I'm trying to gather as much info on the *why* ppl setup their UI like they do instead of only the *how* they set it up. I'm trying to find the "must" and the "must not" do-es and don'ts. I wanna do this because what i wanna do is create a base UI with the important stuff in place provide it to the guild.

I know that Ace2 based UI provide a lot of flexibillity and a lot of people use those mods. This isn't what i am looking into. What i seek is, what are the basic things you need to have in a UI and what are the things to avoid.

UIs are used and design with several things in mind, Class and it's role, PvP or Raiding / 5mans.

My questions are:

1) Do you have multiple UI profiles setted up so you can reload a UI design based on if you are PvPing, Raiding, or 5 Manning. -or- Do you Have 1 and only UI that does it all with hiding frames and rotation on bar pages, or just have ALL your buttons showing?

And what is the reason for such a choice?

2) What do you consider the most important stuff to have in a UI, what you consider usefull but not required. What's the bare minimum you would be comfortable with?

3) The important stuff identified in 2) where do you place it and why? (around your character? sides for peripheral vision? top, bottom?)

4) At what point do you consider you have too much info displayed?

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For my part,

1) I have a do-it-all UI with all skills keybound and consumables in a click-able bar. I am startnig to think i should do multiple profile depending on what i am about do. My UI is starting to get pretty heavy in a raid with stuff i dont quite need.

2) I think the Raid frames, with range checks displaying debuffs, displaying HP bars and mana bars of the whole raid are the most important part of my UI. That is because i play a healing class. I feel that the important stuff for me is what i need to see and react to. If i play a warrior i need much more screen to see the 3D world, if i play a healer i need more view over my raid.

3) I keep all the raid tracking stuff on the left so that if i look left i have all i need. Nothing that is relevent to my raid is on the right part of my screen i dont want to miss a burst on a tank or something if i have to turn my head a round.. (i have a big widescreen). A bare minimum for me would be a CTRA type frames because the BLizz ones are just awfull and i have to keep re placing them over and over. On the right is all the configs / inventory / maps and out of combat stuff.

4) When SCT is going too fast 40 raid frames on the left and targets, target of targets and all of that, chat windows.. it feels there is too much things "bleeping" in my screen and i'm thinking of a way to tone it down yet be able to have the info at the same time.There is too much when i see stuff happenning that isnt affecting me (i.e someone is cursed, nothing i can do about it.)

I try to follow pretty standard rules of UI design; visually, the more important immediate access to a piece of information is, the closer it is to the center of my screen (so my/target health/energy/CP/Slice and Dice/Find Weakness timers sit mid-screen, target/target'starget just below that, timerbars/castbars sit a little to the right, SCT in an arc along the top, debufffilter's output just to the left of my HUD, etc.). As it gets less important that I immediately be able to access it, it moves further away. As a rogue, raidframes get stuck in a corner. Chat sits in a corner as well, and I use chattabs to seperate out various methods (a tells frame, a clique frame for various private channels, etc.). Along the bottom sit unitframes, focus, etc. Map in the upper right corner, buffs display sits along the right edge, etc.

But basically, I try to follow a simple rule of: the more important it is that I see it right away, the less distance my eyes should have to travel away from dead center to see it.

First: I play a holy/disc Priest that pretty much just does 5-mans and has just now started getting enough people together to run UBRS, so I imagine my answers will reflect a very different playstyle from most of the folks on EJ. In fact I _just_ began using raidframes this past monday on our first UBRS run.

I don't use multiple profiles. I have 1 and only 1 UI that does pretty much everything I need to, and I basically keep all my buttons showing. I used to use Insomniax & Discord Frames. I'd have 5 rows of 12 buttons with my guild/whispers/channels on the left, and combat spam on the right. The reason for me to do things that way is that I started off soloing 90% of the time, and just added spells to the spell bar as necessary, and over time I've developed quite the muscle memory for where certain spells are, and if they aren't there, I get totally screwed up. It's probably not the most efficient way to set things up, but it ensures I am less likely to fuck up wildly in the heat of battle.

Bare minimum for me in any grouping situation where I'm healing: PartyBars/Benecast. I didn't use any of the fancy features of Benecast, but I absolutely relied (and still rely) on having buttons next to each member's health, so I can click the pretty icons. I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of healbot, but somehow click-casting bugs me. I think it's the lack of a visual cue to feel like I know, for sure, I'm casting the right spell. That and having multiple rows of buttons so I can stack up all my abilities and have them in plain view (out of sight, out of mind, for me). What's really useful but not required is having the Benecast/Partybar feature where the cure disease/dispel magic buttons don't appear next to a player frame unless they've got a debuff up I can cure with them. Truthfully, it makes it much easier to track, visually, than checking for buffs.

