Tēnā koutou katoa. Nau mai ki tēnei kōwae ako UX Design II. Welcome to this module UX Design II.
In this module you will further develop your design-thinking skills. Your understanding of design, UX and content creation principles, tools and best practices for video game productions will be developed and extended.
You will be introduced to the UX Design concepts and methods such as:
- motion design
- theories of play
- game interfaces
- game narratives
- character and environment design
- animation
- sprite sheets
- game rules and mechanics.
You will also look at technical game art concepts and methods such as texture atlases, texture packing, poly counts, resolution, size, and memory footprints.
You will apply and deepen this knowledge of UX design through iterative development cycles where you will investigate, propose, design, prototype, develop play-test, discuss, revise and refine actual games.
Before getting into learning all this new information let’s take some time to briefly recap what you have already learned about UX Design so far.
What is UX?
A product is more than just the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service – from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. [UX designers should] make them all work together seamlessly.1Norman (1988) cited in Romano (2021)
Simply put User Experience (UX) is how people feel when they engage with or use a product or service. It is a general term for all aspects of the interaction that users of a product or service have with that product, and with the company that provided it.
You learned that UX refers to both the feelings or emotions experienced, and the thoughts a user has when using a product, application, system, or service. It is a broad term that encompasses things like how easy the product is to use, how well the user feel they can navigate around, and how relevant is the content displayed, and so on. It is predicated on the notion that humans are both rational and emotional creatures, and both those things play a significant role in the user experience.
It can be described as the journey the user takes as they use the product and includes not only the direct interactions with the product but also how it contributes to the overall achievement of their task or goal.
In the following video, Colman Walsh CEO of the UX Design Institute describes user experience and its purpose.
UX is not just a concept exclusive to software development or online interactions. It is your experience in everyday life – when you go to the supermarket, ride a bicycle, use a taxi, or any other engagement with any product or service.
It is not rocket science - At its core, UX is about simplicity. It’s finding what the audience needs to know and how they behave.
UX is not the same as UI (user interface). It is about designing the experience – that’s the product of the interaction with what you design (for example the interface). The difference between UX and UI is discussed briefly later in this topic.
Why Does UX Design Matter?
The Usability Professionals Association (2022) outlines 6 reasons why good UX design matters. They are
- Increased Productivity
- Increased sales and revenues
- Decreased training and support costs
- Reduced development time and costs
- Reduced maintenance costs
- Increased customer satisfaction
There may be other reasons that you can think of. These 6 reasons are interrelated in many ways, and it is easy to extrapolate from them what are the consequences of bad UX design.
Dr Ralph Speth, CEO, JaguarIf you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.
Julia Ku discussed why UX matters and used the example of VacMe, the COVID vaccine registration system in Zurich, Switzerland.
The Features of Good UX Design
In CS101 UX Design I, you were introduced to 7 features of good UX design that are universally agreed upon. These features are outlined in the image below:
Consider these two examples of an interface for choosing your year of birthday. How would you feel having to choose your birth year from the example on the left? What would your experience be? Which layout is better?
If you felt that your experience with the left option would leave you dissatisfied or frustrated, then you would be right in feeling that way. It is an example of a poor designed ‘date picker’ with too many options in view, where the option on the right is well designed with the date options being consolidated into one, very familiar format and interaction.
The graphic below again outlines the seven elements covered before and adds a few more. Have a look at it and then review the ‘date picker’ graphics again and note the presence of these features or not.
The difference between UX and UI
Lastly, in this recap let’s take some time to review the difference and relationships between User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI). It is very important to have a clear understanding of these two separate, but related concepts. In the following table the differences are outlined:
| User Experience (UX) | User Interface (UI) |
|---|---|
|
|
Reflect on the relationship between UX and UI as you read the following statement. Is one thing more important than the other? Which one? Perhaps they are equally important? What do you think?
By focusing on the user, Google knows that when they come to the site, they’re after one thing: information. And they want it quickly.
Now imagine that every time you searched on Google, it took 15 seconds to get a result—you’d no longer be able to instantly get an answer to your question. Even if the interface stayed the same, your experience with Google would be dramatically different.
It’s important to distinguish the total user experience from the user interface (UI), even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design. As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.Norman & Nielsen (2022)
In the video using examples, Greg Raiz considers the differences between UI and UX. You will never look at a sauce bottle in the same way again!
Now that we have briefly recapped some of the fundamentals of UX design let's continue with learning about UX design and its particular application in mobile app and game design.
