Relevance to the Concept
Without a planned UI, players wouldn't have any kind of in-game feedback to direct them; particularly in this game, where players know what tasks they have in any given day thanks to the UI provided to them through the phone. Without a consistent UI, players won't feel like there's any consistency to our game, so each UI element needs to compliment each other.
Technical Research
The Most Stylish UI Designs in Video Games
Summary
Provides insight into some of the most stylish UI design in recent video games. What stood out to me was the consistency between different UI elements and how what seems like very complex UIs manage to be very uncluttered and understandable.
Best Practices for Designing an Effective User Interface
Summary
Emphasises the need for UI elements to follow the game's aesthetic to suit the game world and to anticipate how users will interact with the UI - aim to make it easy to understand so that others will too. Also recommends understanding how other games have designed their UI and to take inspiration from these designs and build upon them.
Designed Menu UI in Action
Phone UI + Texting Design
Challenges
- Anticipating how our target audience would interact with our UI was crucial, but very difficult without any prior knowledge of or testing done with our target audience. Once the testing was complete, the design was able to be reworked according to feedback garnered from this testing.
- Providing just the right amount of UI elements without depriving users of information was important, otherwise the game would be very frustrating to play and players would feel lost. I wanted to make sure that UI was never being pushed in front of other important elements of the game while still being accessible at all times, which is how the phone mechanic came to be.