This week I worked on designing the UI for the game. I aimed to use the UI to enhance the visual aesthetic of the game as a whole, similar to the borders in a retro space poster. After doing some research, I also found that futurism and constructivism would be good fits for influencing the design of the UI.

Information

I began by listing the information that is essential for the UI to communicate, as well as info that appears in specific contexts.

The UI needs to show the following:

All of the time:

• Current year
• Amount of fuel remaining
• Distance from planet surface

Contextually:

• When on the planet surface:
  • Modules available (if any)
  • Current era
• When an asteroid or fuel pickup is about to come onscreen:
  • An icon to indicate where it is coming in from, and what it is
• When gaining bonuses to score, such as picking up a meteorite gem:
  • The bonus should appear as a multiplier, and remain on the screen below the current year
• Start menu:
  • Start button
  • High score
• On death:
  • Final score
  • Retry button

Dependent on modules installed:

• When using the radar module:
  • A radar that informs the player of incoming asteroids
• When using the slowdown field module:
  • A button that activates the module
  • The elliptical field around the rocket

Next, I broke down the information into three reads, as suggested by Zach Gage (http://stfj.net/DesigningForSubwayLegibility/), which allows me to create a visual hierarchy so that more important data can be more visually distinct than data which is less important. The first read is the most important, whilst the third is the least; my notes on Gage’s talk can be found here: