[PC] Update 23: Visual Accessibility UI Themes and General UI Feedback Megathread

[Domrond]

Yeah, functionality has to trump aesthetics. The primary purpose of a UI is to let the user easily understand what they're looking at and what they can do with it. When you have so many items in the game that have identical or near-identical icons, you cannot obfuscate the names of the items behind a hover menu. That's awful for usability.  Games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild have a million different items, and also don't show the names unless you highlight them, but each and every one of them has a unique icon so you can tell what you're looking at with a glance. Even cooked food items that look similar have icons to show how much health or stamina they restore, and what stats they boost, without the user having to highlight the item.

In Warframe, every Prime Neuroptics part looks the same. Every Prime barrel looks the same. In that case, you have to show the item names so that the user can quickly get to where they need to go. 

Warframe has hundreds if not thousands of items, weapons, parts and mods, and many of them look extremely similar if not identical to other items in their class. 

[Zgwortz]

As someone who has done UI design for most of my 36 year career as a programmer, this change, as most people have already noted, is a fairly major step backwards.   Some positive items first:

- Yay themes!   The ability to configure different backgrounds with different color sets is a big plus.
- Yay vertical layout for scrollable areas - horizontal scrolling of large quantities of data isn't intuitive nor time effective.

- Font choice for most things is actually significantly more readable.   Good choice.

And for a couple of neutral items:
- The font used in menu titles is... interesting?   Less readable, but not significantly so, and lends some flavor to the game, so it's a wash.

- Putting the Public/Friends Only/Solo selector as an icon displayed popup menu in Navigation is okay... but putting the icon between the team and the add member button is an odd and unintuitive choice.    Would rather still have it above where it was, or to the left with a gap between it and the team icons.  But see below...

- UI Customization - the sample box is a good idea for seeing how the UI works... but it is unintuitive as to what it's purpose is -- people will be going to it and trying to use it to do things and wondering why it doesn't have an effect, and the only thing which actually does anything is the play sound button.   You might want to change the label from "Sample" to something more descriptive like "Visual Test" and then change the tabs, menu, and the sample icon to a bunch of fake things which don't look like they have function.

- Tooltips: Nice to have the tooltip descriptions and they look nice (even if they don't always appear in proper Z-order...), but some of the icons used in them are unintuitive, and having the MR icon *under* the number makes it almost invisible and very confusing.

 

Which leads to the negative items:

- Labels, labels, labels.   As far as I can tell, this UI is inspired by the many other equally massively flawed UIs which think that an Icon based inventory scheme is a good idea.   It is only remotely a good idea when every icon is different, yet not so many icons that you can't instantly recognize the one you're looking for.   In a game like this where there are a massive number of different items with the same icon, it's a disaster, and if you actually made different icons for each item, it would still be pretty bad.   You would have been far better served by making a pure text wall (visually horrible UI, but far more functional) than going to unlabeled icons.   Yes, I understand the driving forces for this - labels make it difficult to fit as many items on screen (especially when you include localization issues...), but fitting more items on screen at the cost of labels means the user has to spend a massively longer amount of time finding the items they're looking for as they have to mouse over each one just to find out what it is.   (I don't use controller, so I can't say how much it affects controller users, but it can't be much better...)   The tradeoff here - you have to scroll less, but then have to move the mouse over each icon, increases the amount of time needed to accomplish any task - a good UI strives to do the opposite.   

- This becomes more disjointed in the Sell items page where the items marked for sale are presented as the pure text wall mentioned above.   Yes, that actually makes sense, especially with the prices on the right and the total at the bottom... but there's NO visual connection between the two sides.   Maybe some small icons in the sell list to the left of each label?   At least there's a flag on the left hand side indicating items have been selected, but there's no counter there.  (Maybe instead of a flag, say "Selling N" at the top of each icon?)  And while highlighting an item in the sell list indicates *something* will happen if you click on it, perhaps a small left arrow next to the item should appear as part of the highlight to more clearly show you're removing it from the list.   And since some of these scrolling lists can get huge, perhaps the tooltip should appear on the item as well?

