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Shneiderman’s Golden Rules 1-2

Oct 10, 09:02 PM by Raesanos regarding Game Design

A lot of research has gone into UI (User Interface) design over the years. A fair amount of that has gone into specific types of applications, for example mobile applications are a hot topic right now. I’m sure this trend will continue as mobile phones become more computer-like (Yep, the iPhone is a perfect example) while still retaining their small size. UI design in MUDs is generally left as a common sense subject, on the other hand. Common sense gets you pretty far in this area, but a more formal analysis of what makes a good UI in a MUD could lead to new approaches that might have been overlooked in the past.

In his book Designing the User Interface Ben Shneiderman presents eight “golden” rules for UI design. In a series of articles I will discuss each in the context of MUDs and give examples related to that rule.

Strive for consistency

We all know that if one command is typed “put apple in bag” and another is “get apple bag” then something is wrong. It should be “get apple from bag” to be consistent. Of course, allowing both is ideal, since you’re more likely to be intuitive to a given person that way, but thats another issue.

There are some breaches of consistency that are harder to identify, however. Take these commands for example:

smoke pipe
read book
use hula-hoop

These all seem logical enough. What’s the problem here, then?

Notice that one of the verbs is far more general than the other two. “Use” could mean lots of things, while “smoke” and “read” are fairly specific. Maybe a “spin-around-my-waist” command sounded too goofy. Maybe the “use” command was already programmed into the game and it was easy to reuse it for another type of object. These are both good reasons, but are beside the point.

The problem is that now the player knows about this “use” command that sounds really general. However, when they try to “use” a pipe or “use” a book, it may or may not work. In my experience with MUDs, there is probably a difficult-to-determine subset of objects in the game that are “useful” and use the “use” command to invoke that use. Phew!

How do we solve this problem? My suggestion is to embrace general-sounding commands. If a player knows that when they want to use something they type use then they’ll always know what to type. The interface has become consistent: they always use the same command to “use” an object.

Of course, you don’t want to lose intuitiveness here. “Read book” is much more intuitive than “use book.” Ideally, both would work. If you don’t have to choose between intuitiveness and consistency, don’t.

Enable frequent users to use shortcuts

This is one that we do pretty well. Most MUDs I’ve used let you shorten any command, for example typing “n” instead of “north.” The problem arises when the shortened version is ambiguous. If you shorten “hitch” to “hi” the game isn’t sure if you meant “hit.” In Armageddon this specific example has lead to some upset pack animals now and then. This can be helped by having the command with the least repercussions win out, or by requiring commands with sufficient repercussions to be typed out in full.

The types of shortcuts that don’t seem to be as widely explored are shortcuts where one command takes the place of entering more than one command. I’ve seen MUDs that use “all” noun that serves this purpose in one regard. “get all bag” would repeat “get x bag” for everything in the bag.

This type of functionality could be expanded upon. “Get all fruit bag” or other subsets of “all” would be useful. Then, make “all” work for any command, not just a few choice ones. “Pick all flower” to go gathering flowers. “Shrug all” might yield “You shrug to those here.” rather than a bunch of serial shrugs.

Other types of shortcuts can probably be found by looking at game logs to see what players spend a lot of time doing. In Armageddon you can walk with an emote by typing something like “west (with a limp)”. As it is now, you need to type “with a limp” for every movement. A great shortcut would be a way to set a “gait” for your character.

Lots of things can be covered by aliases, or the ability to have a user set one command to do some other thing or series of things. I know some MUD clients allow these, but the MUD itself should have them too. This makes the aliases portable and gives you information on how people are using them so you can get ideas for making new shortcuts for players.

There at 6 more rules to go in coming articles. The next one is about feedback and can be found here.

Comment

1. This is the first article aimed specifically at people who run MUDs. Did other people find it interesting too?

   — Raesanos · Oct 10, 09:06 PM · #

2. Very much so. While I don’t do any coding, myself, I found myself nodding every other line while reading these first two rules. A flexible MUD interface where players can successfully type “look book”, “examine book”, “read book”, “look at book”, “read from book”, and just about everything else one might think up that makes any sense at all, rather than fiddling with syntax trying to do something that should, by all rights, be an extremely simple undertaking, would make a great playing experience. MUD coders who read should take heed.

   — NW-PR · Oct 11, 09:34 PM · #

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