Much like you, I put everything on the left side of the screen. The right side is for my buff counters, which I don't give a crap about except as between-fight checks for whether or not I need to throw Prayer of Fortitude back up. My guild/party/raid chat, party bars, and first two raid groups (since I've only done UBRS, I don't even have the other raid groups configured to display) are all on the left. It verges on cluttered when I'm in a group with a lot of pet classes, but I like it so far.

I haven't quite hit that point yet, but it's getting close. I turned off target of target of target because that seemed silly. The big one for me is that I have my party frames cranked up to gigantor size so I can try to assuage my paranoia that I might miss someone's health going down. As I get used to the new UI & mods I'm using after this most recent patch, I think I'll calm down a lot more. I just hate screwing up, so I have my UI tuned to show me maximum information and present the important stuff at the largest size I can manage.

I am considering trying my hand at dumping party bars and eliminating my group's bars at some point, to start getting used to healing via HealBot & raid groups exclusively, though. I can already tell that in anything bigger than a 10 man, I'm not going to have the screen real estate to see everything I need to, let alone everything I want to. (and I'm running on a 24" widescreen lcd)

1) Do you have multiple UI profiles setted up so you can reload a UI design based on if you are PvPing, Raiding, or 5 Manning. -or- Do you Have 1 and only UI that does it all with hiding frames and rotation on bar pages, or just have ALL your buttons showing?

I only have one basic set up. I even use it cross class. I want to always be able to look in the same place and expect the same thing. I even match my keybindings as best I can cross class. Wand is always 1, Sheep/Banish/Shackle are always the same keybind, major nuke always in the same place, etc. I generally have all of my buttons showing all of the time. I think it makes my reaction times faster because I'm never totally surprised when changing between mains and alts (omg I thought that was shackle teehee. No.) because everything does something basically relative. F5-F12 are the unique class keybinds (healing for my priest, aoe for my mage, dots for a warlock) but agian the emphasis is placed in the same way across characters (F5 and F8 are my primary heals, those keybinds also control my main dots on my warlock and my main aoe spells on my mage)

It can pose flexibility problems when leveling a new class and/or adding new skills into the mix... but overall it works well.

2) What do you consider the most important stuff to have in a UI, what you consider usefull but not required. What's the bare minimum you would be comfortable with?

Can't survive without movable unit/raid frames unfortunately. It's the only thing on Beta that I truly mourned when I was forced back to the base ui. Useful but not required: Mods for- Bar, Buff, Minimap, Gearswap, Bag/Bank, Tooltip, BossEncounters, HUD, and a fubar style mod with general information. Bare minimum for comfortable- Unitframes/Raid/Bar/Minimap/Bag/Bank

3) The important stuff identified in 2) where do you place it and why? (around your character? sides for peripheral vision? top, bottom?)

Edges of the screen- I like having the area immediately around my character free of anything but the hud (and I keep my hud small and at half alpha). I generally keep all bars/unitframes/buffs/chat (set to only see important info) in the same general area for easy eyeball access (Left side of the screen for me), and damage meters/bg maps/SCT spam/ SCTD spam -stuff that I only occasionally need to see or that's super spammy- on the opposite side of the screen at half alpha so I can tune it out unless I need it.

4) At what point do you consider you have too much info displayed?

As a healer there's almost no such thing as too much information. If the information impedes my ability to see my immediate surroundings or do my job, I'll generally look for ways to cut it back. Simple ex: I'm doing a lot more dps in raids than I did pre2.0 and VE spam was making it impossible to see my character- so I moved it to the far right and left the center free again.

One of the hardest challenges in creating a unique UI, is not the function, but form. I have seen a few UI's manage to achieve this through excellent choice of mods that have a similar aesthetic, or a bit with discord art. Overall it isn't something we have seen a lot of until recently, and a lot of it is just plain tacky and distracting when subtle elegance would do better (it's a UI, not a Vegas casino).

I have only seen one mod that redoes the UI art for character window, social, etc...and that was a pretty ugly one. Just a grey box instead of art. It is certainly a blank slate as far as UI's go, and probably where my next challenge lies now that I am happy with the function and general appearance of my UI.

Look at your screen and question every part whether or not you actually need to see it. You said it yourself that nothing on the right side of your screen is relevant to your raid. Why is it there at all?

