Min-Maxing Your UI |Part One: Introduction

Refining (read: min-maxing) your UI is a process of justification: questioning the underlying logic behind your UI layout and choosing the options which make your interface as functional as possible. Justifying your UI s is a lot like justifying your spec, your raid strategy, or your rotation: it’s a critical process to becoming an effective raider.

The main function of the user interface is the display of information to the player, and a ‘good’ UI will display that information in a way that is accessible, relevant, and minimal. The breadth of 3rd party addons available to players means that nearly any set-up can be achieved, tailored to the needs of individual players rather than a “best for the most number” solution found in most games. This versatility does require an investment of time and research, but it is outweighed by the return.

Why Customize?

There are two ways you can receive information about what’s happening in the game: visual/audio cues from the environment, and the user interface. The information provided by the UI can replicate in-game cues; for example, the UI can flash a message saying “You’re standing in fire” when you are, in fact, standing in the fire. The UI cannot act as a complete replacement for environmental cues, and in many respects it can be far less efficient at giving you information; however, the UI provides you different and sometimes more important information that the environment simply cannot.

Most people are probably aware of the Unit-Frames, those little bars at the top of the default UI that represent your health and power levels. Can you imagine playing without them?

While a world without unit-frames is an extreme example, it does illustrate the importance of customizing your UI.

A Process of Justification

Customizing your interface should be a process of justification – comparing your current set up to alternatives to determine what will ultimately be the best way to give you the information you need. This justification should be primarily concerned with how things operate (functionality) rather than how they look (aesthetics).

Functional justifications try to maximize HOW you access information – the placement of UI elements, what information is displayed, and when it should be visible. If you had tiny unit-frames buried in the bottom of corner of the screen, they’d probably be less functional then medium sized unit-frames positioned immediately below your character.

Aesthetic evaluations, on the other hand, complicated this situation pretty significantly. While having an attractive UI is important to keep things clear and easy to read, making functionality subordinate to aesthetics produces terrible results. This UI, for example, has extraneous art elements which are at best distracting, and at worst obfuscate important environmental cues. Again, this is a pretty extreme example of failure; but many UIs have elements which are similarly detrimental to the ability to play.

The key to justification is being able to identify things that work and things that don’t. Most folks don’t bother thinking about it that much, or they adapt to obviously inferior solutions out of sheer laziness. But these two approaches (somewhat adapting to or ignoring elements which are less than optimal) will absolutely hurt the ability of the player to perform in raids, arenas, or sweet sweet deeprun tram RP sessions.

Why’d You Post This?

Obviously this is a boring post, it was boring to write and it will probably be boring to read. However, it’s important to understand how and why your UI should be customized. The rest of this tutorial will focus on maximizing the potential in the UI on a meta level, and individual elements on the micro level.