05-24-2003, 06:12 PM
It's called Human Factor Engineering, and ergonomics is but one part of it. There have been tons of studies on interface design. The basics like how many colors/shapes/sizes can a person really distinguish between, how loud and how often does a sound have to be played to catch attention, how far does the eye usually travel to monitor signals has been done countless times. Good HF Engineers can make quite a bit of money and find jobs pretty easily. Though you are correct in that the field isn't very mature yet and people will settle for less. I have looked into getting a job in the field, and have gotten serious consideration by some companies (turned down an offer I probably shouldn't have in retrospect actually) for that type of work, and this is all because I have had 2 classes dealing directly with it, and several others that are tertiary to it. So, yes, it is a big deal, and yes you can learn from scientific studies about what works and what doesn't, and yes, more work still needs to be conducted.
I also want to just point out in passing that ergomonics is much broader than just the trying to eliminate discomfort or injury, but that is the the common connotation/definition of the word, so isn't really a big deal.
I do agree that consistency in design is a problem with a lot of games and that it probably should be one of if not the top priority in game design since so much of the game is the interface.
If you want to see a horrible UI look at Master of Orion III, so so so much drilling when and so many static elements where lists and movable screens would work so much better. There are many things that take 10 to 15 mouse clicks to do that could easily be redesigned to take 3 or 4. Bleh.
As to some of the Starcraft specific points Pete made, I could be wrong thanks to War3, but shift-# should add a unit to a group and if the group doesn't exist, it should create the group. Control-# will create/overwrite that group number, which is useful if you put a templar in with your zealots and didn't want, you can deselect him from the group and then overwrite the group with the control-#, and there are other reasons why you need the 2 group creation/addition methods. I also thought that you could do the map location with either shift or control for similar reasons, since having mutliple map locations makes no sense they both simply work as the overwrite function. Again, if that is only in War3 then I apologize, I haven't played SC in about a year.
If I understood the left click/right click complaint, the right click is shortcut so you don't have to hit attack/move/harvest/whatever than left click. The right click is just a short cut for the common commands for that unit. So I don't see that as a problem really. I actually found the SC interface to be rather simple and well done. I did think it lacked in some of the feedback mechanisms and could have made a lot better use of color coding information but the control aspects of it didn't seem to bad, though again its been a while since I have played it.
Just some of my thoughts on the whole issue.
I also want to just point out in passing that ergomonics is much broader than just the trying to eliminate discomfort or injury, but that is the the common connotation/definition of the word, so isn't really a big deal.
I do agree that consistency in design is a problem with a lot of games and that it probably should be one of if not the top priority in game design since so much of the game is the interface.
If you want to see a horrible UI look at Master of Orion III, so so so much drilling when and so many static elements where lists and movable screens would work so much better. There are many things that take 10 to 15 mouse clicks to do that could easily be redesigned to take 3 or 4. Bleh.
As to some of the Starcraft specific points Pete made, I could be wrong thanks to War3, but shift-# should add a unit to a group and if the group doesn't exist, it should create the group. Control-# will create/overwrite that group number, which is useful if you put a templar in with your zealots and didn't want, you can deselect him from the group and then overwrite the group with the control-#, and there are other reasons why you need the 2 group creation/addition methods. I also thought that you could do the map location with either shift or control for similar reasons, since having mutliple map locations makes no sense they both simply work as the overwrite function. Again, if that is only in War3 then I apologize, I haven't played SC in about a year.
If I understood the left click/right click complaint, the right click is shortcut so you don't have to hit attack/move/harvest/whatever than left click. The right click is just a short cut for the common commands for that unit. So I don't see that as a problem really. I actually found the SC interface to be rather simple and well done. I did think it lacked in some of the feedback mechanisms and could have made a lot better use of color coding information but the control aspects of it didn't seem to bad, though again its been a while since I have played it.
Just some of my thoughts on the whole issue.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.