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On February 21 2013 07:23 Plansix wrote:
It must totally suck for a have to release something you know is going to be picked apart by customers. I hate doing work that I know is going to be shredded by my clients, even if it was the best job we could do with the time we had. But one thing I have learned is everyone thinks they could have done it better after the results come in.
It's also a simple fact of life that no creative work is ever really finished. Everybody who has ever built something would, if they took the time to go back over it again, find an almost uncountable number of flaws that they wished they could fix. And when you give your work to the public you're just outsourcing that process to thousands of people who don't even understand the process that got the work to the place it did when you released it.
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On February 21 2013 06:24 wo1fwood wrote:actually, I'm a contemporary classical composer. 
Well, I find your critic of the new UI to be overly critical, nit picky and presumptuous. You assume a lot with little expertise on the subject and point to small details that have little baring on the over all usability of the system, while taking little time to discuss the improvements in the UI.
More importantly, I am a paralegal who drafts legal documents, contracts and does legal research. How seriously would you take my criticism of your latest musical work if I titled it “Wo1fwood’s Sonata, Not Written for Concert Halls”?
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On February 21 2013 07:29 mishimaBeef wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:26 TeslasPigeon wrote:On February 21 2013 07:23 mishimaBeef wrote:On February 21 2013 06:04 StarBrift wrote:
I find it suprisingly hillarious that the random icon is a die that if used in real life would not actually give the user a random result because it's not symmetrical. Please explain. I was under the impression that a die gives you a random result. A die with uneven surfaces will not have 1/6 probability for each side, there will be a tendency to favor other sides more than others and depending on the severity of the deformity on the die it may not even land on certain sides. Oh does the random icon die have uneven surfaces? Can someone post a pic?
I think I saw one, let me just find a link.
Oh wait, it's in. the. fucking. op.
Sorry, something about not being able to see the forest because of all the trees.
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The reason the keyboard is not used for navigation is because of the ability to type into chat windows. Not having the input box "hot" to type in and then typing would result in moving around the UI. Non hardcore users would be easily confused.
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Very impressive, I've thought about a few of this things before but never as good as the stuff shown in the OP. Its just remarkable, nice work OP.
Blizzard truly needs to work on this; I thought it was kind of OK before and not that big of a deal, but after having a closer look at the current state of things I think its very sad for such a company like Blizzard to present a product with so many flaws.
Stuff like this reminds me of an epic facepalm moment I had when watching last Blizzcon, they were happily showing the "new cool and exciting HOTS units and its abilities" and the way they did it was such a fail, the videos were horrendous pieces of work, anybody could've done a better job; seriously, it looked like they made those videos the night before the event not to mention the retarded idea of the unreal scenarios where the units were engaging battles...I couldn't believe it, it was utterly dumb, such a waste of time and money.
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On February 21 2013 07:13 carlfish wrote:
There's this thing in software development that we call "bikeshedding".
It's based on an insight from a 1960s book on management, in which the author said that if you go to your board of directors with plans for a nuclear power plant, they're going to say “Well, you're the expert” and approve them. If you go to them with plans for a bikeshed, they're going to spend all day arguing about what colour you should paint it. Because unlike nuclear power plants, everyone thinks they understand bikesheds and want to get their two cents in.
I'm a programmer. I work with incredibly talented, professional graphical and UX designers on a daily basis. This is why they they hate us.
Because we look over the design they poured weeks into and start making trivial suggestions. They have to go back over that entire week and justify every decision they made, and explain to us that all the things we're suggesting are things they tried and threw out. Maybe they tried dozens of different menu configurations and interaction models, subjected them to usability testing and went with the one that scored best on all the axes they were interested in? Maybe the distorted dice logo was more recogniseable when scaled down to the smallest size than the perfectly symmetrical one? Maybe one of the designs was rushed because hey, they were only given a limited amount of time to design a dozen screens. Too bad, we're not going to be happy until they've justified all those decisions all over again.
Then we take their designs and subject them to the constraints of software development. The pixel perfection that they worked on is sacrificed because we have to get a product out by a deadline. Some of their screens need to be redesigned because the back-end isn't quite flexible enough to serve what they need. Work on a whole raft of look and feel bugs is postponed because there are dozens of more important things that need to be developed at the time.
And then we release the software, and the designers cringe waiting for the customers to start the same process all over.
As a UX designer for over 15 years, I love you.
