User experience

User Experience, often abbreviated as UX, refers to how a user interacts with a product and/or service and the associated perceptions and feelings that are associated with this interaction.

UX encompasses:

Utility - Does the product provide the necessary functionality to allow users to achieve their goals?
Usability - Is it easy to learn how to use the product and is it pleasant to use?
Efficiency - Are user mistakes easy to avoid?
Accessibility - Can people with different abilities use the product effectively?

Within a visual novel UX plays a central role in the readability, immersion and narrative comprehension. Elements such as text presentation, interface layout, pacing, and accessibility directly influence how players experience the story.

UX vs UI

It is important to distinguish the concept of UX vs UI, even though the UI is a crucial part of the design. UX defines how a product feels, UI defines how it looks - the UX is the blueprint of a house, whereas UI is the paint and decorations placed within it.

For example, you may have an aesthetically pleasing UI with intuitive navigation (UI), however, if the text loads slowly due to heavy animations, or if the user has to make several clicks to perform a single action then it won't be pleasant to use (UX).

Alternatively, you may have a visual novel that presents text in a clean, logical way (UI), however, if there is no clear or easy way to save the game or access preferences, users may be inclined to stop playing (UX).

UX Elements in Visual Novels

Every element of a VN contributes to some aspect of the user experience. The below categories are the areas that you should consider when designing your visual novel.


Element	Examples
Textbox Presentation	How text is presented to users can influence the readability, which is important for longer reading sessions.
Graphic User Interface Layout	How in elements are displayed to users can be used to shape tone and pacing, as well as visually communicate messages to players.
Interaction Design	This is how a user interacts with your VN to either progress the story or access key features. This includes click-to-advance, choice menus or additional gameplay.
Audio Experience	Sound contributes significantly to emotional tone, and should match the narrative design to prevent confusing messaging.
Narrative Design	Narrative design covers the story itself, from branching structures to pacing. Balancing text density with visual and audio changes helps prevent fatigue.
Player Agency	Whether you are writing a kinetic novel or a highly branched narrative, UX covers how much control players feel they have.
Accessibility	Your visual novel is likely to need some level of player customisation to make it suit their needs. This also includes ensuring your visual novel meets certain standards to be readable by as many people as possible.
Translation	Another way to make your visual novel accessible is by offering other languages to the one it was originally created in. This often has considerations for how tone and messages can be conveyed in the same way across cultures.

UX Design Process

A common framework used across the industry is design thinking. The five pillars of design thinking were first developed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.

Five Pillars of Design Thinking:

Empathise
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test

Design thinking is a tool for innovation and solving problems from a users perspective. It encourages you to relate to a particular audience in a creative and flexible way. This type of thinking is beneficial to incorporate from the beginning of VN development as it helps you understand and target your game towards your target audience from a deeper level, minimises wasted development time through quick feedback loops, and identify key features that are needed for gameplay.

Empathise

The first pillar is about understanding your audience and what they need from your visual novel.

You should aim to understand:

What draws players to visual novels?
What draws players to the genre of your VN (e.g. Horror, romance)?
What emotional experiences do players of this genre expect?
What features do players expect from a VN?
What frustrates players with similar VNs?
What do players expect from choices - what makes choices feel meaningful?
How are players interacting with similar VNs (e.g. on mobile, PC, in short bursts or longer sessions)?
What makes characters believable and memorable?

To understand this there are UX techniques you may try:


Technique	Explanation
Observing players/streamers interact with similar games	Whilst it is important to listen for their verbal feedback, visual observation allows you to see if there is anything during gameplay that disrupts the flow or is not immediately clear.
Reading reviews and online discussions	By reading players thoughts on both on the game pages and on social media, you can capture what people love or hate about similar VNs, but also see what is not mentioned and try to understand why. E.g. if a certain character out of a cast is never mentioned is that because they are a side character with little screen time, or because they don't resonate with others?
Documentation reviews	Reading and reviewing articles that already exist, both about VNs but also around the genre as a whole. This can help you understand certain narrative beats that are often expected to be hit, or different game structures that may apply to that genre.
Playing Visual Novels	Your own feedback is equally as important - especially if you're a fan of the genre of VN you plan to write. Experiencing other VNs can help you identify what you like and dislike, as well as common features between them.
Interviews/Surveys	This is simply asking questions to VN players. An interview does not need to be formal to be successful, and often a more casual conversational format provides more engaged responses.

Define

The second pillar is about taking what you have learned in the first pillar and summarising those key observations and glean insights that will be helpful for your visual novel.

Personify your audience

Who are you targeting your game for? Different types of players have different motivations - whilst you can hope that as many different types will play and love your game, it's good to identify who your core audience will be as it will help shape the story and features you create.

Some examples could include (not an exhaustive list):

The Completionist - Players who want to get every ending and achievement.
The Cosy Gamer - A player who wants a relaxing, no friction experience.
The Strategist - Players who want to make choices with meaningful, impactful consequences that they can see.
The Time Traveller - Players who will save before making any choices so they can easily turn back if they have made a 'bad' choice.
The Romanticist - Players who want emotional connection, and prefers character driven stories over complex branching.

