Why UX is King. User Experience Matters.

If you are an engineer or developer consider this;

It's always interesting when the battle between function and UI/UX as a priority takes place. On the one hand you have the point of view that "if nothing functions, who cares how good it looks" and on the other you have "sure it functions, but who cares if you can't use the thing and it looks bad".

So how do you choose what is the priority?

Let's consider 10Up

10Up is one of those games where an individual puzzle itself can be entertaining. Depending on its difficulty determines how much mild entertainment one would have in the exercise. So the real game is built upon repetition and solving as many as you can against the clock.

So this has always had several design challenges especially considering both UI and UX. In 10Up 1.0 it was imperative that I had function down and whilst considering some UI, no care was taken into UX. I thought I had this middle ground between getting function and some form of UI/UX. 

Engineers typically prioritize function

Here's where it is a problem for most engineers: It was a math problem, and you have the tools to solve it.

This is where functions matters above all because without function who cares what it looks like. The software is a tool, similarly like a hammer as a tool, you wouldn't care if a hammer looks good or ugly, can it pound these nails? - No one wants an expensive pretty hammer that can't even destroy a paper cup.

Well, here's the thing, this comparison is actually not complete enough to be comparable. The equivalent of having poor UX on a hammer (although not entirely feasible) is knowing you have a hammer but not knowing where the handle is. Or when you grabbed the handle, the head would shrink for some reason and you had to press a secret "smash things" button to make the head expand to the functional mallet you were asking for.

So the current issue with 10Up is the user flow for a human to solve a puzzle was not intuitive. It was hard for me to understand this as I could work it out, all the tools were there AND I added some colours to indicate where to be looking. I just needed to explain it once and the person could play easiliy. So I focused alot of the advertising and marketing on including some game play working through the puzzles to educate.

But here's the punchline:

A User Interface is like a bad joke. If you have to explain it, it's not very good.

Great.

So now we know that User Interface is important because people can't use the tool. We understand that the purpose of a tool, aside from is function, IS to be used.

But here's where we say, "but, I have a deadline of yesterday and I don't even know if the thing works or not! I can't be wasting time on user interfaces!"

How do I get more time to focus on UI?

Well thankfully you read this article. Here's how you "make time" for considering your User Interface. The more you practice it, the better you get. It takes just as much time to make a poor user interface as a good one. Remember -it doesn't have to be amazing and completely polished (much like the functions) but if you consistently consider UI even when building new functions, it becomes second nature, like driving a manual and you won't be discussing this again. 

It's about balance.

I am not suggesting you spend 20 hours on UI/UX and 5 hours on function and after one full day you have something that doesn't function. I'm saying as you build your functions instead of creating that default object, you set a few variables and place some frames around it. You include what you need to and you are fast enough that there is no detriment.

Now if I'm not done convincing you, here's the final kicker. 

At the end of the day the tool you are building should be designed in a way that it could scale if necessary, or bug fixes can be resolved. Half the problems from the client will be caused by UI/UX problems.

By contract a customer or client may say "Function A is a necessary requirement" and you can focus on it being perfect. But at the end of the day the first thing the client wants to see is the interface. And when you've got this scrounged up last minute interface, the work behind already seems like it is rushed as well.

For future you - you will be building functions and bandaid fixes purely because of your poor UI!

So work on your UI/UX skills from the beginning!!

Now for some bonus content have a look below for some exploration of 10Up user interface within the game. A point and drag system to a central point as this will push users to understand that they are combining items one by one. 

Below is some early stages of the character designs I mentioned in my previous blog.

As always,  good luck on your side hustle!

10Up App Development - How to work through design hurdles

Hopefully you all caught a glimpse of my previous post sharing that early stage graphic design has begun (and why and what tool). Well if you look carefully at the image there there is an image of one of the number designs.

The intention was to go with circles surrounding the number and would involve creating each digit possible and number. But there is a fundamental issue with this for when a number is not 0-9. i.e. single digits. For a game like 10Up, in theory the maximum number sequence a player could do is 9 x 9 x 9 x 9 which equates to: 6561. It would be unwise to endeavour to create unique individual digit graphics for 6561 numbers AND this doubles in effort each time I decide to add an animation etc.

This is a fundamental problem where in version 1.0 I got around by simply creating squares and adding a text field to the image. Now this is a fine approach, functional even, but one of my goals for 2.0 is a big focus on user interface and user experience.

I am working with 2 idea thought processes right now that I will work through and update here with which path I decide, but essentially I have the original original 10Up theme (Windows 8 Release) which involves unique colourful characters for each digit. and for double digits and above a special character not unique.

The other is a shape or single character holding a rectangle shaped object for which the text field would reside. (less visually appealing)

Currently both need to be explored, and neither may be the answer. But my next step will be to go back to the fundamental goals of the 2.0 update and reverse engineer from there. That's always the technique I go with when rehashing ideas and creating something new.

1. Identify some variables
2. Get some inspiration from other places
3. Go back to the fundamental goals of the project
4. Open each thought process and explore it
5. Run through each process possibility in head

I call it VIGOR - variables, inspiration, goals, open, run. In the next post I'll share the result of my quest and hopefully have some new direction with the overall design.

So here's a question; what do YOU do to get your creative juices flowing and how do you deal with slight bumps in design?

As always, good luck with your side hustle!