- Theme colors: Okay, I get that it's important to monetize the game... but theme color sets is definitely NOT way to do it.   Sell backgrounds and sounds, sure, but let people make their own custom theme color combinations, and not for platinum.   As a typical red-green colorblind person, the Equinox theme color set is decent (High Contrast is terrible for color blind people - not sure why it's labeled as such), and the Legacy theme isn't too bad, but there simply ought to be color pickers instead so everyone can make a color set which works for them.   In a related area, it's important to be able to configure the opacity of the element background box as well... None of the four themes have enough opacity for my tastes and it makes overlapping elements (particularly buttons) less readable.

- Currency: The currency display is missing in too many places where it needs to be.   (I'm looking at you, Baro... Why, oh, why, do you not have ANY currency displayed in your buy menu?)   Even before this update, I kept having to go to my inventory just to find out how much money I had.    And sometimes it displays all the different currencies, and sometimes not.   You get a brownie point back for putting it in the main ESC menu, but lose one for not having it display everything.   May I suggest that A) it be displayed all the time, or at least in EVERY UI page; and B) Mousing over it at any time will display ALL currencies (Credits, Platinum, Endo, Ducats, and anything else I forgot?) in a menu form, even if they're not currently relevant?

- I miss being able to immediately see the loadouts of everyone by hitting ESC.   Yes, they made the main menu look kind of busy with all that data at the top... but mousing over each individual icon is a terrible replacement.   If you want to leave the simplicity of that menu there, then you need to have another way of seeing this information at a glance.  In a related area, it adds another step (mousing over to pop up the menu) to leaving a squad, so even if you put this info elsewhere, you should move the Leave Squad button up a level to the icons if you intend to keep this menu as is.   (That said, if you do move Leave Squad up a level, you might want to put some effort into fixing the ongoing problems which happen when a host leaves the squad and the host migration doesn't go well...)


And finally a few suggestions for other changes:

- In inventory popup tooltips, it would be nice if Vaulted items would have an indicator that they are currently Vaulted.   Even better would be a filter to filter out such items.

- The Host (unless running solo - if that has technical issues...) should be able to change the team selection *during* a mission, especially on the Plains of Eidolon where teams change fairly frequently.  This shouldn't kick out any current members of the team, but should change how further members are added - going from Invite Only to Public would open other people to publicly joining your mission, and going from Public to Invite Only should prevent further additions unless you explicitly invite them.   And you should ALWAYS be able to see what team selection you have set as the host.

- The Chat window desperately needs an overhaul - at the minimum a background opacity level selection, and a fade timer selection (including no fade, or at least a very long fade).   As a bonus would be the ability to configure different sounds to play when messages come in from friends/clan/teammates.

 

[iamnuff1]

Probably already been mentioned, but 

 

 

The style is good, but clarity is more important. 

[RogueVoxel]

Why was information and function removed for this?

[Mover-NeRo]

So far my feedback.

• I miss the text on icons.. Most of the Prime items have same icon and i have no idea which one it is until i manually point at each of them.
• There is really no reason why the icons are so shade and only get the color once you point at them.

[tucker_d_dawg]

Having the virtual cursor in the wrong place can result in being unable to use the right joystick to scroll down

 

Edited June 15, 2018 by tucker_d_dawg

[AgniKyry]

Specifically for Baro; I can't see how many Ducats I have to spend, and also the prisma weapons show their normal variant icons.

Aside from that..

 I'd prefer that the squad member details in the Esc menu show without hovering so that I can see all names and loadouts all at once (as well as fill up the very empty feeling space) since they already condense into icons outside of that menu while in the orbiter and in mission.

I would also really like to be able to see which Focus school a squad member has set to primary, maybe represented by the corresponding school icon next to our name? I feel that our school is just as important in our loadout as everything else, and should be shown to teammates, but without spoiling new players of course so just an icon seems fitting.

Finally, and I may just need time to adapt, but I liked before where I could see names of all items without hovering individually. I understand that this new UI saves a lot of space, but it feels maybe too compact? Like I said, I may just need to get used to it for a bit.. For instance, when I used to screenshot Baro's inventory for my discord server before now, everyone could see names and prices on everything, but now it's only pictures.

Thanks DE, the new UI looks beautiful, keep up the good work.

[robbybe01234]

Can anyone else that is using a controller actually click on the "leave squad" button with "A" or "X" on controller?  Or change between Solo, Public, etc? It only works for me if I mouse click.

[tucker_d_dawg]

4 minutes ago, robbybe01234 said:

Can anyone else that is using a controller actually click on the "leave squad" button with "A" or "X" on controller?  Or change between Solo, Public, etc? It only works for me if I mouse click.

