Creating a UI with your Mind Power

[Valiar]

Hello everyone.

At start I will tell anyone looking for a guide to make a UI this topic is not for you.

For some time I was thinking about making a new UI for my toons but every time I sat down and started doing it, I was unable to make one that I felt was right. The reason for it is that I want a UI that take in account:

• where we as gamers concentrate our eyes most of the time.
• what colours, fonts, sounds, humans mind reacts best
• what type of information our brain reacts the most and in what form
• what is the best sizes for UI elements
• what is the most harmful colours, sounds ect.

Yes I am a Geek, sue me.

I am sure someone will point out the fact that there is no one set rule for any of my questions. I know that. What I would ask of you is to point me in a direction where I can find info about this things or better just write about this topics here.

Mind you all I don't want just links I would really want to talked about topics that are here.

For example we all know that most ppl when playing are looking at middle of the screen. But I did notice that when playing I am not looking at center center, but somehow lower part of the screen. And I don't know if it cuzed by how my UI is made or it is cuz that is how we just do it. And if it is how gamers play wouldn't it be better to place the most imported information for playing there. Would that make me react faster to raid warning ??

Like I said I am a Geek.

Thank you for reading this post.

PS. I am really sorry for my poor English I just hope you could understand it.

[cgymer]

I'll chime in and say that our peripheral vision is better on the x axis than the y axis, so placing things you really need to keep an eye on to the left and right of centre rather than above/below centre is theoretically better. I've been testing it a little while levelling some healers in 5 mans and having Grid to the left of centre has made a difference to my awareness of what is happening to me. YMMV ofc.

[Quinafoi]

Try to figure out your target audience first... 99.9% of the time that's yourself.

No UI is universally good because what is important to you is not important to someone else and what is unimportant to you is important to someone else. Here is a simple example. If you're a raider a raid frame is probably part of your UI. If you don't raid at all, would you want a UI with a raid frame?

[Almogaver]

I've been testing quite a bit with eyetrackers to evaluate webpages. For any of you who don't know what an eyetracker is, it's a device that provides information about where the users are looking in the screen. In my tests I've seen that most users tend to avoid "text walls" and center their attention into images or titles. It's not the same envoirment but i guess some of it can be applied to WoW user interface. I think that any gives user would react quicker to images than text. As for the colors, I think red is the color that makes us react quicker, that's why stop signs, stop lights and fire equipment are painted red.