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User Interface Design
Oct. 29th, 2019 08:13 pmI've been watching a lot of UI and UX design guides lately, because it's always fascinating to me to see how very tiny tweaks make very large differences in experience.
My favourite one is an analysis of the UI of the composition software Muse Score, which is fascinatingly inconsistent. Users of open-source software will recognize exactly the sort of bizarre, piss poor yet weirdly functional UI design immediately. Parts of it are spectacularly put together for the tasks in question, such as navigation and certain forms of input, which allow rapid, intuitive use that doesn't interupt flow and saves time. And yet, inconsistent glyphs, empty sidebars, and checklists that close after each click make it teeth-grindingly painful in some places.
But, the one that I think I would recommend to a general audience is this video about how the UX in popular video games is functionally alien, acting like a foreign language to people who don't play games regularly. It's much less technical, but it's also just so intriguing. Things like KB+M games not mentioning that the mouse controls your camera angle, because it's just assumed that everyone knows that, leading players to stare straight ahead for long period of time. Not knowing how to use on-screen maps or waymarks. Plus, the sense of peculiar disappointment from realizing that an open world game nonetheless has a highly scripted or railroaded path that doesn't allow for the solution you came up with to a certain problem.
My favourite one is an analysis of the UI of the composition software Muse Score, which is fascinatingly inconsistent. Users of open-source software will recognize exactly the sort of bizarre, piss poor yet weirdly functional UI design immediately. Parts of it are spectacularly put together for the tasks in question, such as navigation and certain forms of input, which allow rapid, intuitive use that doesn't interupt flow and saves time. And yet, inconsistent glyphs, empty sidebars, and checklists that close after each click make it teeth-grindingly painful in some places.
But, the one that I think I would recommend to a general audience is this video about how the UX in popular video games is functionally alien, acting like a foreign language to people who don't play games regularly. It's much less technical, but it's also just so intriguing. Things like KB+M games not mentioning that the mouse controls your camera angle, because it's just assumed that everyone knows that, leading players to stare straight ahead for long period of time. Not knowing how to use on-screen maps or waymarks. Plus, the sense of peculiar disappointment from realizing that an open world game nonetheless has a highly scripted or railroaded path that doesn't allow for the solution you came up with to a certain problem.
