STREAMLINE EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT

One of the ways I work around this clunky  method is to press the Right Bumper to throw the  undesired weapon away (which can be used as an attack move, such as to throw spears). This works for melee weapons, but bow and arrow weapons can't be thrown away, nor can shields. In this case, if you have full bows or shields, you have to  browse through the equipment menu again to drop something.   Because you are dropping and switching equipment in the UI with greater frequency, users will likely encounter unnecessary friction. The best fix to avoid this clunky experience would simply be to  add a context-sensitive "Swap" option that only appears when the user tries to pick up a weapon or open a chest when the weapon inventory is full. This would no longer force users to go through this frequent and tedious routine,  making weapon inventory management more fluid and keeping users focused on the adventure and exploration, not futzing with menus.

Users shouldn't be left hanging and have to see this.

GIVE USERS Shortcuts tO Food

Shortcuts to Food would make combat more fluid and fast-paced.

One of the  more consistent hallmarks of UI design in the ZELDA franchise, even since the 16-bit era,  has been the ability to remap the button functions to use different items. With  BOTW​ we now have a system of magic rune powers that gives users agency over the game's physics systems, and an  ingredient and cooking system  that allows users to create different food items and elixirs to restore health  and/or grant status benefits, like increased damage or resistances. While you can select from the magic runes by pressing and holding DPad Up (more on this in a bit), there is no quick access to food items.  Instead, users have to press the Start button, browse  to the Food tab, sort through several sub-pages, then sift through  an item matrix  to read and evaluate which dish or elixir confers the desired status effect and/or restores the right  amount of health (too much health would waste the food's benefit, too little and the user has to eat multiple items).

There's no reason you couldn't browse bows and arrows in a 2D matrix versus a linear row.

Relocate the Arrow and Shield Switching functions - Pressing DPad Left brings up an auxiliary menu that permits users to select shields or arrow types, depending on the primary  weapon type the  user has  currently selected. In my experience with the game so far, the frequency that I need to switch my shield or arrows  is either moderate  or infrequent , so these functions could be relocated.  Expanding the primary weapon selection (on DPad Right) from a  linear row of weapon selections to a matrix of 2 rows would achieve this. In the case of the melee weapon selection,  the top row would be weapons, while the bottom row would be shields (which would be greyed out if the player selects a two-handed weapon). If the user draws their  bow, then the top row becomes bows, while the bottom becomes  the arrow types.

MAKE RUNE MAGIC SELECTION MORE FLUID

WARN USERS THAT FOOD STATUS BUFFS DON't StACK

GIVE USERS BETTER Item SORTS

LOTS of items, one sort...

When you sort items, like ingredients for cooking or crafting, there is one sort type and it doesn't really tell  you much  about the method it chooses to sort by. It seems to be by a general type (such as fruit, plants, meats, critter, mineral, for ingredients, and then by effect type for food).  But in some instances, this enigmatic sort is not helpful. What if you're talking to a merchant and you want to sort the items by worth to find out what's the most valuable item? Nope! You have to sift through items one by one to see how much you can sell them for.  How about sorting them by what you have the most number of items? Ditto, no can do.

CONCLUSIONS

Visual Design is in the eye of the beholder.

WHAT  IS  VISUAL  DESIGN? Often referred to as “Graphic Design,” or more confusingly “User Interface Design” or “UI Design,” Visual Design is the process of using fonts, typography, color theory, composition, and iconography to establish or reinforce a product’s visual aesthetic and emotional appeal.  Visual design directly supports a product’s given Content Strategy and is a crucial component of branding.  Graphic Designers create “mood boards,” “style guides”, or “pattern libraries” to establish conventions and standards for what all the widgets and interactive elements will look like across all parts of a product.

WHY  IS  VISUAL  DESIGN  IMPORTANT?

WHEN  SHOULD  I  USE  VISUAL  DESIGN?

WHAT  IS  INTERACTION  DESIGN?  You may hear the term “Interaction Design” and wonder how it relates to the other flavors of UX.   It can get confusing to talk about all these different terms, but like Prototyping, Interaction Design (IxD) is a specialized subset of UX Design, informed by visual design, that deals with making user inputs and moments of interaction as useful and emotionally resonant as possible.     Interaction Designers achieve this using animations, audio, visual effects, or other forms of feedback to enhance interactions, making them more pleasing and delightful.

WHY  IS  INTERACTION  DESIGN  IMPORTANT?

