For example, I was able to place a Capitoline Wolf statue in my plaza. Since I’m from Rome, Italy, but living abroad, having a piece of my city in the game really made me happy.
My island: ‘Londo’
Disclaimer: I did not work on this game or for Nintendo; this analysis is from a customer’s perspective. All images in this article are property of Nintendo.