- A lot of people insist on displaying the combat log, after thinking about it for a while I decided to hide it, I'm not missing much.

- Grid really opens eyes for a lot of people used to standard/CTRA raid frames. You can customize Grid exactly in a way to only display information you need to know - stuff you can do something about. It's not perfect, but it definately gets you thinking.

- Why do you need to see people's mana?

- Do you really need the party frames? I use Grid for everything now.

- Unit frames is probably is where I see people waste the most space. Do you really need the 3D portrait, current hp, total hp, and percent hp all at the same time?

Me personally, I use one UI for everything, allthough I imagine creating profiles for people who have all their bars visible and click a lot of stuff is a good option (only thing I click is TrinketMenu to change trinkets and a few consumables). I feel I've taken a truly minimalistic aproach to my UI keybinding everything including my professions, bags (default is Ctrl+B I believe), spellbook, questlog etc. on top of all the skills I ever use with a few having several ranks all keybound (Shift and Ctrl really helped out here, but I screwed myself out of Clique in the process). My UI looks accordingly with unit frames (myself, target, ToT), Grid, chat, minimap, TrinketMenu, 15 consumables on buttons and nothing else.

The biggest problem I've found with Grid, is it's just too good for how compact it is. You don't want to look anywhere other than Grid window, you can't break it up to plaster half of it on one side half on the other to force yourself to look at what's happening.

e: heh that typo was hilarious

e2: Where I personally put stuff - If you draw a triangle with lower left corner of the screen, lower right corner and center this is where I put all my stuff.

- I have one and only one UI. I may change keybindings in certain situations, and thanks to the advent of the new [help]; macro I don't even use multiple pages of my main action bar anymore for pve/pvp situations
All my buttons are showing, most of them have key bindings. I run something like a 1600x900 resolution (the WS res below 1680x1050 which is the max of my 20in ws LCD). I run the buttons along the bottom, my minimap down there as well as chat.
Even though all my buttons are showing at all times, it doesn't take a lot of space given my screen real estate. That and sometimes I click when i'm lazy ;)

The bare minimum I would be comfortable with is the barebones UI.
- The one addon I think would be missed would be SCT/D since I don't display combat log and it's really the only way i know what I'm doing how hard i'm getting hit
I also don't like the default Blizz raid - Prefer something like PerfectRaid (waiting for an update).
Other then that, I think i adjust the following if I can but don't consider it neccesary - Unitframes, Action Bars,

I like Bagnon since it lets me see my bank, my other toons bags/banks, lets me know who has what if i mouse over something etc. I think it's great.

Important in the middle, less important to the side generally. My Raid bars (usually PRaid, right now AGUF) on the right side of the screen. Bagnon gets moved all the time based on what is blocking my view of it. In the middle is generally HUD (if i'm running one) and SCT/D

- When I can't see the game and it's just a bunch of Addons. Getting a larger LCD (15->20in woooo) really helped the situation some odd year,year and a half ago). but if it appears cluttered, then it's too much info, even if i want to see that info.

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I think a UI should be an extension to make the game enjoyable and not something that contributes to your frustration with the game. My value for an addon is How easy is it to setup, does it do what I want it to do, if it crashed how easy would it be to re-setup.

For me, oddly enough, yes. I don't need to see portraits, but I feel naked without seeing current/total and percentage. I don't use it for party/raid, since Grid with Clique is all I'll ever need in that respect, but for myself and my target, I like having a bit of information overload. I like seeing that after casting X, I dropped y% mana, so I can spam it Z number of times before being OOM. Seeing the totals is nice for "have I used enough to pop a potion to start timers as soon as possible without wasting part of the potion?"

1. I have a single UI for all, because I like knowing (w/o thinking about it) exactly where to get the information I need or what button casts what spell. It goes back to committing information/responses to memory and muscle-memory.

2. As a healer, I feel there's almost no extraneous information with the exception of seeing my keybound buttons/macros. I don't display any of those, because I know where they are and I've got almost everything bound to a key + modifier.

3. Important stuff goes in the center around my character slightly faded and fades even lower when not active, other necessary stuff goes to the bottom. After AQ and pvping for a while, I could not tolerate obstructing too much of my view. The top and sides of my screen are bare.

4. If I can't just look at the screen and take it all in, then my UI gets tweaked further. If I have change where I'm looking at the screen often, then it's too cluttered or not organized properly, but there is almost never too much information. It's a different story on my mage and lock.