For your core persona/s you should identify what were the key pain points and expectations - that you specifically plan to address. (e.g. Players struggle to understand which choices influence specific endings without a walkthrough).

Clarify the emotional arc

Visual novels rely a lot on emotional storytelling, which then also shapes the experience your players will have. Identifying the emotional arc you want your players to have will help set the direction for writers, artists, audio specialists, and voice actors.

What tone or atmosphere must the story maintain?
How do you want the player to feel on opening the game (from as early as the splashscreen/main menu)?
How do you want the player to feel at the end of the game?
How do you want the player to feel about the characters?

Outline the constraints

One of the most important early steps is to set boundaries for your project, to keep your VN achievable and realistic. This will help in later pillars to focus ideation and ensure nothing is missed.

What to consider:

How many characters are feasible to include?
How complex a branching structure are you aiming for?
What are all the key user interactions that are needed (save, load, skip, making choices etc.)?

Ideate

In the third pillar you look to explore how you will deliver the emotional, interactive, narrative experience that your players will be looking for. The idea is to let your creativity flow to come up with different ways you may approach your story, a choice, a UI feature etc.

The ideate stage works best when:

No idea is dismissed too early - even an option you know you won't progress with can provide inspiration and insights.
Team members build on each other's concepts.
You explore both safe and unconventional approaches.

UX techniques you may try:


Technique	Explanation
Brainstorm/dump	Freely sharing and capturing ideas, often as part of a group. Ensure this is documented in some way. (Braindump is done individually).
Mind mapping	Visually connect ideas and their relationships around a central concept to explore topics deeply - tools such as Miro/Mural can support this.
Crazy 8's	Sketch or write eight solutions to a single problem/topic in eight minutes. This encourages quick thinking.
Storyboarding	Roughly sketch out different scenarios and how that experience may flow together. This can be anything from a UI interaction (how might a user saving look like) vs a narrative story beat (what could a dramatic scene look like).

Prototype

The fourth pillar is about developing chosen ideas from the ideate pillar to create a prototype. This pillar is often called the 'development' stage.

A prototype can be as simple or as complex as needed for your testing.

Simple Prototypes

Simple prototypes are perfect for initial testing of ideas before moving into full development. Simple prototypes are often non-technical and easily iterated upon.

Wireframe sketches of the idea.
Concept art.
High level outline.
Character introductions.
Moodboards.

Complex Prototypes

Complex prototypes are more detailed and are suitable for when you feel comfortable with your decisions, and expect any changes from feedback to be small. Complex prototypes are often technical and interactive.

Interactive high-fidelity wireframes (using software such as Figma).
Minimum Viable Product.

Test

The fifth pillar is implementation and testing - specifically user-based testing (compared to technical testing you may do as part of your programming workflow). The primary goal of this pillar is to gather feedback which will then feed into future improvements.

Before any testing is done you should first:

Establish what you are trying to find out - e.g. are you aiming to validate narrative flow, or test UI usability?
What is the scale of testing required? Note - Consider the stage of your project, a nearly complete VN might require more testing than a VN in the very early stages.
What is your plan for handling feedback?

UX testing techniques you might try:


Technique	Explanation
A/B Testing	You present two versions of a design to users and compare them through performance and feedback.
Surveys	You provide players with a list of questions and gather answers. A good technique when you have a lot of testers.
Heat Mapping	Track where users click, or the features they most use. With VNs best done by recording players interacting with the design and visually tracking.
Sensitivity Testing	Presenting the design to testers who represent different minorities and needs to ensure your game is inclusive and accessible.
5 Second Testing	Showing a design for five seconds to gauge first impressions and clarity of UI features.
Heuristic Evaluation	Self-evaluate your VN against 10 general principles for interaction design.

Iteration

Design thinking is a process that can be repeated to build upon and improve your game iteratively until you reach a point of satisfaction with the final product.

Developer Experience

Developer Experience, also abbreviated to DX, is UX but from a developers perspective. It is defined by the tools, software and processes that a developer uses when creating a system - in this case a visual novel. The idea is to improve developer productivity and satisfaction through systemic improvements and optimisation of the development process.

There is considered to be three fundamental concepts that influence developer effectiveness.

Feedback loops - How quickly a response is given to developer actions, as well as how much useful detail is included within it.
Cognitive load - The mental processing required for developers to perform tasks. Reducing cognitive load allows for more developer creativity and productivity.
Flow state - The ability for the developer to achieve immersion and enjoyment in development for periods of time, specifically without interruption or pressure.

This is especially important to consider the above when working with developers or are the developer on a project, to maximise efficiency. However it is also important to consider when providing software-as-a-service (SaaS) for other developers.

You can apply the above UX design thinking approach with DX SaaS to understand your developer audience, their skill sets and their needs. This will ensure your service will be received, understood and used by the community.