The secret to a fantastic mobile user interface

Atomhawk Advance’s Leanne Bayley talked about the UI and UX design that goes into games and touched on the differences between desktop and mobile.
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX), two crucial components of game design, may either create or break how much fun and how much players get out of a game.

A decent UI and UX can drive monetisation, despite the fact that it can appear like something that can be neglected from a business perspective. As much as every other aspect of a game’s menus and interactivity, the rationale behind store design, special deals, and other aspects is impacted by UI design philosophy. Leanne Bayley of Atomhawk Advance focused her speech at Develop: Brighton 2023 on “Style, Trends, Immersion and Abstraction – Developing UI Art Direction” on the art of game UI design.

The main emphasis of the presentation is on features of user interface design that are more unique to gaming in general, and console and PC gaming in particular. However, a few points touch on broader UI design concepts as well as real-world mobile gaming examples and how they can guide gamers in the proper direction for an all-around better user experience.

Immersion versus Abstraction

Bayley begins by prescribing the two extremes of her suggested sliding scale. Although she acknowledges that it’s not a precise science, she suggests that the majority of UI design lies on either side of a scale that ranges from “immersion” to “abstraction”. A game like Alien: Isolation, on the other hand, goes to tremendous efforts to produce diegetic interfaces and menus, even going so far as to record its menu interfaces onto VHS for real graphical bugs. While Genshin Impact, which uses visual metaphors like spellbooks in its mobile version and star maps in its console version to express its menu and UI, falls on the abstraction end of the scale.

But what does UI do in terms of business? Well, for one thing, smart UI design can aid in monetisation in addition to improving the overall player experience. Whether it’s discrete storefronts or strategically placed advertisements to avoid interfering with gameplay, it can be argued that businesses like Bidstack that embed advertisements into the game world are, in a general sense, contributing to the immersive design that distinguishes titles like Alien: Isolation.
Notably, Hi-Rez Studios continued to use a variety of components such maps, characters, skins, and store design even after shelving their eagerly anticipated mobile spin-off, Rogue Company: Elite. It’s apparent that less invasive shops can be claimed to offer a benefit for gamers, developers, and publishers alike by improving the mood of potential in-app purchases with an overall smoother user experience, even though it may not be the most savory feature of UI design.

As Bayley discusses the art of UI, she offers several important recommendations for programmers and UI designers.
First, be aware of what your rivals are doing and avoid innovating only for the sake of change. Two, be aware of readability and the platform you’re creating for. Since mobile devices have much smaller screens than other devices, we can notice that titles with mobile versions frequently have larger icons and more text for easier reading. Three: Consider how your UI will improve your user experience. For example, a simple menu would be ideal for an intense action game, but it might be difficult to use in an RPG with a lot of information.

All of these factors contribute to effective UI design, and as Bayley noted in his talk, there are many different games to consider as examples, including Alien: Isolation, Genshin Impact, Pentiment, and even Voez, an older mobile game from 2017 that Bayley singles out for special praise for having withstood the test of time in terms of its interface design. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that UI plays such a crucial role in the UX experience since it serves as the main interface through which players engage with games across all platforms.