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On February 21 2013 07:29 mishimaBeef wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 21 2013 07:26 TeslasPigeon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:23 mishimaBeef wrote:On February 21 2013 06:04 StarBrift wrote:
I find it suprisingly hillarious that the random icon is a die that if used in real life would not actually give the user a random result because it's not symmetrical. Please explain. I was under the impression that a die gives you a random result. A die with uneven surfaces will not have 1/6 probability for each side, there will be a tendency to favor other sides more than others and depending on the severity of the deformity on the die it may not even land on certain sides. Oh does the random icon die have uneven surfaces? Can someone post a pic?
Most casino dies adhere to high standards, for Blizzard's die it doesn't have "even" surfaces.
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Skimming through and seeing you bitch about the size of the dice icon...I knew I didn't need to bother reading the whole pretentious piece. Good god.
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On February 21 2013 07:29 mishimaBeef wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:26 TeslasPigeon wrote:On February 21 2013 07:23 mishimaBeef wrote:On February 21 2013 06:04 StarBrift wrote:
I find it suprisingly hillarious that the random icon is a die that if used in real life would not actually give the user a random result because it's not symmetrical. Please explain. I was under the impression that a die gives you a random result. A die with uneven surfaces will not have 1/6 probability for each side, there will be a tendency to favor other sides more than others and depending on the severity of the deformity on the die it may not even land on certain sides. Oh does the random icon die have uneven surfaces? Can someone post a pic?
The pic is in the OP. Also, when did we care that art in a UI was not perfect in every way? I mean, its an icon and when did we start caring about those on this level.
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LOL at that terribad Random icon. What the fuck were they thinking?
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On February 21 2013 07:40 TeslasPigeon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:29 mishimaBeef wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 21 2013 07:26 TeslasPigeon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:23 mishimaBeef wrote:On February 21 2013 06:04 StarBrift wrote:
I find it suprisingly hillarious that the random icon is a die that if used in real life would not actually give the user a random result because it's not symmetrical. Please explain. I was under the impression that a die gives you a random result. A die with uneven surfaces will not have 1/6 probability for each side, there will be a tendency to favor other sides more than others and depending on the severity of the deformity on the die it may not even land on certain sides. Oh does the random icon die have uneven surfaces? Can someone post a pic? Most casino dies adhere to high standards, for Blizzard's die it doesn't have "even" surfaces.
By distorting the image slightly to increase the size of the visible facets, the icon is more recognisable as a die when scaled down.
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On February 21 2013 07:31 carlfish wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:23 Plansix wrote:
It must totally suck for a have to release something you know is going to be picked apart by customers. I hate doing work that I know is going to be shredded by my clients, even if it was the best job we could do with the time we had. But one thing I have learned is everyone thinks they could have done it better after the results come in. It's also a simple fact of life that no creative work is ever really finished. Everybody who has ever built something would, if they took the time to go back over it again, find an almost uncountable number of flaws that they wished they could fix. And when you give your work to the public you're just outsourcing that process to thousands of people who don't even understand the process that got the work to the place it did when you released it.
Its so true. I always want to polish my motions and pleadings before we submit them to the court, but we due dates and we can't blow them off. Pleadings arn't art, but I treat them like it(because I like to win). However, even in law, people don't nitpick to this level unless your at the S.C. and even they don't care about uneven lines.
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While it looks like you put a lot of time and effort into this, it's just a frontend for the game itself. It's the aesthetic choice of the designer, and as such, it can't really be "wrong" for PC. This is how Blizzard wants it to look/act, this is how it will look and act.
As far as the bugs and glitches are concerned, just give it some QA time.
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I don't get the thing about the icons. I think they look a lot better than before (although for those of us who plays random, I can confirm that it is NOT asymmetrical. I call it terrandom now)
Completely agree with the rest, unfortunately bnet 2.0 will require so much work I don't think they will ever be able to make it good..they can only tweak it a little bit, like they have in hots.
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On February 21 2013 07:23 Plansix wrote:
It must totally suck for a have to release something you know is going to be picked apart by customers. I hate doing work that I know is going to be shredded by my clients, even if it was the best job we could do with the time we had. But one thing I have learned is everyone thinks they could have done it better after the results come in.
As a designer, it's par for the course. You learn to have a thick skin. It's why design school spends so much time on critique, because that becomes half the job. It's also why there's an art to arguing for design ideas, since most people view them as subjective, when most of the time they're anything but.