WHEN  SHOULD  I  USE  INTERACTION  DESIGN?

WHAT  IS  GAMIFICATION? Gamification is not necessarily a component of all UX projects, but it bears mentioning here as it’s a very specialized and unique part of the toolset of some UX designers (like yours truly!)  Gamification is the process of adding elements of game design or game theory into a product or service’s feature set to recognize and reward desired patterns of behavior.  Such elements often include typical features like “leveling up” with “experience points” or earning rewards like “trophies” or “badges” for maintaining habits and engagement over time.  But they can also utilize elements of choice-making, customization, and goal-setting so users feel more deeply invested and motivated to interact with your product.   ​

WHY  IS  GAMIFICATION  IMPORTANT?

WHEN  SHOULD  I  USE  GAMIFICATION?

WHAT  ARE  YOUR  MINIMAL  VIABLE  UX  NEEDS?

WHAT  IS  INFORMATION  ARCHITECTURE?

When a big building is made of bits and bytes, there's often more than one UX design that flows through it, and they don't serve the same end users.

Information architecture (IA) is a fancy word for the process of designing multiple end-user experiences or "environments" that are all intended to share or access a similar base of information.  At its core it is the process of tackling a big complex problem (consisting of all the data, requirements, and features that a product or platform needs to support) and organizing a plan to distill it into smaller, more discrete, and more manageable chunks.  Each of these chunks may be  focused on the needs of multiple yet dissimilar end-users who all need access to the same source of information.  Sounds important, doesn’t it?  It sure is!  Truth be told, I dislike the term "IA" as good UX is about promoting clarity and reducing confusion, so it’s ironic that this term is less immediately obvious than others, but it's arguably the most complex part of UX.  A helpful metaphor I picked up is that information architecture is the design of a holistic structure of a building, like a museum, including the public galleries as well as all the wiring, lighting, plumbing, security, and AC system.   One user's experience may entail following one path through the front-door of this metaphorical museum where they see the latest public exhibits, but much of the underlying complexity remains hidden.   Another user experience defines how an electrician or plumber accesses and interacts with the museum, which entails both more "under-the-hood" information and complexity that offers a  completely different experience from what   public users see.

Why  is  Information  Architecture  Important?

When  Should  I  Use  Information  Architecture?

Not every startup needs an Information Architect, but if you do, use IA early. Under certain circumstances you may have to wind it back up post-launch to support different end-user types as your startup grows.

What  is  User  Experience  Design?

UX Design is the process of taking the all the requirements, features, and constraints informed by other UX practices and starting the official process of organizing information, and features into a form that defines the moment-to-moment experience of moving through your software. This can take the form of rudimentary sketches, flowcharts, screen mockups, and diagrams called wireframes.  The purpose of these materials is to detail step-by-step how the software guides users to experience and interact with functions and information, and how all the pieces of the UX puzzle start to fit together.  Sometimes these diagrams can be large and intricate, other times interactions are chopped up into smaller flows.  Often it’s necessary to annotate UX Design materials with notes that may convey additional details or information for developers.  This can be especially important if the team is distributed or the UX Designer may not be immediately accessible to relevant stakeholders.  While there’s plenty of dedicated tools out there for creating UX Design materials, some also believe that good old-fashioned pencils and paper can be best.

WHY  IS  USER  EXPERIENCE  DESIGN  IMPORTANT

When  Should  I  Use  User  Experience  Design?

UX Design is most effective after some initial end-user research is done and tends to taper off as development proceeds and features get made (assuming things go smoothly)

What  is  UX  Prototyping?

UX Prototyping is a specialized user experience design practice where UX Designers take initial ideas for user experiences and implement them into an interactive form in a fast, efficient way.  Wireframes, mockups, and flows can be great for clarifying the big picture, but to an untrained eye they can be difficult for assessing usability.  While knowing how to program using HTML or CSS can be an effective prototyping method, the good news is that you don’t need to know how to program to create UX Prototypes.  There are a variety of dedicated tools for interactive prototyping, like Pixate, Invision, or Sketch, that enable you to quickly create beautiful animated prototypes that replicate the superficial look and feel for real apps without writing a single line of code.   Or you could get old-school simple and bust out the crayons, scissors, glue, and table, and make paper prototypes of screens or target  sub-portions of your product.

WhY  is  UX  Prototyping  Important?

