Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The UI Design Space - Initial thoughts

Looking at the results of the objective game study so far, some trends can be identified. The notion of diegesis seems relevant to take into the picture.


The visual non-diegetic dimension of the UI design space seems to be highly exploited by FPS games in general; traditional HUD-elements layered on top of the game in various forms, menus used for different purposes. Blur filters, red glow when the player is damaged and fading the screen when dying seem to fall into a 'grey area' - is it always what the player character really experience? The visual diegetic dimension is less exploited - a few games use diegetic information elements, mostly in the form of highlighting interactive objects. Environmental effects seem to be rare. Possibly, this will change as more games are studied.

In the auditory dimension, diegetic UI elements mainly seem to exist in the form of heart beats and pulsating sounds to indicate a critical health level. Non-diegetic audio used to convey information mostly exists in the form of dynamic music indicating battle, used by a few of the games studied so far.

Controller rumble is more or less exclusively used in a diegetic way; vibrations when a weapon is fired, when taking damage, etc.


In the search for unconventional, innovative ways to get rid of traditional, immersion-breaking HUD elements, there seems to be a lot of unexplored ground in the diegetic visual dimension as expected, as well as both the diegetic and non-diegetic haptic and auditory dimensions.

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