Yes - however even since the last UI update with the introduction of the this virtual cursor - it will bug out from time to time rendering it useless and having to resort to Kbd/Mouse.  Usually going into a mission/or anyhting that results in a loading screen with the annoying tribal drums resets it.  Of course restarting the game does as well.

So I'll be able to use the leave squad for a few runs until it just stops working.  Its also random which menu option stops working.

Also happens on Console (XB) where it is particularly annoying since there is no mouse/kbd equivalent to fall back to.

[Vanille]

The new UI is nice, even though it has removed functionality that made a simple and minimalistic UI work before.

• Texts blend in with background or the in-game textures specially, since they're really dark. It needs at least black or white borders and shadows. When you queue for missions, or when you're cheking your in-game idle text on the corners for credits, platinum, foundry/mail/booster notifications, it's barely noticeable and it was really easy to see when they were white.
• Squad interface no longer shows other player's equipment unless you hover over their now smaller glyphs boxes, and this can become a problem specially for relics runs, hovering over the names one by one to check what relics people queued with (on radshares mostly) and not being able to cancel the queue in case someone used the wrong one.
• Item boxes need their name text back on it. It becomes tedious having to check every single item 1 by 1 when they share the same icon so check which one is which, specially for ducat kiosk inventory.
• Item boxes and hover-description on shops don't show if you already own that item, you have to manually click every item to have the full codex description showing if you own it and have it mastered.
• It would be nice if UI colors where more customizable, the solid parts that only have one hue and shares the color with the theme text color. If these could be customizable separated, including custom text color, that'd be amazing.

[tucker_d_dawg]

1 minute ago, Kiwinille said:

• Squad interface no longer shows other player's equipment unless you hover over their now smaller glyphs boxes, and this can become a problem specially for relics runs, hovering over the names one by one to check what relics people queued with (on radshares mostly) and not being able to cancel the queue in case someone used the wrong one.

I would add this is particularly painful if you use a controller since its no where near as precise as a mouse for this kind of hovering over - and this applies to the above, or selecting menu items etc..Especially since D-Pad functionality is NOT fully implemented or if it is it is not working properly.

[Mak_Gohae]

first of all, only 8? BOOOOOOOOO!!!! i was ready to rumble and it basically nothing. I Guess this is cause it's beta.

OK, the ducat kiosk, there are no names on the items when you load them. So i have to go one by one to see what they are, that's a no, no.

And are you going to charger for further customization down the line? Cause this looks like a plat dump.

IMPORTANT EDIT!

You can longer travel between ship sections? Before i could teleport from arsenal to foundry to navigation etc.

Now i have to fully esc out then load up the menu to do it. This needs to be rolled back. I think walking now is more efficient.

Edited June 15, 2018 by Mak_Gohae

[CrimsonSkies00]

14 hours ago, RoomofR said:

I love the UI because it is a lot cleaner and the sound design is wonderful, however:

• There are some dead space that kills my OCD.
• I kind of miss being able to press "esc" and seeing all my group's weapons and equipment with out hovering on each at a time. Also as -TSA-BierWurstGER said, it tends to glitch behind icons time to time.
• Also the removal of alot of names/titles make it difficult to know the difference of a lot of muted item icons.
• The muted color of icons bugs me a lot as it start to burl with the rest of the background. You have a bunch of wonderful and colorful item icons, I feel like there is no need to mute the color for a hover effect.

Edit: I another problem is the mouse tends to jerk when clicking on search bar sometimes.

Thanks 😄

Every time you have to point to it to see others player equipment...headache ● ﹏☉

[DeMonkey]

7 hours ago, Blakrana said:

Not to be a jerk, but you do realise that the most common form of Colourblindness is Deuternopia, the form of Red-Green colourblindness that is weighted more toward difficultly distinguishing greens? That being Red-Green colourblind (Protonopia and Deuternopia) makes things that are Red, Green, Brown and the like hard to differentiate?

Ergo, this mostly green slate is less about contrast, and more about "can you pick apart different shapes?" than colour. Whilst symbols+colour are the aim to ensure people can follow without loss of information, as you learned with showing if lockers and doors are locked or not, the fact that we are, once again, looking at something like this really begs the question; do you have any colourblind staff members, relatives or friends you could ask for input on these things?

