1217Design.com

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Philosophy

Overall Philosophy:

The overall goal of the interfaces that I created was to increase the visibility of the most important information while removing any extraneous and unnecessary visual clutter that was ultimately preventing the viewer/observer from having the most optimal experience possible. After thoroughly studying the existing system and truly looking at the user experience of viewing eSports, I found that the bottom 1/3 of the screen was more or less “wasted space” that, for the most part, is usually covered up by tournaments and streamers. By allowing the bottom 1/3 of the screen to only display information when there’s information to be displayed (information-on-demand), we allow for a much more unobstructed viewing experience. I also felt that by allowing a number of elements to be toggled on and off, the viewer/observer can tailor the viewing experience to best-suit their own needs. Additionally I wanted to help smaller grass-roots tournaments that might not be able to afford external overlay software the ability to display information such as the win-loss count in a best-of series, team logos/player images, player bios and information, or even the logo of their tournament built completely into the interface.

Streamlined Interface:

While I was excited to give the community a variety of different ways of displaying the information and experiencing Starcraft 2 eSports, I also understand that it may not be for everyone. It is because of this that I developed the Streamlined interface, which is the interface which most closely resembles the normal, default interface. The only changes that I made beyond removing the un-necessary interface elements, was to re-skin the existing interface and make text larger and easier to read. This was done primarily due to the way that compression handles the small text when viewing a stream at a lower bitrate, and my attempt at still relaying all of the important information to the viewer.

Split Interface:

Design Process

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For the HoTS launch event as well as the “grand reveal” of the power of our new custom interface system, I wanted to try a radically new approach for displaying what is happening in the game to the viewer/observer. With this in mind we decided to break up the interface to have each player essentially “own” a side of the screen. By allowing this split, I feel as though there’s an extremely clear delineation and separation between who is doing what, and also feel as though this is a very interesting way of presenting the information to the viewer.

Minimal Interface:

Design Process

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I created a third direction for the custom observer interface setup, which is the “Super Minimal” version of the interface. A number of changes from the traditional interface are present within this version, and I’d like to explain the decisions that were made with this interface so as to help others understand the direction that I ultimately went.

• No Minerals or Gas: After viewing countless tournaments and discussing the matter with others at Blizzard, we came to the conclusion that there really isn’t any actual need to have the minerals and gas constantly displayed. It may seem very jarring at first, however we found that very rarely do the vast majority of spectators are actually looking at the minerals and gas. Most of the time we only actually notice it when a caster points it out, beyond the few times trying to see if a player has the resources to re-max an army or will be able to adequately defend from any potential attacks. I made sure that if an observer/viewer felt it necessary, that the resources could still be displayed via the default resources leader panel. After careful observation of tournaments and streams, I feel as though Supply is the most important information here, which is why it is displayed prominently next to each player’s name.
• No Multiple Select: I feel as though the main time that this is important is when a caster or observer has multiple units selected and we can see that a number of the selected units are very low on health. With unit health bars displayed in game, I feel as though this negates needing to display this duplicate information.
• Upgrades not shown: With the availability of the new Upgrades Panel, I feel as though displaying this information all of the time is unnecessary and potentially redundant. By removing this information, we are also allowing for the UnitInfoPanel to occupy less screen real-estate and provide a more optimal viewing experience.
• Queued Units not shown: Beside being a bad way to play in general and reinforcing negative habits, I felt as though this provided no benefit to the viewer beyond knowing that a person has additional queued units which ultimately won’t be available for use for quite some time. This also helps to save the amount of space that is required for the UnitInfoPanel. I have however made sure to display both active queues if a production facility with a reactor is producing two units at the same time.
• Leader panels along the bottom-middle: After looking at a number of professional sports casts and analyzing their use of screen real-estate, I noticed that many of these organizations were utilizing the very bottom of the screen to display additional information. While it is still displayed on the screen, I feel that this is not only an interesting location for the information, but may prove to be a more optimal location, as it keeps the primary view of the battlefield un-obscured.
• Score “numbers” rather than “pips”: While the score pips present the number of wins in a new and cool way, in order to best utilize space while adhering to the “minimal” theme of this interface, I felt that numbers denoting wins would be the most appropriate for the scores.
• Removing the portrait and abilities command card: I have noticed that the vast majority of tournaments obscure both the portrait panel and unit command card with advertisements or player cameras. With this being the case, I have found that there was no need to display this information as it would most likely be covered up.

