CS 147, Friday 10:00 a.m
TA: Heidy Maldonado
Ruhi Vasanwala
Gloria Miller
Applying Interaction Design Principles
Assignment #3
The following documentation is based on data gathered by Miller-Vasanwala Consulting
after conducting a UI critique of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC). The user testing
(evaluation) was conducted over a period of two days (October 15 – 16, 2002) for an
estimated total of 5 hours of game time review/analysis. Investigators working in pairs
conducted the evaluation. Although Alpha Centauri is touted to be a dream for expert
game players (see game critic’s review at http://pc.ign.com/articles/159/159941p1.html), novice
players experience confusion that leads to frustration and dampens motivation to learn
how to play. Expert players can perhaps overlook the flaws so as to experience the world
of Alpha Centauri, but there are some design features that could be improved thus
improving the gaming experience. This report is in three parts, a discussion of the UI
features that violate established design principles, tradeoffs between the features and the
violations, and a ranking of the design features. We tested game play on a PC platform
using the demo provided by SMAC.
Features Correlated to Design Principle Violations
The top five design principles that are being violated are: visible affordances, consistency
of the interface, adequate feedback, true affordances, and clearly displaying exits.
Game play consists of moving pieces to explore an alien landscape. The mouse/arrow
keys are used to navigate the menus, move the game pieces, and change perspective. The
first violation refers to hidden game features. Besides the flashing object indicating a
moveable piece, little else is apparent. Other features/plays are buried under menus that
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CS 147, Friday 10:00 a.m
TA: Heidy Maldonado
Ruhi Vasanwala
Gloria Miller
are available only when pointing to different objects. Even after viewing the orienting
tour to help the investigator gain familiarity with the game, the cognitive load was so
steep it was difficult to remember where the features were located and how they were
invoked. The “Help” was also buried two levels deep in the main Menu.
Consistency in the in the presentation of material is the second violation. This principle
is critical for all users who depend on being able to build upon knowledge of play
interactions. One example of this violation was the use of the mouse and arrow keys. At
times when you pressed the arrow keys the “Scout” (moveable object) on the screen
would move, not necessarily in the same direction as the arrow pointer. Then other times
when the arrow keys were pressed intending to move the Scout, a different object
(formers, ship) would move instead. If you pressed the arrow key in the opposite
direction, believing that may “undo” the move, the object would move once again. The
biggest frustration we experienced and noticed that other investigators experienced as
well, was when pressing the arrow key shifted the perspective and the entire terrain
would move off the screen.
The next violation is the lack of adequate feedback. As first time users of the game, our
investigators never had a clear idea of what happened, why it happened, or even how an
event happened. Many times during game play a message would appear saying that some
sort of technology or cure had been discovered …”I did, how?” was the response. Or one
time the investigator was in “war”, and did not even know it until the observer pointed it
out. On separate occasions the investigator would press a button to build a city or
increase population and then nothing would happened. It was not until an observer told
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CS 147, Friday 10:00 a.m
TA: Heidy Maldonado
Ruhi Vasanwala
Gloria Miller
the investigator that not all actions happen immediately, it might not happen for the next
few “turns”. How would a novice know this information without feedback?
A helpful feature was the right click mouse button. This provided a pop-up menu when
the pointer was over an object. However, the menu choices were all presented uniformly
(no graying out of the unavailable options). This is the fourth violation, false affordances.
Some of the menu choices do nothing/unavailable. There is no indication that some are
inactive for the object.
Lastly, this game lacked clearly marked exists. At one point the investigator was so
frustrated she wanted to quit the application, but couldn’t find the exit. After many
attempts to click on various objects/menus, the investigator gave up and used Ctrl + Alt +
Del! If nothing else, the game should make it easy for the player to quit/quit with a save
game option and not allow the frustration level to climb to the point of performing a
reset.
Tradeoffs
Clearly, the game genre dictates the level of complexity. In this case, the requirement to
create an immersive world leads to game play with several dimensions of logic.
Consequently a lot of information must be displayed and the language matches the “talk”
of science fiction novels. This leads to the display of extraneous information and
language that is only familiar to a narrow audience and is difficult to translate for a new
user.
The look and feel of the world projects outer space exploration and reflects what is
commonly termed “futuristic”. Color choices then are limited to help support this
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CS 147, Friday 10:00 a.m
TA: Heidy Maldonado
Ruhi Vasanwala
Gloria Miller
perspective. However in selecting this color palette, black background with blue type, is
bad use of color and makes it very difficult to read and can lead to eye fatigue.
A third tradeoff is inadequate help. Understandably, visible Help options would clutter
the screen and detract from the look and feel of the game. However, this is something that
could have been highlighted in Tour or even added as a reaction to follow “illogical”
operations trying to be performed by the player.
Rankings
1. Inconsistent interface: the triple duty that is performed by the mouse, navigation of
menus, movement of pieces, and shifting perspective is just too much and detracts
severely from game play. Navigation and piece movement is sufficient; the landscape
should always be center screen.
2. Inadequate feedback: when actions are performed, a message should be displayed
especially when the action will take place in the future and disconnected from direct
action by the player. The messages should be able to be turned off by the player.
3. Hidden affordances: the player should have the option to see all the moves available
with the option to shut them off when gaming is more familiar.
4. Inadequate help: help should be available on a variety of levels. What does winning
the game look like should be clear to the player.
5. False affordances: unavailable options should be grayed out or otherwise not present.
6. Poorly marked exists: quit and save should be clearly visible.
7. Extraneous information: although this is a violation it is minor compared to those
above. Minimize information that does support game play. What’s the Bioscan for?
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CS 147, Friday 10:00 a.m
TA: Heidy Maldonado
Ruhi Vasanwala
Gloria Miller
8. Bad use of color: investigate other color schemes that don’t detract from the look and
feel to improve readability
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