Cheese or Font:
- Core Elements: The table that shows the names to identify as well as the player’s answers, the box where the player enters their answer, the player’s score
- Supportive Elements: Both headings on the table (Over the name, saying “Cheese or font?” & over the column that holds the player’s answers, telling them to “Enter C or F”)
- Extraneous Elements: The “clever” messages that appear when you misidentify the name
Sketches:
Proximity Exploration:
- What should be grouped?
The box where the player enters the answers should be more grouped with the table where the answers appear. As it stands, the input box is quite far away from the table where answers appear after entering asnwers, which causes the player to split their attention between the cute flavor text or the satisfaction of a correct answer and the actual spot where their typing cursor is. - What is different, and thus should be separated from gameplay?
The score, although central to my satisfaction playing the game, should be separated more from the table where the bulk of the gameplay and results is shown.
My Game:
My beautiful game of choice this week is Cytus 2, a rhythm game with a novel UI that has the user scan the screen up and down with the horizontal line. One extremely clever graphic design principle that Cytus leverages is the slightly different shades of colors for the same type of input depending on if you hit them when the line is moving up or down. There are also completely different colors for different types of inputs (taps, holds, swipes, etc.). Another clever principle they take into consideration is size: elements that are central to the gameplay, such as the horizontal line and the notes, are large and striking, taking up the majority of the screen. Proximity also comes into play — or rather, it’s used in order to not impact gameplay. The design includes inportant information like the player’s current score and their progress through the song, but it is kept at the very top of the screen (in the case of song progress) or the very top of the screen and in the corner (score). This is important information, which is why they’re shown at all, but since these elements are not central to gameplay, they are moved to be further from the “action.”
