Motor Accessibility for Pikmin Bloom

Making Accessibility Accessible

To be accessible, games should be playable by everyone. But in fitness-walking games, players with mobility impairments are demotivated to move when existing game features rely strictly on certain types of motor movement for progression— whether that be steps, or hand dexterity.

We redesigned Pikmin Bloom's accessibility features so players with limited lower body mobility and fine motor mobility can enjoy the game without barriers discouraging them from playing because of how they move.

Steps Don't Actually Matter

We were shocked to find out that step metrics actually weren't a dealbreaker for many disabled players, since the gameplay loop of planting flowers, going on expeditions, and collecting postcards to send to friends are what kept them on board. We redirected our focus towards emphasizing these features and making sure they could be accessed by an even larger population, including players who don't push their chairs, and players with fine motor disabilities.

Rewarding Different Kinds of Movement

Our solution adds a distance tracking toggle which players can choose to use. When steps are not tracked accurately and do not feel like a motivator, distance traveled is a reliable reward and makes seeing the number go up more interesting, according to our interview with avid Pikmin player 'C'.

Additionally, we integrate a full-app dexterity toggle which removes repetitive taps, holding, and dragging motions in favor of single taps. Avoiding complex motion simplifies gaming not only for those with fine motor disabilities, but any player with cold hands, injury, or playing with one hand.

Do Players Want That?

To test our redesigns, we virtually interviewed a range of Pikmin Bloom players from age ranges 20-40s, from new to experienced, including players with movement disabilities in our user testing. This was my first time conducting online user research off Reddit, but it's valuable because that's where we saw a lot of players voice real opinions on the problems they were facing.

When presented with our redesigns, I found that after the initial barrier of accessing and enjoying the game, solutions universally benefitted all types of users. Specifically, all our interviewed players wanted to expand on the feature to pick specific Pikmin to bulk feed. The feature that we initially developed for players with limited hand dexterity ended up being universally desirable. Accessibility benefits everyone!

Special Thanks to

Pavani, Livianne, and Valerie for taking on this idea I had in a dream wholeheartedly. Many thanks to Steven Weitz for lending his expertise and encouraging this project.

I'm grateful to our interviewees, who took time out of their day multiple times to review and user test our solutions.