TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2010
User Interface Design for Games - I
I will be talking about user-interface design for games in this blog.
We will see what makes a "good" user interface.
Let's examine what are the desireable properties of user interface for game design.
Enjoyability:
e.g. quality of sound, graphics, animations, etc.
A video game that produces quality sound and good animation is fun to play.
Usability:
How easy to use/learn?
Some people believe that usability is "an art". However, it is not so.
Usability has technical aspects. It is a large field in computer science and a lot of research is going in this direction.
Work Software vs. Game Software
Work software and game software have almost opposite criteria to be "good".
E.g. Work becomes less productive if software is unnecessarily hard to use.
On the other hand, games are not fun unless some difficulty to solve.
Creative vs. Instrumental work
Creative work:
Creative work is opposed to routine work.
- It is creative
- It is non-routine
- the goal of work
Instrumental
- It focuses on means to get work done instead of "goals"
For example, Inserting and deleting words and phrases.
Design Goals
we want to facilitate creative work by providing powerful and highly useable computer instruments(tools).
Fun vs. Instrumental Concept of Game
- Fun - create interesting, challenging enjoyable things to do.
- Interacting with game software to have fun
Design Goal:
- The design goal is to maximize the time/effort spend on fun and minimize time/effort spend on learning and using the instruments of interaction.
What is Usability?
Broadly, there are some concepts associated with usability:
1. User friendly
2. Look and feel
3. Intuitive - we can predict it intuitively
4. Natural
"Usability" means:
- Ease of learning
- Ease of use
Some other aspects of interface design are not usability issues but they can be affected by usability.
- Ease of implementation
- Attractiveness
- Marketing
- Entertaining value
Approaches for developing game software
There are certain approaches which we can use for developing game software.
There are many. Some can be based on the goal of video games - Entertainment goal
Entertainment Goal
What will make the game entertaining?
How to develop a Usable System?
Remember I talked about "task analysis" in my last blog
We will use the concept of task analysis here. We will figure out what the user needs to do and how can the system help them do it.
1) Perform task analysis
What does the user want to do?
2) Methods to do
In this step, you need to choose the system function that will support the task.
3) Choose and adopt some usability specifications
4) Chose initial interface design for initial specifications
5) Evaluate the usability of the design
6) Correct any problem and repeat evaluation
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