Improving The Game Catalog Page

Hi everyone! 

In this short edition of our Design Insights article series we are happy to showcase to you all an overview of a recent update that we made to one of the most important pages of Nutaku: the redesign of the Game Catalog (or simply “Games”) page. 

Those that have an eye for detail may have noticed some minor changes already going on with this page over the last several weeks, but we have recently released a large update with many small changes which we believe will make  for a better user experience when looking for new games to play!

Find The Games You Want To Play

We briefly mentioned at the start of this article that we consider the game catalog page to be one of the most important pages at Nutaku. The reason for that is twofold: not only does it host all the games that we have available at the platform in a single place (and we got a lot of them!), but it also hosts a variety of tools that can be used to navigate more easily through these games.

Not only do we already have a sizable library, but frequent new releases make this library grow larger and larger by the day. Whenever you are dealing with a large and forever expanding library of items, it is very easy for things to get out of control quickly. This makes it extra important to ensure that the tools that are in place are properly supporting users and making their lives easier when visiting a page such as the game catalog.

In essence, all of that translates to a very simple goal: we need to help you find the games you want to play.

Making Filters More Intuitive

One of our main goals with the redesign was to improve our filter design. Filters are an important aspect of any catalog, as they are often highly used elements when users want to quickly narrow down content when looking for something specific. It is important that filters don’t only do a good job at filtering content, but also that users can reliably find them and use them with minimum effort.

In order to achieve that, we made changes to the way we display some of our filters, such as the ones found above the first row of games. These filters, which we internally refer to as “top filters”, provide access to general categories, such as “New Releases” and “Upcoming”. While most of the interaction will continue to be the same, we are modernizing the design of this section to increase its visibility and to make it easier to know which filter is currently active. We also updated this section to become scrollable, which gives us the flexibility to explore a larger number of filter options while also being able to support any screen size, so that users can rely on it regardless of whether they are accessing Nutaku from a PC or mobile phone.

Another filter that will be receiving a major update is the “Pricing” filter on the left side menu. Currently this filter works via an interactable slider that allows you to drag and drop both the minimum and maximum price points you are comfortable with. While a slider is a fairly intuitive approach for representing ranges, the interaction of setting up each value was a bit fiddly, requiring multiple refreshes of the page. We are now replacing the sliders with a list of price ranges that can be selected with a single click, as well as adding the option for users to type a custom range if they are ever looking for more specific prices.

What Does This Tag Mean?

Nutaku contains a large amount of genres and tags on its database which can be used to filter games. While this is a great way to look for specific content, it requires that users understand what the tags actually mean in order to reach its full potential.

While many tags and genres are fairly straightforward (such as “Big Breasts”), some are derived from japanese words or expressions that may not be as familiar to all users (such as “Tsundere”), or that may be somewhat ambiguous. 

In order to improve the clarity of these elements, we are now including a small explanation of what they mean whenever they are individually selected. These explanations are presented near the top filters area, and should provide some guidance about the culture and common elements found in our games.

Expanding Filter Combinations

We have also changed the way some of the filters can be enabled in order to provide more flexibility in different use cases, so that you can have more control and need to put on less work on your explorations. 

Some filters, such as “Language” and “Operating System”, originally only allowed a single option to be selected via a dropdown menu. While being able to select only a single option was sufficient for people with more strict requirements on the games they can play, it presented needless effort for those that had more flexible requirements, such as someone who would want to learn about all games that could be played in either PC and Android. 

We have changed these filters so that now users can select a combination of filter options to search for games that match either of the categories. Not only does this make it so that less steps need to be taken than before, but also that all the results can be seen from a single results page rather than two separate ones, making it easier for users to have a better idea of all games available for them. 

In Closing

We made many other changes to the overall experience of using this page, beyond what we highlighted in this article: from small touches on the design, to more search options for filters. However, we will leave those for you to discover on your own.

We hope you are excited to see these changes go live, and that it makes your experience of navigating through Nutaku while looking for games overall better. We also hope that it helps you find a hidden gem that you may have not seen before, so that you can have a great time with it.

As always, if you have any feedback regarding your experience about anything Nutaku related, feel free to let us know about it by sending us a message to any of our social media!