David Emery Online

Interface Missteps

9 June 2005

As well as all the other stuff released at the WWDC this week (see Sandvox below), OverTheEdge Software released Unity , which is a game development environment similar to what I hoped to create with Everest (It turns out it’s more then a one man job).

The product looks pretty good, with some very powerful features such as full integration with both Maya and Photoshop; shader support so you get really nice graphics and best of all built in physics, which really adds a lot to a modern game.

However, they seem to have seem to forgotten about the interface.

I’ve seen this in a lot of high-end 3D apps such as Maya, and to a certain extent in Apple’s Pro apps (they know what they’re doing, however) – and Unity is certainly priced high-end at $249 for the indie licence or $999 for the pro. With the apps I’ve mentioned – on the whole – they have fairly good reasons for their odd interface ticks, but this is a brand new mac only app, so why have they completely ignored the Apple interface guidelines?

Unity: Just ‘cause Final Cut Pro is grey, doesn’t mean you should be…

If you look at the screenshot above, you can see that instead of using the default buttons, pulldowns and general style that a mac app normally uses, they have created their own nasty, grey version instead.

All of these buttons represent wasted development time, and there is no corresponding gain in productivity as they are functionally equivalent to the standard controls (this is doubly compounded by the move to resolution independence in 10.5 Leopard – they will have to remake their controls, whereas other apps will get the new functionality for free from Apple).

Apart from the non-standard look – which is bad enough by itself – the interface is thrown together, with little thought for any normal user interface conventions. For example, in the above shot look for the “Play Game” button (a cool feature – you can play the game right in the editor without having to build a copy then run it externally – you can even see the object tree change as you create objects). It’s in the bottom right hand corner of the window – for no apparent reason – and also doesn’t seem to have a menu equivalent (Update: I found it, it was in the “Edit” menu, for some unknown reason). Also amusing is the “Axis” button in the top left of the window, just to the right of the tool switcher button (which, curiously enough is aqua…) – it has a nice big gap on its left – does it not like its aqua neighbour?

It would be really great if they would just use the standard toolbar and put what they have at the top now, coupled with the play/stop/fast-forward buttons. After that, using standard controls would be nice, as well as a rearrangement of the interface (Move the hierarchy over to the left, like every other app, and turn the inspector into a separate palette window (like every other app…). Also, it seems to be exclusively one window per document, which is a bit odd.

Gaahg! I’ve just noticed that the aqua tool switcher is home-made as well – it changes on mouse-down not mouse-up. None of their other home-made buttons do this, so why this one?

Come on guys – You obviously have really (really!) cool tech, but get someone to look at your interface – get someone to care, before your customers realise you don’t.

Note: I keep noticing more and more issues as I play around a bit more; so have a look and find them yourself (hint: try closing a document)! Also, I really don’t mean to pick on OverTheEdge – this sort of thing happens all the time; hopefully by writing about it it’ll happen less.