[AUTHOR’S NOTE: I don’t usually post Ingress stuff to my regular blog, and when I posted this in the Ingress community page in G+, I had no idea it was going to actually be transferred in. But since it’s a public community, I guess Google+Blog brought it over. Anyway, it seems to have struck a chord with the Ingress public, and, as of about 3:40pm, sits with +132 rating. A picture is worth a thousand words, I guess.]
Spinners are cool to see, but a pain to play with, both here, in portal mod deployment, and in (ugh) key inventory. (Btw, having an indicator of number of keys on the portal, as well as a way in the scanner of seeing what portals you have keys for would both help manage this key resource better.) A more straightforward interface would make for a more pleasant game to play.
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My thoughts almost exactly
Shut up and take my money? 😛
I like it seems like it would work way better
Agreed
Agreed on all points. This isn't a game that requires fancy graphics. I wish we could select a bare bones interface like what you've created. By time a user is L3 they'll never use the fancy one again.
One point of contention: Now your Upgrade and Cancel buttons are very small.
Brilliant
Not if it shows up as an overlay
This is EXACTLY what I wish the UI was, the pointless spinner ui elements make it slow and obnoxious. There are only 8 levels of items.
I also wish the inventory screen was more of a gallery kind of interface instead of the spinner. +Ingress
While they are tweaking that interface, can they remove the code that makes the resonator labels on the portal info page pulse between barely visible and completely hidden? I have never understood that design choice.
Bearing in mind this was a 5 minute mock-up …
+Chris Buehler – Existing buttons are relatively small, too. But I would let the actual artists try and improve do their job with it.
+Brian Geniesse – Not sure what you mean as an overlay – this would be what the Upgrade Resonator screen looks like (should have included a screen cap of the present one). There would still be an overlay, when you tap on the resonator, showing the current level, range, mod values, as there is today.
In the spirit of Open Source if you don't like the way something is coded, code it better. If you can't code, then you may not understand the complexities which went into the existing platform and the complications which may arise from replacing it.
Two click deployment! Mark the resonator position. Mark the resonator. done.
A popup accessed by a double tap
I like it, thanks for sharing Dave.
Edit: Oh yeah, and an XM meter would be a great addition.
+Brandon Badger +Joe Philley (because I know you guys haven't gotten tagged enough yet today ) 🙂
I'm neither qualified (nor, I believe, allowed) to recode the client. But speaking as both a user and as someone who actually manages development for a living, I do think I'm qualified to say that the UI is time consuming and awkward to use, and to suggest improvements. If there's a reason for all the spinners, aside from looking cool (e.g., there is behind-the-scenes communication that the spinners cover by their visual time lag), I'd be happy to hear about that complication.
+Chris Buehler not even sure why there are upgrade/cancel buttons. I'd rather see the selection of resonator just plant the darn thing and save us a keystroke. All our phones have back buttons, so we don't need cancel either
For that matter, this could even replace the deploy button. If you don't select an octant first, and just tap the resonator you want to place, it drops it in the closest slot.
Great work, Dave – I agree entirely and appreciate your contribution – much better than whining.
I do like "cancel" since the client is laggy enough that it can be hard to know/remember if you were successful in hitting the back button, and you don't want to overshoot and close the client.
Next: what would a better key inventory UI look like? With multiple sorts, arbitrary tagging, etc.
I think the Upgrade & Cancel buttons are fine. But other elements could be compressed a bit so that the 3 levels of shields could also be included. And the option to tap-tap in either direction (item then slot, or vice versa) or drag items to the slots would be nice.
Drag and drop the resonator you want to the slot to which you want to attach it. Couldn't be simpler. Three year olds could figure that out.
I won't dummy this one up, +Neal McBurnett, but I would start with:
1. Treat keys as their own Ops category (not lumped in with Items)
2. Have a horizontal menu across the bottom for Sort by Name, Sort by Proximity, Filter by Tag. Tap on Filter by Tag pulls up the tags you've previously used and limits the list (sorted as indicated) to just the one you choose.
3. Replace the spinner with a vertical scroll list, picture about half the height of the current pictures (I think pix are important, but a vertical scroll list that allows multiple keys to show up on a given piece of screen real estate would be highly useful and make overshoot much less of an issue).
4. Tap on a key pulls up the info, as at present, but with a button that lets you type in a new tag, select from ones you've already entered, or clear the tag. (These tags have to be remembered on the client in case you get that key again.)
And, am I the only one who's noticed that the spinner rotates the compass points in the wrong direction?
