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How video games inspire great UX (2019)

66 points by andsoitis ago | 9 comments

joinHNtheysaid |next [-]

I found games ux really transformative , where they almost become work UIs. Everyone pays to learn photoshop, nobody wants to pay to learn to use an UI for a game. Not even in tutorial ttime.

Total annhilation was such a milestone to RTS games UI. Programming unit routes and behaviour via factories was peak intuitiv design. It was such a boost to the experience of strategy compared to the clicks per minute juggling competition that was starcraft.

blymphony |next |previous [-]

Refreshing take on exploring the "delight" aspect of UX with lots of nuance as well. I read too many comments on here that seem a little a too spartan in their perspective on good UX, but it feels silly to be spartan on a topic that is so, so far from being solved.

krm01 |next |previous [-]

Great article. I’ve been in the UI/UX space for years. Prior to that I studied gamedesign at uni and graduated engineer in art and tech. Principles of gamedesign always allowed me to solve ux problems in sometimes unusually delightful ways. One tiiiny example was a search function for a piece of software that was incredibly slow. The engineers couldnt get it to go any faster. I helped solve it with an old gamedesign technique, which is to add story to the loading screen. Just adding a fun animation and text on what’s happening helped decrease dropoff and increase delight. Now transitioned to more design and engineering allows me to own the full ux even more. [1]

[1] https://designshippers.com

iamagurgle |next |previous [-]

I didn't read the entire article but the headline reminds me of a programme I use: Treesheets. It's a spreadsheet/note taking app made by a person in the games industry, and I find it really fun to use.

link: https://strlen.com/treesheets/

dang |root |parent |next [-]

A few past discussions:

TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer (Hierarchical Spreadsheet) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654219 - April 2026 (1 comment)

TreeSheets: Open Source Free Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34184993 - Dec 2022 (55 comments)

Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27614912 - June 2021 (90 comments)

TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15057392 - Aug 2017 (58 comments)

TreeSheets: Free-Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11247372 - March 2016 (28 comments)

Forgeties79 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I swear I’m having déjà vu. Didn’t this exact post go up on HN like 2 days ago and somebody mentioned tree links as one of the top comments?

this is not me being all “OH MY GOD REPOST” I’m just scratching my head because I swear I saw this exact thread the other day ha

frankmatranga |root |parent [-]

I believe HN revives posts and rewrites the timestamps of comments sometimes to give them another chance of visibility

leephillips |root |parent |next |previous [-]

That looks like an interesting program. I can hardly believe I’d never heard of it before—and it’s in the Debian repository, too.

rchase |root |parent |previous [-]

wow. thank-you. i'd never heard of it, and it is a thing of beauty.

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