Failing that, a Workshop asking for help on colourblind friendly UI certainly wouldn't be a bad idea as it at least helps get the conversation going before the error needs to be rectified after the fact.

I apologise if this comes across as somewhat harsh...but seeing as I am red-green colourblind, a singularly green interface doesn't actually make my life easier with menu navigation. The "Equinox" is superior purely on the grounds that Black and White are actually contrasting tones than what the "High contrast" has to offer us.

Hopefully, as we found with the Mod Stars, lockers and doors, you'll be willing to listen and take the feedback into account to make something better suited to the different forms of colourblindness than trying to argue that one green screen will be suitable for all involved. If it was, we wouldn't see games offering the four filters of Default, then Protonopia, Deuteranopia and Tritanopia when it comes to those that do provide colourblindness settings.

Any event, sorry for going on, as always.

I've tried to explain this before here https://forums.warframe.com/topic/860716-mining-and-colour-blindness/.

 

The easiest way of explaining it to those who don't have it is ''colour dyslexia'', it's not specifically 'can see this, cannot see that', but rather that distinguishing one from another can be almost impossible. Bright yellow and bright green? Same colour. Purple and dark blue? Same colour. Dark green and dark brown? Same colour. The list goes on.

These aren't really helpful changes, and as I said in that mining thread it really does feel like a mere token effort at times, and a lack of understanding as to the extent of colourblindness.

Wish I knew how to actually change to that Equinox theme, but I can't for the life of me find the option anywhere.

[Zgwortz]

5 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

I've tried to explain this before here https://forums.warframe.com/topic/860716-mining-and-colour-blindness/.

 

The easiest way of explaining it to those who don't have it is ''colour dyslexia'', it's not specifically 'can see this, cannot see that', but rather that distinguishing one from another can be almost impossible. Bright yellow and bright green? Same colour. Purple and dark blue? Same colour. Dark green and dark brown? Same colour. The list goes on.

These aren't really helpful changes, and as I said in that mining thread it really does feel like a mere token effort at times, and a lack of understanding as to the extent of colourblindness.

Wish I knew how to actually change to that Equinox theme, but I can't for the life of me find the option anywhere.

It's under Options > Interface > UI Customization.   You might need to scroll *up* to see it - I missed it the first few times I went looking for it.   It doesn't help that since it's just a line of text in a box, there's no indication it opens a new window.  (UI design suggestion: at the very least put a small right triangle next to it so it looks like "UI Customization >"  -- that will clue in people that clicking on it expands to something more...)

[DeMonkey]

Just now, Zgwortz said:

It's under Options > Interface > UI Customization.   You might need to scroll *up* to see it - I missed it the first few times I went looking for it.   It doesn't help that since it's just a line of text in a box, there's no indication it opens a new window.  (UI design suggestion: at the very least put a small right triangle next to it so it looks like "UI Customization >"  -- that will clue in people that clicking on it expands to something more...)

Cheers. To be honest I was looking more under ''display'' than interface, that's my fault.

[shootaman777]

3 hours ago, (XB1)Aye Dave II said:

IIRC it was stated that the UI was going to be shipped in waves, it seems no one is taking that into consideration and are just assuming this is the full and final UI update. (Console tenno two cents)

Then wave 2, the one with the, I don't know, improvements, should've come first.  Whether or not this is the full and final update, DE still shipped it in the wrong order if it's how you say it is.  And they still have earned some negative feedback for that, which is what ~85%+ of everyone on the forums, who is giving feedback about the UI, is providing. 

In other words, it doesn't matter if they're going to ship an improvement later, they shouldn't ship trash now with blanket promises for an improvement later.  Especially when it's a defective update to a functional and effective system, and the update is entirely unwarranted in the first place. 

Edited June 15, 2018 by shootaman777

[Revgat]

Never sacrifice usability for aesthetics. Hovering over everything just to get basic information is extremely bad design. Lack of text and just icons is bad for veterans who already know most of the items, but for new players it would be a downright confusing mess. You sacrificed functionality so now things arbitrarily take longer for something that many find ugly and looks like it took 5 minutes to mock-up in Photoshop.

I won't even go into the frustration of trying to use a controller with this.