As was mentioned earlier, this was the first version of a very new way of experiencing Starcraft, and may be very different from what a person may be used to. After a number of times watching replays and live games with this interface enabled, it felt as though this was the correct direction to head with minimalism in mind. While I may eventually push this direction further by possibly eliminating more elements and further streamlining the experience, I feel as though this is a great first step towards an optimal viewing experience.

Heroes Of The Storm:

Design Process

With Heroes Of The Storm, I was given a chance to fully evaluate and see how the experience of observing a MoBA game could be improved upon. Since this was going to be the first time that anyone outside of Blizzard viewed Heroes, I felt as though I could omit a lot more of the information that would normally be present in an observer interface, because it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t been playing the game for months at that point (hotkey labels, buffs and debuffs, ability tooltips, mana bars, etc). My main goal with the Heroes Of The Storm interface was to make the game and the players the rockstars – I wanted to strip out as much of the un-necessary visuals that often-times supersedes the gameplay and give people a chance to really see the action. I also needed to make sure that we displayed all of the important information and distilled down all of the action happening throughout the map, making it as easy to understand as possible. One of the biggest issues for many people new to MoBA style games is needing to have an enormous amount of “tribal knowledge” before you have a basic understanding of what’s going on. I felt that it was extremely important to effectively display as much of this information in an easy to understand manner for both a MoBA Veteran and a person viewing it for the first time.

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Interfaces currently in use by:

GDC 2012 Presentation:

It Stinks and I Don’t Like It – Building a Better Engine Experience at Insomniac Games

 

Description

Video game development has progressed significantly over the years – from punch cards and user made tools to enterprise level applications. While the technology that we use on a daily basis has changed significantly, can we really say that the experience of creating games has improved as well?

Studios are constantly on the look-out for the next best tech, middleware, or ideas to help make their next title a reality (and success). With licensed tech and often-times even proprietary software, the User Experience is frequently viewed as a second class-citizen when efficiency and deadlines are in the fore-front. At Insomniac Games, we’ve decided to make the user experience of our tools a priority. By leveraging traditional engine programming with web application technology, Insomniac Games has created their new engine from the ground up with a focus on the user experience.

PDF Location:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1015459/It-Stinks-and-I-Don

Video Location: (GDC Vault Subscribers only)

http://www.gdcvault.com/search.php#&category=free&firstfocus=&keyword=ahern&conference_id=

 

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UX at Blizzard:

 

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Please check back after BlizzCon for full details about a number of additional systems that I helped to develop – many of which are forthcoming in future patches.

 

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UX at Insomniac:

Editor UI Design

Editor Style Guide

 
While at Insomniac, I was tasked with designing not only all of the interaction logic and flow for our internal web-based editor, but also prototyping and developing the majority of all user-facing systems and UI. What you see above is a small sample of what was done during my time at Insomniac. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to see more.

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Resupply Tanker

Literally the best 2v2 ladder map you’ll ever play

 

Unique Features:

A natural expansion located above a player’s main base – making it easy to secure and difficult to attack.

A high-yield mining base located in the center of the map – a prime location for establishing a forward mining base while dividing the map.

Multiple attack paths separated in the middle with high-ground terrain.

 

Software Used:

Starcraft 2 Editor

Year:

2013

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Destiny

Gears of War: PC Single Player Level

 

Software Used:

Gears of War Editor

Year:

2008

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Abandoned Spanish Mission

Environment Art and Modeling Exercise

 

Software Used:

UDK, Maya, Photoshop, 3D Studio Max

Year:

2010

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