Virtual Application

Title : Nintendogs

Target Audience : Aged 4 and above

Platform : NintendoDS

Publisher : Nintendo

Nintendogs is a pet simulation game that teach players how to care and train dogs.

It's a very well-known educational game, and it's suitable for many players from different age range and genders.

In this virtual world, players can interact with their virtual dog. There are few different techniques to interact with their dogs, so that players must learn how to actually interact using the NDS touch pen. There are few voice commands such as "Sit", which to call their virtual dog to do such action. Players can name their virtual dog in different and they have to do it in the early period of the game before more interactions to introduce later in the game.

Problems that I identified :
Can kids get the information from text without any visual?

Some icon design are making players confusing (especially kids)

How do players know what types of interactions can be use in the game?

1. Interface
The pet descriptions are full with text, which is difficult for a children to understand the attitude of the dog. For example, the pet descriptions (screenshot below) , which can be visualizing into icons or images that children can easily understand without reading the description. Children like to learn things from pictures rather than texts.

Suggestion
Some icons can be put into this part to make sure children are able to get the information, or put any button that can extend the information through another screen or pop out box. Not only for younger age children, even teenagers and adults can find it to be more helpful because people like to learn from visual rather than text, so that, the information can be
transmit through both visual and text.


Example screenshot of gameplay from internet

Sketches (coming soon)




The sketches above show some of my ideas base on how to use "visual" instead of "text".
Icons are able to transmit message to the users with the it's shape and design. Since the screen space is not big enough, so that the icon size will be big but will still give some breathing space to the user. Without breathing space, people might feel lost and the screen will looks complicated. This is a simple design with the use of icons to show what type of dog those are.

2. Icon
Many icons design of this game are considered good, but there are certain icons which might need improvement to fully transmit the message to the audience, especially kids. Some icons for different items from the game are the same, so it may cause confusion to young age player.

Suggestion
For the improvement, icons design should be design in different way. For example, different items go for different icons should be much more appropriate for users who can't actually understand the meaning of the description of items.


Example screenshot of gameplay from internet

For both Interface and Icons improvement, the icon designs must be able to show what we want.

The icons above are the reference that I found on internet.

Those are just simple icons, but it's enough to explain what is the meaning of the icon, mean that, icon designs should be simple but effective.

3. Navigation
How do players know how to interact with the virtual pet? The button and sensor are crucial for this part. For adult, they might able to look for guide or tutorial whether from internet or any other magazine, because if you're in the middle of the game, there is no any help button to help you.

Suggestion
A help button in the 2nd screen is enough to place in the tutorial or guide for how to control the touch pen. The information will be display through the first screen. (sketches will be upload later) The navigation not only created for adult players, but also kids, because since the target user are aged 4 and above, so that the design layout and navigation should fit the kids as well.


Example screenshot of gameplay from internet

Sketches




To guide user how to interact with their virtual pet, the instruction of how to use the touch pen is important. So here, I put a "HELP" icon on the top right corner, if players have no idea how to do the command, they can click on the icon, and the instruction of how to use the touch pen will be display through the first screen, and it will display in pictures, and a short description beside it. I put directional arrow in the pictures to make sure users are able to follow the movement of the arrow to control the touch pen. If the instruction are only text, kids can't actually get what it mean. Pictures are important in kid's learning and development.

4. Layout
The overall layout looks nice just for certain part, looks a bit general and not fill up with pattern and shape that can attract younger age or even female players. The interactive button are sometime cause confusion because of the layout design, whether which button can be click, and what it's function.

Suggestions
Apply some pattern or modify a little bit of the shape for the elements in the game will improve a little bit, but it's important to make it simple like the original layout as well, and to make sure the users don't always get confusion in this game, especially during the early period of the game.


Example screenshot of gameplay from internet

Sketches




The sketches above show some different layout of a game scene. The original layout of the game, most of the designs are just general shape, such as rectangle, box, and circle without any pattern design. Since kids like more pictures, so the shape can be design and apply with some pattern, or the shape that looks like an object, such as books, tree, dog, or any other objects which are able to attracting the kids. Some of my design above which I just applied some pattern and simple shape. Since the screen space are restricted, so that the design can be just some simple patterns which are enough to give some theme to the layout.

5. Color
The color for the overall game looks fine but just for some parts, the color is not strong enough to attract children. Children usually like bright color because those thing looks interest for them. Yellow is quite fine but just some part of the color can be change, for example, different page, some design can be fill with other color instead putting the same color for all the box, button and so on.

Suggestion
The color can be modify depend to what the target user like. For kid, they usually don't like dark color. For girls, most of them like pink color. But this is a game that to teach us how to care for a dog, mean it's included with cute element, so that the color should not go for darker color, such as black (except for certain icon designs). Red, pink, or yellow are much more appropriate for the color of the game.

Digital version of sketch with color will be post here.

Some findings that I found
Imagery and Children's Learning: Putting the Picture in Developmental Perspective
http://rer.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/47/4/585.pdf
It show that the children's learning process in different age range.

" There is no doubt that even very young children's recognition
memory for pictures is very good. Brown and Scott (1971) showed
that preschool children (4 to 5 years old) performed at ceiling on a
recognition task, even when the recognition task was made
difficult by presenting a long list and perceptually similar picto-
rial stimuli (Brown & Campione, 1972). Pictorial recognition
continues to be very good throughout childhood "

Vol 47, No. 4, Page 600.

" However, is recognition memory of pictures better than recog-
nition memory of words? Perlmutter and Myers (1976) found that
2½- to 5-year-old children performed significantly better on a
recognition memory task with picture lists than word lists.
Corsini, Jacobus, and Leonard (1969) observed the same effect
with 4½- to 6-year-old children. Jenkins, Stack, and Deno (1969)
found that second graders performed at a higher level in a
pictorial recognition task than in a word recognition task. Bird
and Bennett (1974) showed that children 4 to 10 years old
recognized pictures better than words. Thus, there is good reason
to believe that pictorial recognition is superior to verbal recogni-
tion through much of childhood (i.e., at least from 4 to 10 years
old). Moreover, it is likely that recognition of pictures is superior
to recognition of words at all developmental levels, for adults also show higher picture recognition memory than verbal recognition
memory (e.g., Shepherd, 1967) "

Vol 47, No. 4, Page 600~601