Wardrobe Revamp: Navigation

Product:  Kim Kardashian Hollywood
Platform: Mobile Game

During my time working on Kim Kardashian Hollywood, the game went through two major visual refreshes. In order to maximize the excitement of these updates, we leveraged these updates to implement major changes to our character wardrobe area. These updates brought new life into the game for older players and gave new players a more robust first time experience.

Navigation

When Kim Kardashian Hollywood was first created, the number of customization items (e.g., facial features, clothing items, accessories, etc.) available for a player to use was relatively small (approximately 700 items). As with most mobile games, a “design for the now” approach was taken, which meant ensuring the design of the wardrobe would be able to withstand going from 100’s of items to 1000’s items was something to worry about down the road if the game was successful enough to encounter this problem.

With the library constantly growing, it became obvious that the task of browsing through the collection of customizable items, which had expanded to approximately 8500 items, had become cumbersome and frustrating.

Subcategories

After taking an inventory of all the different types of customization items in the game, we realized there were several subcategories that could be created from the initial group of categories. So we decided that navigating through subcategories of items would be the main change to the way players navigate items.

This new navigation approach opened up the use of the “Home” level of the navigation area to not only direct players to the main customization categories, but to also allow us space to feature our Kollections premium clothing line and easily add new and interesting customization categories whenever needed.

Once inside a selected category, players were greeted with the original layout of the wardrobe as it was the most ideal for both viewing your character and browsing customization items. However, now they were presented with multiple subcategories of the main item they selected, and a back button to return to the main landing page.

Introducing subcategories was a no-brainer. It was the most obvious way to manage a continuously growing inventory of items and proved to be the simplest way for players to quickly navigate to the items they were looking for.