Dishonored
Personal · Product Design · Video Game HUD
Figma · Illustrator · Photoshop · Premiere
OVERVIEW
New players often have difficulty learning new video games that more habitual players may not experience due to an assumption of prior gaming knowledge. After exploring the different perspectives of both groups, I conceptualized and redesigned the heads-up display (HUD) for the video game “Dishonored” to create a more inviting gameplay for new comers.
GOALS
Recreate the heads-up display for the video game Dishonored to make information more accessible for inexperienced players.
CHALLENGE
Providing a decreased learning curve for new players without disrupting the experience for players who may already have prior knowledge of how the game works.
RESEARCH
Phase 1: Survey
Players will submit and complete a survey prior to playing to determine their experience, technological comfortability, and personal interests.
Phase 2: Informal Experiments
2 groups of players, experienced and inexperienced, will be called in one-by-one to play the selected single-player title Dishonored and Bioshock Infinite for one hour under the following parameters: players must not have played the titles Bioshock Infinite and Dishonored prior to the sessions, players will start at the beginning of the game and attempt to complete the tutorial, players cannot receive outside assistance; only information within the video game is acceptable.
Phase 3: Interview
At the end of each gaming sessions, players were asked a series of questions about their enjoyment, frustrations, confusions, navigation abilities, and understanding of the game's mechanics and story. If you would like to view parts of the informal experiments, a video is available for you to watch within this section (Press the play button!).
Inexperienced Players
I had anticipated that a laptop would be easier for new players as it is used rather commonly, but instead many opted to use the trackpad instead of a mouse as they would at work. Due to their trackpad usage or discomfort with a mouse, their field of vision within the game was limited. Key bits of information were often missed which led to confusion and frustration. For example, when players were approached by enemies in Bioshock Infinite, they could hear shooting but didn’t understand what direction it was from, despite having a red circle indicating the location. Bits of information, such as ammo types, pop-ups, and objectives were often over looked due to other things happening in their immediate view. This led to players missing hints or gaming functionalities that would have helped their experience and make the overall game easier.
Experienced Players
Unlike inexperienced players, those who have regularly played video games were incredibly comfortable with both titles. Experienced participants were able to navigate the game’s virtual environment smoothly and greatly improved their ability to complete tasks. The majority of participants immediately knew which controls emit a particular action. If they were confused, players knew where to find the control menu and were able to understand the information given. Many also noticed small changes on their screens, pop-ups, and status conditions due to their familiarity with HUDs in other gaming titles. However, the quick secondary pop-ups within Bioshock Infinite did appear too quickly for some participants. Ironically, there was also an annoyance when instructions they deemed as common sense would block their field of vision for too long.
PLANNING
I created an information architecture with a short user flow based on key features I wanted to implement. Wireframes and prototype designs came quickly after, and went through many rounds of revisions to maintain the visual style and feel of Dishonored. After working on the final design, I had participants, who fell under the categories of experienced and inexperienced players, look at each screen and tell me what information they understood or observed.
During the tests, some participants missed or overlooked the newly designed features. The majority had difficulty knowing what the red and blue bars meant. I originally planned to have the red bar represent health, while the blue bar would represent mana. However, most did not understand why the bar would increase or decrease between screens, leading to a lack of correlation to health or mana. On top of that, many didn’t notice the sound indicator placed below the mini-map, despite recognizing the visibility indicator. This is most likely due to the pop-up describing the visibility indicator but not the sound indicator. Fortunately, all participants understood their objectives and the steps to achieve them. They also understood the quick wheel for weapon types, mini-map, navigational arrows, and comprehended what weapon they had equipped.
RESULTS & TAKEAWAY
When creating the assets, I wanted to keep the spirit of Dishonored with a more frayed and rigid look. Each asset has an emphasis on dark tones with accents of yellow to echo the environment the Dishonored’s dark themes.
Navigation & Mini-Map
The navigational arrow was redesigned with a yellow accent to stand out more on screen. Like the original, it displays the distance between the player and the objective. The mini-map provides a clear image as to what area the players are in and is in sync with the navigation arrow.
Vision & Sound Indicators
These indicators provided a bit more clarity to the sneaking feature of the game. It would allow players to understand if they were hiding properly and if they were being quiet enough.
Objectives
When a new objective appears a pop-up would come out describing the new goal and title of the goal. Once the new objective notification disappeared, it would turn into a symbol with a “J” implying to players to press “J” to view their journal / objectives page. Whenever the reach a step closer to their objective goals, a step completed would pop-up and a new step would slide out to update the player’s progress.
Health & Mana Bar
Due to confusion in the prototyping stage, I decided to add in a slight red glow when the player’s health began to decrease. Next to the mana bar, I also added an icon that would correlate to different abilities in their abilities wheel.
Gun Type & Ammo
Instead of showing an icon of the ammunition like in the original game, I opted to place an icon of the entire weapon next to the ammunition type and amount. I also had a mouse icon with the middle button highlighted to describe how players can open their weapon wheel.
Weapon & Abilities Wheel
Many players did not understand how to switch between different weapons. Dishonored assumes players know to press different numbers for the corresponding weapon or scroll the mouse wheel. With the middle mouse button highlighted in the gun type asset, I intended for the ammunition wheel to appear when triggered by that action. Within the abilities wheel, descriptions were created for each power the player has selected to understand how it would effect their gameplay.
After months of work, I was able to finalize the UI components of Dishonored’s heads-up display and tailored the experience to new players. The components redesigned and implemented were the: health bar, mana bar, navigation and mini map, weapon display, primary and secondary tutorial pop-ups, objectives, interaction indicators, sight and sound indicators, and quick-wheels.
Many of these features are unavailable within the original game. This new design was created to provide clearer instructions to the players about the game itself, as well as fundamental features that would assist their gaming experience.
In the future, I hope to be able to redesign the entirety of Dishonored and place the final revisions into the game itself. Once completed, I hope to invite non-gamers to play the design and observe how they interact with the components.
Throughout the entire process, including research, experimentations, and the design itself, it was rewarding to dive deeper into something that I am passionate about. I am grateful for the participants that allowed me to move forward in my project and ultimately discover different perspectives within video games.
In the end, I hope that many become open minded about video games and discover the enjoyment games have to offer, regardless of frustrations that may come. There are thousands of titles for people of all ages, and hopefully those that are curious will find the right game for them.
