Chapter 2: First Alien UI design

Does our Alien User Interface design break any of these rules?

Which brings us to step 2. Now that we have the most important rules, we can test how user
friendly our User Interface design is. Now in this part we will have a look at an Alien User Interface I made as
an example UI. If you made your own User Interface you can skip this step to step no. 3 and apply these design
rules to your own UI.

Now for step 2 we will have a look at my User Interface design. This design is made with the intention of being
used by aliens, and so it’s designed by aliens. During the design process of this User Interface, I mainly focused
on the aesthetic aspect and the main features a Real Time Strategy User Interface needs.

To understand the user interface a little bit more, I will shortly introduced the aliens that have inspired and

essentially designed this user interface. The background story of these characters explain most of my design
choices.

Image 1 - The alien race

These aliens were humans at one point in their life. They came from earth and stranded on a hostile planet that

changed them. They mutated to adapt to the hostile environments. They used to think as humans and slowly
became more feral.

So this is my unbiased Alien User Interface design. The User Interface is made for a Real Time Strategy game.

I tried to design the User Interface as if it were designed by aliens. In the design you can find elements that can
also be found in the alien designs. For example the health bar has a spiked design like a crown that the aliens
wears. And since the aliens were humans at one point, the user interface still has some little design elements
that resembles human designs. So let’s see what components we have in this User Interface design.  

Image 2 - My Alien User Interface Design

So the User Interface consists of 1. The mini map, here the player can see all the enemies and allies in the area.
It has a radar like design which is a bit of the human touch that resides in the design.  2. The health bar, here
the player can see the health status of the selected unit. The shape is a reference to the headpiece that the
aliens wear. 3. The currency, here the player can see the currency that he or she currently owns. The player
needs this currency to build new units. 4. The menu button, this is what the player uses to open the menu
options, pauze and close the game. 5. The Command box, this is where the player can see which units he or
she can build. And use to build the units. On the left are some alien type lights that adds to the alien feel of the
user interface. The spiked design of the user interface is based on the armor that the alien grow on their bodies.

Testing my design

So now we can apply the design rules to my UI design. To test how well my User Interface is designed according
to the design rules, I made two surveys to test with actual humans. For this research I have chosen to use
surveys, because direct feedback from my target audience is the most useful in this situation. Since the goal of
the user interface is that it is user and human friendly. So for this test I would also recommend you guys using
a survey. Or something similar that gives you direct feedback from a human perspective.

My presumptions are that my current design might not be very practical or natural to use. I think that aesthetically
it might score better. But we will find out! The first survey contains four questions about the Learnability, Efficiency,
Errors and  Satisfaction. Twelve people have participated in this survey, and the overall results are pretty negative.
But now we know what is wrong with my design.

Image 3 - Survey test results

The User Interface scored pretty low overall, but especially with learnability and Efficiency. The User Interface

is too big and takes up too much space on the screen.

User’s would find it difficult to click on units and navigate through the game. In the charts you can see that the

User Interface scored a little bit higher on the Error, Memorability and Satisfaction questions, but still pretty bad.
To test the memorability question, I asked the same twelve participants to fill in another survey a week later.
How well can you remember the User Interface?

Image 4 - memorability survey

This question scored higher than the other ones. Same as before, I asked the participants why they gave it the
score they did. And the main feedback was that it looks so different from a regular user interface design, that it’s
pretty memorable. Since the focus is more on the aesthetic side, it looks very unique. In the survey the
participants told me that that made it more memorable. Honestly I can say that I have expected these results.
Since my design was purely based on aesthetics, it completely lacked in other aspects. Personally I would say
that the Satisfaction question scored pretty low because of the other questions. The feedback that the
participants gave made me think that the alien design was not the problem.

But although it’s an overall negative result, we can still use this and learn from this. So now that we know what is
wrong with this User Interface design, we are going to have a look at how other successful games apply these rules.