I tend to have one UI for everything. Raid frames are hidden in normal combat, party frames are hidden in Raid, but for the most part everything else stays the same.

I think it's easier to have to use one interface instead of two or three. My UI is designed to allow me to have access to all of my necessary spells and abilities (which tend to change from Raiding to PvP, but thats why you can do action bar paging).

I use an Alphagrip to play WoW, so the single most important thing to me is a good button layout matching my Alphagrip. This is why you'll always see my UIs with (one or two) blocks of 16 buttons. Also, everything necessary for combat should be in my own particular "regular" spots that I tend to look for such information, or should be painfully obvious otherwise. I'm a creature of habit, I look to specific places on my screen for specific information and if it's not there, it throws me off.

I tend to place my important UI elements on the bottom or top of the screen preferably, expanding down or up on the left or right edges as necessary. I do this because I like having a wide angle view around my character. I've also extended my zoom-out distance quite a bit so I can get a good overhead view to see what's going on around me. Situational awareness is key.

If it's cluttering my viewport to the point that I can't have good situational awareness, it's too much. Otherwise, it's fair game. I'm always trying new mods, so I have a pretty easy time getting rid of crap I don't use in favor of something I might, but at some point the clutter just gets to be too much and I start over.

I think this is a great guideline, but it raises a problem as a healer: Where do you put your health bars?

At least 90% of my time is spent staring at them. So, logically, they should be front and center, right? But I just can't get a good setup that does that for me and still lets me see the game.

PerfectRaid and now Grid have been evolutionary steps for me in terms of how much screen real estate I devoted to health bars, but even the hyperminimalist Grid is a pretty hefty thing to be putting dead center.

I end up with the health bars thrown to one side of the screen, and a serious case of bar-vision. (Maybe with only 25 bars in my Grid in TBC it will get even better-- we'll see.)

Any healers out there with a set-up that makes both health bars and the rest of the game easily visible?

I probably like most healers spend many fights focusing on raid bars mainly and not much else (if its not around the raid bars I just don't see it). A problem arises from this thou. During geddon for example who turns you into a bomb or Vael I have before completely missed the fact I got the debuff since I was focusing so much on the raid and killed a few people.

I took this into account when designing my UI for 2.0.1. So describing my changes I answer your 2nd question. What I planed to do was focus the important stuff that I need to raid all around one part, this was the bottom and right side of my screen. Casting bar/raid frames/current target (usually the tank)/ chat/spells I havn't keybinded/buffs/etc. All located on the bottom or right side of my screen so I can simply focus in one area with out having to pay much attention.

example: http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/8...sectionjt3.jpg

To answer the 4th question. I consider to much info displayed when at a quick glance of the surroundings I can barely see whats going on. A Lot of: healing spells/pots on my bars, sct spamming with your heals,mana regen,large raid/unit frames can do this. Another fault of my old UI I noticed which I've tried to limit via macros/keybindings and scaling.

I would like to throw a question out there, as you could see from my screenshot I am using ct_viewport to other users of similar addons why do you use them? I never really thought of it until now talking about maximizing as much of the screen space as possible when this addon limits certain areas of the screen into a black bar. For me I guess it just looks more organised and the loss of space is at an acceptable level. Other peoples thoughts?

Since I try to keybind everything I have one profile for everything. Though I have started to toy with setting up different profiles on Grid for different PvE encounters where I need to do different things, mainly 20 mans with my druid to start with. For the mage I doubt it would matter other than see those curses.

Bare minimum is the most important stuff for me so I don't really view them as different things. Useful but not required would be boss mods like Bigwigs, timer bars like oCD, HUD's, etc. Pretty much anything that makes viewing information easier but not required to know that info. As far as bare minimum and most important, what I have learned because of this 2.0 patch that I need though is: Fubar, DueceCommander, Grid, Clique, and working Action Bars. The rest I can figure out with the default UI if need be.

Anything having to do with my character goes in the bottom center for ease of reference. Raid timer bars go above my character. Cooldown timer bars go above my unitframe. Enemy Cast bars go above the target unitframe. Everything else is put to the sides in varying places depending on importance.

