Great Design Is: The Nintendo DS Lite
Aug 14, 2006Most of my attention on design lately has been in the world of web design, and in an effort to broaden appreciation of design I’m going to be posting short articles about everyday things I believe embrace good design elements.
First up: The Nintendo DS.
The iGameboy?
So Nintendo has embraced the shiny Apple white and brings us a nice refresh of the original DS. There are plenty of reviews online that talk about the graphics, games, and tech specs, but I want to focus on the design.
I love that Nintendo has made the DS Lite all about playing games and making it as fun as possible. No tiny DVD movies, no web browser, just games. Between the bright screens with a great viewing angle, long battery life (8 hours on average), and easy controls it’s very easy to get hooked on the DS Lite because it does so many things right through solid, simple design.
Upon opening the DS Lite all you’re presented with is your D-pad, buttons, touchscreen, and normal display screen. It just works well. Nothing unnecessary to get in the way of playing games.
Even the built in wireless is so automatic that multiplayer is drop dead easy. And most games only require you to have one game cartridge, so you can play Mario Kart with a friend even if they don’t have it. That screams, “we care about letting people have fun, not trying to get every dollar we can out of our users”.
Overall the Nintendo DS Lite just focuses on getting out of my way so I can have fun.
Little Things That Count
What really makes the DS Lite shine for me is the little design touches that make it easy to use.
- You can close the DS Lite at any time and it just will go to sleep. Open it back up and you’re right where you left off. Nintendo says the thing will last a good solid week in sleep mode.
- Hello rounded corners, goodbye painful poking in the palms. (Remember the original NES controller?)
- Internal storage for the stylus
- Easy to read grey on white text around the buttons
- A plastic dummy cartridge to fill the GBA slot on the bottom
- The controls, power button, and volume slider give good, solid tactile feedback
- Having the power/charging LEDs visible when the DS Lite is open and closed
- Nothing to break off when closed, which makes it travel friendly and kid friendly.
A Minor Gripe
Nintendo has diverted from the two buttons of the Game Boy Advance and given the DS Lite four buttons. To this I ask why? There are relatively few games that will use it, and it is much harder to push the four buttons instead of having only two larger buttons to worry about. But it is just a minor gripe, and isn’t a deal breaker. I’m thinking this was a decision pushed for by the engineers and game developers and not the designers. More buttons are not always better.
Final Notes
The best evidence I had that the DS Lite was designed well was not that I could just open it up and play without reading any instructions, but that my wife could do the same. She has never been big on video games, but the fact the she can just open up the DS Lite and play has us fighting over it (I think we’ll end up buying two). I think that says a lot for what Nintendo has managed to accomplish.