GUI Design
First Meeting, Wed. June 18, 1998, at 1:00 PM
Context Setting
- There are no right answers in GUI design -- only tradeoffs that are
better or worse -- we must balance aesthetics vs. playability vs.
authenticity
- There is nothing more emotional than User Interface Design
- GUI design is a group process, and ultimately depends on user feedback
- We now have an initial prototype, and we're about to design a second.
We must respect the work of the previous designers (John Bauer, pretty
much single-handedly)
- The overriding principle is "design to function" -- first decide the
functions to support and then work them together.
- A wise saying (made up by me): We move a ton to save users an ounce of
effort
Major Topics
Interface Conventions
Evaluation Plans
Main Functions
- Layout
- Viewport
- location
Decision: top and center
- size
Decision:Window and Image height fixed at 400
pixesl
Window and Image width 600 pixels or greater
- Dashboard
- Navigation
- Local zooming (achieved with scaling)?
- Global (aerial view)
- support for beaming
- using a personal map
- using a global map
- back to the spaceship
Decision: we must support this, we claim it, in proposals, as one of the
uniquely "virtual" functions
- partial beaming (i.e back to a previously visited room), this is
probably implied by the previous point
- Roomal
- clicking (single vs double)
- arrow keys
- onscreen direction buttons
- Communication
- communicator device (@page in LambdaMOO)
- text balloons
- scrolling text window
- mouse-over status
- Operations
- Experiments
- Choosing a "weapon"
- others
- Customization
- what to allow
- how to save
- Error Messages
- Notebook Function