Welcome to the portfolio of Sean Ahern
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.
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.
Design Process
Design Process
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Personal
2013
After Effects – Was done as a fun, personal project to create a “music video” using The Glitch Mob’s “Animus Vox” with the cutscenes from Heart of the Swarm.
NovoNordisk
2008
After Effects, Design
Crestor
2008
After Effects, Green Screen Keying, Compositing, Design
NovoNordisk
2009
After Effects, UI Design, Matchmoving, Design, Green-Screen Keying
Crestor for CNN.com and FitNation
2008
After Effects, Concepting, Design
GlaxoSmithKline
2010
After Effects, Design, 3D, Compositing
NovoNordisk
2009
After Effects, UI Design, Matchmoving, Design, Green-Screen Keying
Liraglitude
2009
3d Modeling, Texturing, Lighting, Rendering, Compositing, Animation, Matchmoving
Starcraft 2 Editor
2013
Gears of War Editor
2008
UDK, Maya, Photoshop, 3D Studio Max
2010
Contact me, I would love to hear from you!