Xbox Game Studios and Playground Games' fifth installment in the Forza Horizon franchise takes place in Mexico. Beautiful landscapes, astonishing temples and a diverse culture invite you to into one of the most exiciting racing games in recent history. Winning various Game of the Year 2021 awards truely shows how groundbreaking and fun this installment is.
However, no product is without its flaws and things can always be improved on. Such as the car list in Forza Horizon 5. The game features over 500 cars, from old classics to the newest hypercars. Navigating through the list is possible with clever shortcuts that let you jump to a manufacturer with ease, or filter specific characteristics a car has.
Customizing Groups
This mockup improves on what is already present in Forza Horizon 5. Custom groups would be a great way for users to categorize their favorite cars into certain classes (road racing, offroad, exploration, fun modes etc.).
This is even more benefital looking at the car list while selecting a car for a race. WIth that, players are able to quickly select the right tool for the job, instead of taking additional steps to then easily overlook your preferred choice.
Creating custom groups allows players to sort the group content by filter options (Performance index, year, country etc.), rename, or remove the group. Players may also select one predetermined icon to easily highlight what this group is about. For example, the blue icon represents "Road Racing", which should only contain cars that are great on tarmac. Last but not least users can sort the groups itself.
Adding cars to groups
Forza Horizon 5 has a great context menu to select an option for the selected car. This is also a great place to add or remove a car from an existing group.
Improved Filter experience
At the beginning I mentioned the possibility to filter certain characteristics to only show applicable cars. It's a great feature, but unfortunately the implementation is lacking a bit.
There is lots of unused screen space which other menus make use of. My goal was to streamline the filter menu design to the manufacturer selection menu. This way we end up with more information for the amount of screen space we use, and also give the user a better approach to select options not only vertically, but also horizontally.
Work Files
I've also made the figma project file public so you can look at it and see my design decisions and how I approach certain tasks. I've included various components and variants I've used throughout this little project as well.