You should scrap it and start over and actually listen to community feedback. But you probably won't... you'll keep this basic and ugly design to use as another plat sink so we can only make it look half-decent by paying. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if you were thinking about charging us plat to bring back lost functionality, display text, and controller support as well.

Paying plat should be for things we can show off to other players (skins, decorations, slots for more frames/weapons, etc). UI isn't one of those things unless you are a streamer. UI is functionality first and foremost and should never be monetized by those with good conscience.

[L0KiGiBB0N]

Please make it so we can see the names of items again. Not being able to see them is especially annoying and tedious when  trading prime parts or at Baro Ki'Teers kiosk because you have to mouse over every single one to see which one to sell/trade.

Also please show how many ducats I own in the baro store

Edited June 15, 2018 by L0KiGiBB0N
added a point

[Wephrix]

Today when i went to check out the items that Baro has to offer, i notice what in the new UI design there's no currency info in the Baro's market screen (like Credits and Ducats available) like the previous UI version. i hope you can fix this :D

[Syvarin]

The three issues I've noticed so far:

• Not showing squad information makes it harder to ensure relic groups are using the right ones.
• Trading with Baro doesn't show how many Ducats you have.
• Not showing item names without hovering makes selling prime parts for Ducats a pain.

I applaud the effort to give us an updated interface but there are times "cleaning it up" by removing information is bad.

[ChronicMX]

I really miss the previous HUB that was on the team in this section.

I want to see the information of the other players at the time I am with them

 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2018 by ChronicMX
Forgot Image

[Blakrana]

44 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

The easiest way of explaining it to those who don't have it is ''colour dyslexia'', it's not specifically 'can see this, cannot see that', but rather that distinguishing one from another can be almost impossible. Bright yellow and bright green? Same colour. Purple and dark blue? Same colour. Dark green and dark brown? Same colour. The list goes on.

These aren't really helpful changes, and as I said in that mining thread it really does feel like a mere token effort at times, and a lack of understanding as to the extent of colourblindness.

That's a good analogy, somewhat surprised I've not seen it around before.

Still, yeah...the problem isn't something they can resolve by running it through some photoshop filters to vet it, then just ship it if it looks okay. Personally, I think a genuine effort to do some research into colourblindness support in general, and in gaming, would go a long way to helping remedy matters. Least, hopefully. Unfortunately, if that's not happened yet despite the repeated highlighting of the issues, I'm unsure when it'd be figured out.

[shootaman777]

19 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

We have exactly 131 screens in Warframe that need an artistic pass to the new style. 8 are done and ready to go.

Please, just stop at the 8.  Leave the other 123 screens in peace.  And, for good measure, please revert the 8 that have been converted to the new style. 

19 hours ago, [DE]Danielle said:

>so that we can improve Warframe’s accessibility.

By googling 'accessibility definition', we can come up with

"

1. the quality of being able to be reached or entered.

   "the restoration project involved repairing the roof and improving accessibility"

   • the quality of being easy to obtain or use.

     "students were concerned about the accessibility of quality academic counseling"
   • the quality of being easily understood or appreciated.

     "the accessibility of his work helped to popularize modern art"
   • the quality of being easily reached, entered, or used by people who have a disability.

     "many architects believe that accommodating wheelchairs is all there is to providing accessibility"

"

Let's compare the old UI and the new UI side-by-side, shall we? 

 

Old UI:
-Easy to use
-Easily understood
-Not Pay2Customize, easy to obtain/reach/enter

New UI:
-Not easy to use
-Not easily understood
-Pay2Customize, not easy to obtain/reach

 

I think we have a clear winner here in terms of 'accessibility'.  The simplest and easiest (and therefore best) thing DE could do to improve the 'accessibility' of Warframe's UI, is to revert the changes. 

Edited June 15, 2018 by shootaman777

[DeMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Blakrana said:

That's a good analogy, somewhat surprised I've not seen it around before.

I guess dyslexia isn't all that common.

The reason I know about it, and can kinda relate it to colourblindness, is because my sister has dyslexia and I made it my mission to teach her how to read. Whenever she struggled she always described the problem as a word looking like another word, so yeah.

I just worry that a lot of people have an outdated and unrealistic view on what colourblindness is.

At least there's the monochromatic theme, at the very least that should be usable by anyone. For me, personally, I'm really liking the Orokin one. The contrast between orange(?) and white is certainly more pronounced than say, green on green.