When  Should  I  Use  or  Do  UX  Prototyping?

LET'S  TALK  ABOUT  YOUR  USER  EXPERIENCE  CHALLENGES

"Good UX is clinically proven to help users like you grow arms!"

What  Is  User  Experience?   User Experience is the holistic experience of real people interacting with your startup's brand and software, encompassing the design, distribution, organization, and implementation of information and interactions to serve both the emotional needs of real people and an organization’s objectives.  It’s a complex and fascinating field that touches a variety of disciplines, processes, and practices, including psychology, art, technology, marketing, business, finance, and more.  All practices within the UX spectrum promote clarity and increased levels of positive user emotions (such as engagement and delight), strive to reduce negative friction, and increase the chance of building great products that reach audiences and fulfill business objectives.​   In today’s high-speed, socially connected world, the distinguishing factor between business success and failure often boils down to who has the better UX. ​

What  Are  the  Different  Types  of  UX?

This smartphone app is so happy because it's highly usable!

What  is  Usability? Let's begin with a definition.  Usability is less of a process or phase of UX development than it is a fundamental quality that all UX products should strive to achieve and uphold.  It is the measure of the utility and ergonomics of a product (ie - how intuitive or easy it is to use) and reflects the emotional appeal and end-user quality of a UX product.  ​ Nobody wants to deal with cumbersome tools, clunky interfaces, or confusing interactions.  A product or service with poor or low usability is more likely to produce user frustration, confusion, or friction, which is when users struggle or are impeded or slowed down from fulfilling a specific goal.   Why does this happen?  Usually because one or more of the UX practices are overlooked, which, sad to say, can happen quite easily!   Developers or entrepreneurs sometimes overlook good UX because they can be strapped for resources.  Sometimes they can make inadvertently self-defeating UX design decisions because they’re thinking about what’s most efficient and easiest to implement instead of what's best for their users.

"What I'd need is an app that helps me grow double jointed arms..."

What  is  User  Research? User research is the process of talking to real people to collect data about the emotional needs and responses of your target users when they might interact with your product or service.  Who are your customers and what makes them tick?  What kinds of devices do they prefer to use?  What are the problems they’re having that you could solve for them, making their lives better?  These are just a sampling of questions that go into user research.  A common goal of this process is to form a fictional model of a typical end-user, known as a persona.  Another goal for User Research is to create a "user journey maps", which outline the emotional phases  and actions a fictional persona might go through as they learn about and interact with a brand or product.

​When  Should  I  Use  or  Do  User  Research?

Research is one of the most important flavors of UX practice across the entire Product Lifecycle?

There's a whole lot of Wingdings going on in this image...

What  is  Content  Strategy? I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "Content is King," right?  If you haven't maybe you haven't been hanging around with enough marketing people!  Content Strategy is another broad category of practice that can be hard to nail down.  It’s the practice of looking at categories of data or information, such as text, images, graphics, audio, and video, across different delivery channels, such as blogs, email, social media, and online video sites.  After you've categorized what type of content you're using, you initiate a high-level planning and analysis phase to strategize how to produce and use content and channels to best maximize appeal towards a specific target market or end-users. ​ Examples of content strategy at work include:

Why is Content Strategy Important?

When  Should  I  Use  or  Do  Content  Strategy?

Since Content Strategy governs and influences your marketing, (and you need to be selling all the time) Content Strategy is important through all phases of the Software Lifecycle.

WHAT  UX  PROBLEMS  ARE  YOU  HAVING?

Unintuitive  Character  Switching

CommunicatE  the  Importance  of  the  Lab Another thing that gets lost in the shuffle of systems within the Ark is the “Lab” where you buy and sell weapons and undesirable items.  First off, “Shop” would be a better term because a “Lab” is where you research or create things (you know...like the T.E.C.H. chip upgrades).  “Shop” better describes a place where you buy and sell stuff.  Also, the game floods players with low-quality weapons during regular gameplay, so it’s likely that players don’t perceive the need to go shopping for more.  One crucial but not immediately obvious detail is that the “Lab” (ugh!) is the BEST place to buy the rarest, highest rank, highest quality weapons, and the inventory changes periodically so that new stuff appears often.  Because high-rank shop weapons are the most expensive things to invest money into (aside from Synthesis), it  strengthens the reason for the rest of the economy to exist, helping completing a key player-compulsion loop.  Better terminology, giving the user some extra feedback (like a reminder or notification when new or rare weapons are in-stock), or even putting the "Shop" closer to the top of the Ark Menu would be more intuitive and would better reflect how its importance to the player's chances of success.  Improving discoverability and awareness is never a bad thing.

