4
Troutmonkey, on 10 May 2015 - 08:46 PM, said:
It looks terrible, is clunky, and fails several UI design heuristics.
The mechlab UI is the part of you game you'll spend almost 50% of your time with, so it is definitely worth investing more time and effort into to make it as fast and simple to use as possible, while also putting effort in to make it look good.
As someone who has studied UI design and spends a lot of time with software, a bad UI can be the difference between someone using your software or just giving up and using something else. It doesn't matter how powerful or how many features it has, if it's ugly and hard to use people will go elsewhere. Why do you think Apple is doing so well in the mainstream while the superior Linux barely gets use?
I quit my previous job due in part to an "upgrade" to our software that made it nigh unusable, and I also quit MWO for several months after UI2.0 released.
How bad do you think it will be for the casual Steam player who tries out the game? If first impressions aren't good the UI will likely drive away thousands of new players.
The mechlab UI is the part of you game you'll spend almost 50% of your time with, so it is definitely worth investing more time and effort into to make it as fast and simple to use as possible, while also putting effort in to make it look good.
As someone who has studied UI design and spends a lot of time with software, a bad UI can be the difference between someone using your software or just giving up and using something else. It doesn't matter how powerful or how many features it has, if it's ugly and hard to use people will go elsewhere. Why do you think Apple is doing so well in the mainstream while the superior Linux barely gets use?
I quit my previous job due in part to an "upgrade" to our software that made it nigh unusable, and I also quit MWO for several months after UI2.0 released.
How bad do you think it will be for the casual Steam player who tries out the game? If first impressions aren't good the UI will likely drive away thousands of new players.
So much true on that. And that's what I am worried about: new players that are non-BT fans. If we want the game to grow, we need to appeal those. They couldn't care less for a Marauder.
And just to give a complement to your words:
- There isn't such thing as good usability for good usability should be completely transparent, but bad usability can rip an interaction experience apart
- Bad usability is highly subjective, but we can try to average things out and resolve most of the potential interaction problems, either through heuristics, either through test sessions
