An image of cute kittens playing in a Japanese garden yard.

Design Critique: Kitty Collector

By / / Design Critiques

About

Kitty Collector is a Japanese game built for cat lovers where users need to attract a variety of cats by placing food and goodies in their virtual home or garden yard. It is designed with a no-spend approach that encourages you not to use real money, instead relying on in-game resources to enhance your experience.

Understanding The Game

A flow chart showing the steps involved in this game.
  1. The first user action is to place food and goodies in order to attract a variety of cats. This is the primary affordance for the user, and they need to be careful that there is limited space in their virtual house or garden so they can be smart in placing the food and goodies to maximize the number of cats attracted.
  2. The user is required to close the app now because there is no other user action required at this point. Placing the food and goodies also acts as a signifier that the user’s work is done here.
  3. Cats show up in the background in your virtual house or garden where they will eat the food, play with goodies, and in return, they will give you currency (either you will get golden currency or silver currency). Cats start spending their lovely time at your place.
  4. The user opens the app whenever he/she gets time and sees the cats relaxing.
  5. Now the user needs to use the currency collected to buy more food and goodies. The user needs to provide them to the cats consistently so the cats remain and the collection goes up. Here, the currency acts as a secondary affordance where it provides information to the user about how and where to utilize it in the game.

UX Audit

Issue of Pseudo Tap

The image that the app has blue-colored text in its modals, which indicates tappable text but is not. Along with that, the modal doesn't communicate to the user where they should tap in order to dismiss it, hence creating a perception that the app got stuck.

1. The app has blue-colored text in its modals, which indicates tappable text but is not. Along with that, the modal doesn’t communicate to the user where they should tap in order to dismiss it, hence creating a perception that the app got stuck.

Feedback and Visual Noise

A image showing that the app consistently provides feedback to the user if they completed an action or got an achievement.

2. The app consistently provides feedback to the user if they completed an action or got an achievement.

3. Displaying several elements develops visual noise for the user, thus confusing the user about which element to focus on and take action accordingly. Here, the modal and the rectangular box below are not in a group; both are different elements. The one below communicates the information for the elements present behind the modal. This interaction might increase the interaction cost for the user.

Consistent Visual Language

A image telling that even though the app is quite old, the developers have maintained consistent visual language using the Kawaii art style UI design. The sizes, colors, and shapes are consistent across the screens.

4. Even though the app is quite old, the developers have maintained consistent visual language using the Kawaii art style UI design. The sizes, colors, and shapes are consistent across the screens.

Mental Model

The game is designed to somewhat replicate the actual life pattern of cat lovers, where cat lovers aren’t required to do a lot for the cats, like taking them out for walks or bathing them as with dogs. The game is designed specifically in Kawaii art, a famous Japanese art style known for its cute aesthetics, which triggers the ‘baby schema’ phenomenon in the user’s brain, which further triggers the emotion of cuteness. The game is designed to encourage sweet play, just like it is in actual life as a cat lover. However, at the same time, the game discourages screen-on time. Thus, it maintains a healthy play time for users without strong visual graphics for lesser eye strain and cognitive load.

Conclusion

The Kitty Collector app was launched in 2014, which explains why the app looks quite outdated in comparison to the small gaming apps in 2025. However, a couple of design factors have been handled pretty well by the developers (Hit Point Co. Ltd.), thus showing Japan’s focus on user experience. The app has been designed considering the mental model of cat lovers and doesn’t keep users hooked for increased screen-on time, which is impossible for even a small game app in today’s world.