You'd be hard-pressed to learn how important the Lab is based on how the UI presents it.

Better  Filtering  and  Sorting

Don't mind me channeling my inner Dinobot monologues...

"Adding relevant filtering options...would remove a cognitive degree of separation that forces users to think more about getting what they want than necessary."

ALLOW  PLAYERS  TO  MANAGE  WEAPONS  EN-MASSE

​Synthesis  Improvements

Synthesizing old weapons to make newer, more powerful ones makes for a strong compulsion loop, but with all the complex factors involved in this system, the UX Design needs can't be shoehorned into existing screens.

Other improvements could go a long way to improving synthesis usability.  You don't get prompted to equip a new weapon once its been synthesized, it gets tossed back into the huge list for you to sift through and relocate (perhaps it builds character?)   Adding this prompt would decrease friction.   Better still would be giving players the ability to search for an "ingredient" weapon for synthesis based on the perks they want to add to an existing, highly desired weapon.  For example, if the player wants to increase health regeneration when equipping a S-Rank Energon Hammer, the game should let the player search for potential ingredient weapons that have that property,  instead of forcing them to sift through tons of trash loot and trying to toggle subscreens and interpret abbreviations.   A little more "top-down" thought centered on what end-users really want to do (or need to avoid) versus "bottoms-up" iteration on existing functionality would improve the UX quite a bit.

Auto-Equip

CONCLUSION

​All of these proposed changes would not sacrifice the depth or the “good friction” of the customization systems lying underneath the bad UX design.  Many of these fixes would reduce the bad friction and complexity that haunts common or frequent tasks, broadening appeal to users that feel obstructed from enjoying the faster-paced aspects of the game because of clunky menu organization and arbitrary or poor design choices.   Hopefully with a bigger budget and more time (and some more thought put into end-user experience), Platinum can address these flaws in potential follow-up games.

Farewell, old friend. I hope I see you again... with a better UX Design.

IMPROVE  PACING  OF  ONBOARDING  &  TUTORIALS  FOR  THE  ARK In between missions, players return to an in-game base called “The Ark.”  It’s here where players can fuse or “synthesize” weapons to create more powerful ones, develop “T.E.C.H” upgrades, and configure gear for the five Autobot heroes.  While the first level does a decent enough job of teaching the moment-to-moment gameplay systems and rules, once you get to the Ark, the game dumps several major systems on you at once, and all the handholding goes out the window.  A better option would be to temporarily disable some of the systems, then “breadcrumb” or introduce them one-by-one as missions progress with some brief, targeted feedback on how it works or why it’s useful.  This reduces the number of new things players need get used to at a time, reducing the potential for overwhelming stress and confusion.

Optimus Prime...you'll always be my hero, but your main menu has too many systems introduced all at once. (PRESS TO ZOOM)

T.E.C.H.  SYSTEM  UX  DESIGN  IMPROVEMENTS This is the T.E.C.H. Chip crafting minigame. (PRESS TO ZOOM). "Changing the mapping of buttons and functions ... with no visual feedback or prior warning feels like the game is pulling the rug out from under the user."

The "T.E.C.H.” system allows players to invest money into a little timed button input mini-game to develop computer chips to install in the various Autobot heroes.   The different “zones” aren’t fully explained the first time you develop a chip, and I put in almost 20 hours into the game before it dawned on me that the look of the T.E.C.H. icons indicates the amount of money you gambled on the chip. This wouldn’t be an issue if not for the fact that the timing-based nature of the mini-game permits you to fail, resulting in low-quality chips with defects.  When equipping and selling chips, there’s no immediately obvious visual feedback on the quality of the chip, even though this information is now more relevant than the amount of money you initially gambled on it.  Also, once you pick a tier to invest money in, if you decide to change your mind, you can’t back out of the mini-game (by pressing Circle on the PS4 controller which is the standard mapping for cancel).  Changing the mapping of buttons and functions like that with no visual feedback or prior warning feels like the game is pulling the rug out from under the user, so the minigame should let you back out of it (as it does with every other screen in virtually every other game)

Use Consistent Color Coding Across Weapons and T.E.C.H.