I think drag and drop could work, though tapping should also be in there.
I thought about folding the shield/mod selection in there, but (a) didn't want to redesign too many things at once, and (b) I'm reluctant to compress the screen elements too much, for those of us with large fingers (esp. if we put in drag-and-drop).
Here's an ingress-discuss discussion about this:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/ingress-discuss/carousel%7Csort:date/ingress-discuss/9UwCzbayb2o/P9oDKO_W9AAJ
I fully l like the draft, I hope the interface will be changed according to this concept as soon as possible (preferably with the next release).
I suggest to consider adding one more element: the actual XM reserve (in figures or a bar indicator) just to see how much XM is available still for actions – that might be quite useful, I think, especially with these new rules on XM costs.
Personally I agree, that would be WAY BETTER and much faster too. Drag & drop or just click & click style.
+Pete Royston – The fade-pulse thing is kind of cool — but makes playing in the sunlight a lot more difficult …
+Dar Dudley The compass directions are fine! .. you just have to hold the phone above your head and look up! 🙂
Something along these lines would be great.
I think we need to know our distance from the portal too. Because the scanner tends to floating around much these days, it's getting annoying when trying to deploy at optimum distance.
Another advantage to a quicker interface is that the time to drift is minimized. I know that I've been looking at the scanner, and by the time I tap on the portal, tap on Upgrade, scroll to the resonator spot I want to place, and scroll to the resonator I want to put in … I've drafted out of range, or drifted on top of the portal. Repeat eight times …
I agree, +Stephanus Aditamaputra, a range indicator would be nice.
+Dave Hill I think the current UI is beautiful. But it's also clumsy, just like you said. I'm pretty sure the Ingress designers can come up with a more usable UI without compromising its visual appeal.
I am sure that they could make even my rough wireframe look gorgeous, +Matthias Gutfeldt — no question about it.
Aww, man. I've been doing it wrong this whole time! Lol
I've suggested almost exactly an interface like this a number of times since January, but I never get a response from them. I hate those stupid cards just to deploy resos & shields. Except, my suggestion was not to even have an upgrade button. Just tap the reso (or shield) location, then tap the level (or rarity) of the item you want to place. That's it.
Well, hopefully, the new options for location smoothing will help with the drifting issues that everyone seems to have.
It's seems to me to be a phone issue. I have two devices and depending on other things in my life, I use one or the other when playing. My GNex has great GPS stability while my SGS2 drifts like crazy…
This would make so much more sense
+Ingress
A future problem with this solution is that Niantic has already declared that there will be more levels released at some point. If we get new levels of L9 to L16 all buttons might not fit on one "page".
We might need two pages to flip between, one for L1-L8 and one for L9-L16
Two pages are still better than what we have now imo
looks handy. just a thought – maybe the (whole) current UI was designed to consider Glass controls ('ok glass deploy'.. flip left-right with a finger, tap) so we have all that spinners around.
+Hakan Gül – I suspect you could compress the 8 to at least fit three rows to 12, or five columns to 15. On the other hand, I having to spin through to put in an L14 resonator in the current setup would be even more clumsy.
Given GPS inaccuracy and drift, esp. in urban areas, I can't imagine what playing Ingress via Glass would be like.
Wow, this design idea is wonderful. That laggy spinner is gonna drive me insane one day 🙂
this is assuming that Level 8 is the max. what if they increase the levels to 9 or 11 or 13…any odd number.
Offset rows of odd & even numbers of circles can be nested together to save space, or you could just use a hex grid.
A hex grid would certainly have that hi-tech look Niantic likes in the Ingress client, +Dar Dudley. 🙂 But, yeah, my drawing's meant more on principle than the literal interface I'd want to see, and there are a number of ways to add buttons to the array.
I totally agree about the OPs opinion: The current UI is consuming way too much time and needs an improvement.
One other thing which is missing is the ability to recharge a particular resonator. There are times which only some resonators are extremely low (such as being on the periphery of a burster blast), and my XM situation is such that I only recharge particular resonators.
On the question of the resonator inventory, I would make that a scrollable section which defaults to the area which covers your current level. That would allow a nearly infinite number of levels.
+Dave Hill one small modification to your proposed key layout… Have the menu across the top… May seem like a silly thing that is a non issue, but Android design principles say primary menus and tabs (which is effectively what this is) go at the top. Sorry to nit pick. Other than that I whole heatedly agree.
