UI/UX Department
Have you ever wondered what experiences make a game satisfying, what layouts make in-game menus easy to navigate, or how we can make games more accessible for everyone?
If you are research-minded and interested more in-depth on the user experience and interactions with user interfaces, you've come to the right place! Welcome to UI/UX!
Background
User Experience and User Interface Designers seek answers to questions surrounding user satisfaction, menu navigation, and accessibility. User Experience and User Interface Design (UX/UI) is a broad design field spanning industries like healthcare, education, and entertainment.
In our department, UX/UI seeks to inform design choices through a focus on a product’s intended user, optimizing interactions, and subsequent experiences with a product to be both positive and satisfying. Over time, these practices made their way into games where they’ve been fundamental to improving player experiences at every level of development.
What do we do?
We aim to educate members about current best practices in UX/UI design for games through workshops, training, and events. Every other week, we will host department activities that will be open to all members interested in learning more about UX/UI Design and will include formats such as organized lectures, case studies, and hands-on design thinking exercises, all with tangible application to game development.
Industry Relevance
Pursuing UX/UI design opens up many careers within the game industry that are related to the field. These include, but are not limited to:
User Experience Designer
Information Architect
Interaction Designer
UX Developer / UI Programmer
User Researcher
User Interface Designer / Artist
Data Scientist / Data Analyst
Software and Tools
The tools used for UI/UX design and research vary widely by design project. These can range from complex biometrics scanners and wireframing software, like Figma and InVision, to pen and paper journals.
Through our workshops, we'll cover some of the commonly used and practical methodologies accessible to student developers and, depending on availability, even provide hands-on experience with industry-standard hardware.
FAQs
Do I need to have any prior experience in research and working with UX/UI design to participate?
We're all here to have fun and while you don't need any prior experience to get involved, many of the workshops will be what you make of them. We'll do our best to educate our members and provide them with tangible resources and applicable knowledge. The only thing we ask is that you show up motivated and ready to learn!
How is UX/UI research and design different from game design?
UX/UI iteratively supports and informs game design decisions.
For example, a game designer will focus on creating an ability and think about how it works and affects the gameplay. But a UX/UI designer will focus on the interactions the player has with that ability, and how those interactions translate into player experience.
In a sense, UX/UI is the connection between game design choices and the interactions players have with those choices, with more research and analysis involved to support the overall game design.