Aspects of the T.E.C.H. minigame can be confusing and aren't applied consistently (PRESS TO ZOOM) One of the things I do like about the T.E.C.H. system is that it uses color-coding to categorize some of the perks (Red chips, for example, are attack-oriented).  It’s not perfect, however.  When creating the chips, the game doesn’t explain that “red equals attack.”  In fact, during the mini-game, it’s possible that users may equate colors as a reflection of chip quality, which would be a false association.  Also, the game uses both Green and Yellow under the “Support” category (for things like getting bonus experience or money).  They don’t explain what yellow means versus green, but even these lapses aren’t the main issue.  The issue is that the weapons that you find during gameplay also have most of the same benefits.  Because both systems confer almost identical bonuses, the color-coding scheme could be applied equally, but the game only uses color coding for the T.E.C.H. chips.

Without color, abbreviations can be hard to interpret and require digging into sub-screens. (PRESS TO ZOOM) Instead, they expect you to dig through sub-menus to uncover what the abbreviated bonuses on weapons mean.  A more unifying use of color-coding across screens (such as a little tab, line, or splash) and providing feedback to guide color associations would improve usability.

PROMOTE  CONSISTENT  BUTTON  PROMPTS

Why is the same function moved elsewhere only for the "Analyze" screen? (PRESS TO ZOOM)

This is more of global issue then something that is confined any one part of the UX, but many button prompts exhibit consistency issues in presence, position, and terminology.  Players switch Autobots in the Ark by pressing the lower shoulder buttons on Playstation 4 controller (“L2” and “R2”).  This visual affordance migrates from screen-to-screen, nor is it available in some of the sub-screens, even though it might make sense or aid navigation.  Also, when examining a weapon’s characteristics with the Triangle button, on one screen, it describes this function as “Details” and the prompt is in a good position relative to the weapons panel.  However, on most screens, the same function is described as “Stats” and is displayed elsewhere.  Sometimes it’s really difficult to promote rigor and consistency throughout a UX Design (especially under tight, high pressure development deadlines), but minor deviations like this increase users’ cognitive load and add to perceptions of the UX being rushed and unpolished.

STREAMLINE  RARITY  OUT  OF  THE  UX  DESIGN

During missions, the game provides basic feedback on a found weapon’s Rarity (Common, Uncommon, and Rare).  Once you return to the Ark to identify your weapons, the whole notion of Rarity becomes meaningless as the game assigns every weapon a Rank (D, C, B, A, S, SS).  Often, you can get a Rare weapon, only to uncover that it’s a low-rank (ie - low power) weapon.  This creates dissonance between the expectations (“I got a Rare...I bet it’ll be good!”) and the outcome, (“WTF - why do I need another D weapon?”)  There’s already a direct correlation between high Rank items being much rarer than low-rank ones, but with only three tiers of rarity with little to no functional significance, the whole concept of rarity could be streamlined out of the design with negligible negative impact to the user.

Rarity has no functional significance compared to Rank and is not necessary. (PRESS TO ZOOM)

REVAMP  THE  POST-MISSION  REWARD  SEQUENCE

Get used to this screen, you'll see it. A LOT. The "Analyze" Summary screen has a number of issues. (PRESS TO ZOOM)

Upon returning to the Ark, players are inundated with a flood-like sequence of all the weapons they’ve found.  While there’s kind of a fun, anticipatory “unwrapping the presents” quality to this sequence, after the first few times, you realize that most of it is C-D Rank trash loot and just mash the button to get through it.   Fortunately a "Skip" option will take you to an "Analyze" summary which provides a better at-a-glance view, but even this screen has problems.  You can sort by Level,  Rank, and Type, but only Level and Value is in the summary list.   In fact, there's a whole column that could be used for Rank, but instead it's used for a money icon.    These icons and the multiple "Lvl" text strings  are redundant; they would be better used as table headers, clearing out space to display Ranks to match the available sorting fucnction.   Better yet, this screen could  allow players to immediately sell weapons  to nip inventory clutter problems in the bud.    Losing the overly long presentation, taking users right to the summary, and making these improvements would go a long way to cut down on bad friction. Are there any TF:D  fans out there who feel differently?  Is this too nitpicky, and should hardcore players just suck it up?  What did I miss, or what do you think?   Contribute to the discussion by leaving a comment below, and stay tuned for Part Two, where I'll present more UX Design improvements for TRANSFORMERS: DEVASTATION.