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Is it just me or are the first 1500 words just saying "add hotkeys to every function"?
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On February 21 2013 06:43 MVega wrote:
A lot of those are personal preference and not bugs or issues. Others that legitimately are bugs (such as the hotkeys) need to be posted in the bug report forums if they're to have any hope of getting fixed eventually.
I'll address what some people are classifying as 'preferrential' on my part:
Inconsistencies are not bugs for sure, but they still are inconsistencies within the client. I will admit that there is a bit of preference in what I say (how can I not), but that said however, there is a distinct difference between the inconsistencies that a designer sees, and what a general end-user will think is just fine or overly nitpicky (or labeled preferential).
An example of this is the highlight inconsistency in the replays section. As someone who designs things, this discrepancy does not make sense because there is no underlying reason that one type of selection_highlight is different than another (blizzard does have a 2 tiered system were there is a hover and selected difference, which is important). Ask yourself the question, "why are replays highlighted differently? Whats the purpose?" By making this design choice Blizzard is very subtly saying "hey, this is important (or less important)!" and has a distinctly different function, when clearly, it does not.
Now to the average end-user this difference is so subtle that they will likely classify it as 'preferential', and there is some truth to that idea, in that it is a very subtle change that doesn't really impact the client operation. Nevertheless, you cannot deny that the above differences still have no functional reason to exist and is therefore inconsistent from a design perspective.
So, are there some preferences here in the inconsistencies I mentioned? Out of the 24 total, I would say that about 1-3 of them are more grey and perhaps preferential, but every other item (aside from 2 that I would need more info on) is rooted in some design choice that has some kind of issue or problem behind it.
This is also not a subtly derogatory remark either on my part, I hope to impart that designers see things differently, the way that anyone with advanced knowledge on a subject sees things differently than the general populous. Think of how Beethoven would hear music versus one of your siblings or parents? Err... Maybe I should have used the word perceive... 
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when watching a replay or observing a game, clicking on the image placeholder in the production tab will automatically center the camera on that area specifically.
Firstly this doesn't always work fluidly; lets say you are researching +1 weapons at a Forge, and your screen shows the Forge in the top right corner, but barely visible. When you click on the upgrade, it will just highlight the Forge, but not center it on the screen. This is kind of annoying because as you've stated if the building/item on the production tab is clicked when it's "owner" building is off screen, yet it will center it.
Secondly; this is incredibly useful and I'm glad they put it in (despite the above inconsistency) as it makes displaying something that is being produced a lot easier when casting/observing 
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On February 21 2013 07:42 carlfish wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 21 2013 07:40 TeslasPigeon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:29 mishimaBeef wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On February 21 2013 07:26 TeslasPigeon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2013 07:23 mishimaBeef wrote:On February 21 2013 06:04 StarBrift wrote:
I find it suprisingly hillarious that the random icon is a die that if used in real life would not actually give the user a random result because it's not symmetrical. Please explain. I was under the impression that a die gives you a random result. A die with uneven surfaces will not have 1/6 probability for each side, there will be a tendency to favor other sides more than others and depending on the severity of the deformity on the die it may not even land on certain sides. Oh does the random icon die have uneven surfaces? Can someone post a pic? Most casino dies adhere to high standards, for Blizzard's die it doesn't have "even" surfaces. By distorting the image slightly to increase the size of the visible facets, the icon is more recognisable as a die when scaled down.
Unless you have a picture of an undistorted Blizzard die, you have nothing to compare to and you're just making conjecture.
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On February 21 2013 07:20 mrRoflpwn wrote:Thats what I was thinking- No one could even notice half the things he mentioned unless they critisized things this heavily on a regular basis. The new UI is nice, clean and easy for me to use. I see no problem with it. You are being to critical in my opinion.
so your argument is they should invest millions of dollars in a game and then leave bad design elements in because (in 1 persons opinion) its not worth the effort to fix?
this isnt the first time blizzard has failed at simple shape drawing in the SC2 UI, this guy is basically doing their QA departments job for them.
On February 21 2013 07:41 KrazyTrumpet wrote:
Skimming through and seeing you bitch about the size of the dice icon...I knew I didn't need to bother reading the whole pretentious piece. Good god.
you think the design team didnt have a meeting to decide on icon choice/colour/size?
hes being no more pretentious than any designer would be.
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EPT