In a PvE sense, I don't really think you are ever at that point unless you have completely covered up your screen and can't do the required movements. If you are not at that point though and adding another mod will make you doing your job on this encounter easier then I say go for it. In PvP though, anything that stops me from noticing enemy targets needs to go. I try to close as much stuff as possible or minimize as much stuff as possible. At times I have even gone so far as to minimize the minimap and solely rely on the battlemap for positioning if I find that people are getting the jump on me because it was in the way. Now if only the servers would stop lagging on me, mages don't have autoattack!!

the removal of combat log is a good idea, with SCT/SWS/etc it serves a questionable function, at best you can stash it in a tab of your chat area. i think i'll drag it off and put sws there.

what about fubar/titan? I find it very useful as a sort of "dashboard", I try to keep it to just 1 line and only put in mods that are really useful. currently have location, honor, fps, mr plow, bigwigs/ora2, bartender, skinner, deucecommander, durability, bags, money, and clock on my fubar.

i dumped a hud long ago, just found it cleaner to have ag unit frames in a very simple style, as close to center area as possible. is a hud a good idea or not?

lastly, viewport? i really like having my buttons, map, and chat window "outside" the game view, especially since i never look behind them. on the other hand i can see how it removes game immersal. tough one.

and yes i try to make my ui so that most important things are all in one area, center-bottom. dashboard at the top with stuff like fps and control functions (deucecommander, ora2, bartender, prat menu). XRS replaces grid and the like for me, all I really care about is how many ppl alive, what healer & DPS mana is, how many tanks alive, and so on.

i have way to many buttons at the moment playing my warlock, even with shardAce its a nightmare. really need to sit down and consolidate this, I recently got a new G15 keyboard so probably going to spend some time figuring out best way to use the extra 18x3 keys.

In my opinion, the goal for all UI's should be getting the most information available with as little repetition as possible. I won't link screenshots of my UI's, but I'll use them as examples in saying that, originally, I had a ton of information duplication. My player frame was in the top-left corner of the screen, containing my XP bar, name, level and class, health, mana, and portrait. Ditto for the target (sans the XP bar). Who really needs all that? Especially because, in addition to those things, I also had StatusBars showing duplicates of almost all that information right in the middle of the screen during combat. Horrible, horrible inefficiency.

Now, I have a HUD mod. Why HUDs? Well, because they display the most relevant information front and center. When you're in the middle of combat, your goal should be to spend as much time looking at the actual combat as possible, and as little time looking at your UI as possible. If you have to stare into the top-left corner of your screen to find information about yourself and your target, then you're creating a severe tunnel vision problem for yourself. You can put your player and target frames in the center of the screen, sure, and then it pretty much is the same as having a HUD (and much better than having them in the top-left corner). Pretty much the only difference between a HUD and unit frames is that the HUD usually occupies less screen real estate (but it's not always the case).

With respect to other unit frames, what do you really need to see? I noticed a post above said you could just use Grid and have it suffice for parties as well, but personally I think that parties require slightly more micro-management, and since there's only 5 people in a party, there's nothing wrong with taking up a little more space for your party frames. In my opinion, your four party frames and player frame should add up to take about as much space as your raid frames. Neither should be too big. In a raid, you really just need to see each player's health and applicable buffs and debuffs (since you need to be space-efficient, probably limited to just those you can cast/cure). Mana might also be necessary if you're a druid. In a party, though, you can show more stuff, including mana/rage/energy and all buffs and debuffs. You may ask why -- I would ask why not?

The key is simply to be space-efficient in whatever you do. Don't duplicate information. Don't waste space between UI elements where it isn't needed. Don't waste space on elements that aren't needed. Portraits? Kill 'em. Do you really need to know which member of your party is the loot master? Which one is the leader? Wouldn't you already know these things, being in a party? Do you need to know which are flagged for PvP? Maybe. Which are in combat? Definitely. Prioritize the things you need to see and organize them in a way that puts the most important things in the most obvious positions.

In my opinion, Titan Panel/FuBar are the best thing since sliced bread. Here are two mods which simply occupy a small strip of screen space along the top or bottom of your screen, and can display a great wealth of information, or even provide functions beyond simply information-collecting. A ton of Ace2 mods even plug in to it to provide easy access to functions that are normally buried in less intuitive slash commands.

Regarding action bars and buttons, I like to keep all of mine on screen at the same time, even if I know the bindings by heart. Why? Simply -- I'm human, and humans forget things. If I happen not to recall which, between Alt-2 and Alt-3, was my Vanish key and which was Blind, I don't want to have to dig into my mod to bring up the action bar to find it. I just want to look down and see it. This isn't a big deal, though, because even though I use five action bars plus my stance/pet bars, I have them all stacked neatly in a small space in the bottom-middle of my screen.

Thus end my random thoughts on UI for the moment...