UI & UX design from a Programmer's Perspective
Lars Wobus
Senior Animation Programmer @3D Interaction Technologies // I bring your 3D models to life on the web, desktop and mobile devices
As some people already know, I'm currently developing a strategy game as part of my second master's degree at the University of Applied Sciences Dresden.
Via a survey of 588 respondents, I was able to determine that 52 percent felt that poor controls as well as a poor user interface was one of the biggest customer pain points. The result made me focus on UI and UX design instead of game programming for the last 2 weeks. So this week there is a short insight into my UX / UI concept.
Lets begin with my final result for this week, which can also be found on my ArtStation profile.
As a programmer I thought for a long time that an Artstation account was superfluous. But now I believe that every developer should have an online showroom to present some UI / UX design concepts. After all, it shows potential employers, clients, recruiters, etc. that you have dealt with UI / UX design at some point.
In some situations, it's probably enough to collect screenshots of UI web frameworks and arrange them smartly. For my purposes, however, it was wiser to spend some time designing the UI elements myself rather than using existing icons and UI asset packs.
Except for one AI image, I created all UI elements using Inkscape. Since it's the only graphics program I've mastered to some extent. The quality certainly seems to be less good compared to the work of 2D/3D artists, yet it quickly becomes clear to any viewer which UI elements are ultimately needed for my game.
The creation of the icons, the search for suitable fonts, the selection of colors, etc. took quite a lot of time. Around 18 hours so far (Time for website design not included).
Countless designs have been discarded in the meantime. Some of the design concepts I can't even show today, because they contain images for which I don't own the publishing rights. What I can show though is concept of the ingame UI.
The first concept still takes up quite a lot of screen space. No wonder that UIs (e.g. from BattleTech, XCOM, Phoenix Point, etc.) are kept minimalistic. There is also a second version that shows only some thumbnails of the player squad, but I decided not to show the image today because it still contains a large empty space on the right side. In the games mentioned above, the information about the weapons carried is usually displayed at the bottom right, but I consider that less relevant in my case.
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What's still missing is the overall UI between levels. But maybe it's time to push the game development the next few weeks to see which UI elements are really needed in the end.
That's it for this week.
What do you think about spending time designing UI elements as programmer? Have you ever done it yourself or do you think I should let others do the job for me? Feel free to leave a comment or share the article with your network.
And don't forget to hit the "Follow" button on?my profile page?or add me as a contact if you haven't already. Not convinced yet? Well, maybe you will be once you read some of my?other articles.
My long-term goal is to develop a turn-based strategy game for PC in the mecha universe during my second master's degree. I don't know how far I will get, because - besides programming - I also have to deal with topics like social media and marketing, 3D modeling, sales, business creation, game design and so on. So if you are interested in such topics or if you are also an indie developer and want to know how to manage all these tasks, please (1) hit the Follow button, (2) leave a Like and (3) share this article with your network.