+Sam Alderman ingress isn't an open source project so the spirit of open source is irrelevant- since access to the source is restricted then he has no way to recode the ui. Even if he could, there is no complications in a ui change as those suggested, it is a minor change…
Totally agreed with that
@Iian, if what you say is true, then the Ingress app has been going against those principles from the start. It depends on functionality. Would you have your keyboard pop down from the top?
+Douglas Needham – Good spot on the single-resonator recharge. Hmmm.
Okay, currently it works by
– Spin to the resonator location.
– Tap
– Detail on the resonator as it exists pops up on the bottom half.
– Tap "deploy/upgrade" (pulls up spinner, spin, tap to add resonator) or "recharge" (recharges).
So in my model:
– Tap the resonator location.
– Detail on the resonator as it exists pops up on the bottom half.
– Tap "deploy/upgrade" (pulls up grid of resonator levels, tap to add resonator) or "recharge" (recharges).
Essentially the same logic as what happens now, sans spinners. You're correct I elided the middle step.
+Iain Baker – I'm keeping the buttons across the bottom as they currently are (though they stack). On the key inventory menu stuff I mentioned, I was imagining the Ops menu being across the top still, so the buttons for doing things would again be at the bottom.
Hey +Ingress ! Hire +Dave Hill already!
The menu thing +Iain Baker mentions isn't exactly applicable to games as much I think. They are kind of the exception.
If we do get more levels the resonator section could just omit listing things you don't have to reduce overflow.
One more thing, the center of the spokes provides a great place to possibly list key quantity, overall level, energy, or something.
no need to fix whats not broken
+Dar Dudley a) no it hasn't. The only tab system/horizontal menu is the ops section selector which is at the top. The other menus are pull down, different kettle of fish.
b) in what planet is a keyboard a menu/tab layout?
c) Google used to have several apps that went directly against their own design principles, releasing Android apps that looked like ios apps-doesn't make it right
plus the 3-d look rocks
+Dave Hill You don't need an "Upgrade" button or a "Deploy" button on this screen. Simply change that "Upgrade" button (which is actually used on the previous view to even get to this view) to "Recharge" and the problem is solved.
2 taps:
Tap resonator location (info shows on top, replacing the octant thing)
Tap level to upgrade, recharge, or Back button to do nothing (then the octant thing shows again)
That's it. The grid can stay full time. Unavailable buttons would be dimmed/grayed out like normal. Like +Douglas Needham said, if they add levels, the grid can scroll horizontally. Also, if you tap a mod location, the level grid could change to 3 rarity buttons. If different mods are added, we might need a grid for the mod type to show before the rarity selection grid shows.
Good call +2WYCE I was starting to think that's how it'd work kind of too, but didn't think about the upgrade button. Indeed it'd be perfect to replace it with a recharge button.
After thinking more about it, I think the center should have the overall level and energy level, and then there'd be room for the xm meter at the top.
Yep. Great point, +Doug Dunfee I didn't think of the xm bar. Definitely important. I agree, lots of room in the center for the portal info/stats.
+james hawkins There appears to be some consensus here that it actually is broken to some degree. Given any ambient light at all, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between say an L4 and L5 or an L5 and L6 resonator. And bumping the screen brightness is a very poor answer to this, especially given how the game chews up battery charge. Indeed, numerous HCI studies have shown that having a UI rely on slightly different colors is not something which lends itself to creating a good UI. Even the use of the "level" color in the text is poor design, as a number of those colors create horrible contrasts which make the text almost unreadable. Also, what is going to be the case when we are talking say 16 levels instead of the current 8… the answer is that things will be worse. It surprises me that anyone even remotely associated with a Google project would not be keeping the color contrast issue in mind. And while 3D appears cool, functional is far more important.
One other thing which drives me nuts is when I go to deploy resonators via the Upgrade screen is that when I go to select the first resonator, it is at L1 instead of at my level, and the second and subsequent instead of being at the last level I deployed or the maximum that I could deploy, it again is at L1. It means that there is considerable searching for the right level resonator when your normal L6 pattern should be something like L6-L4-L5-L4-L6-L4-L5-L4 (for maximal spread of the higher level resonator). The current UI should at least offer a configuration toggle for this sort of behavior. (What do you think +Ingress, do you think we might get at least this behavior in the next non-bugfix release??)
Things I do like about the current Upgrade screen are the previously mentioned single resonator recharge, as well as the display of the range, as well as the changes that deploying a new resonator to the portal would create. With resonators now costing XM to deploy, making play in more rural areas such as where I live even more of a limiting factor, I may find myself forced to build the minimal portal for the range which I need, instead of the maximum… that, or just go through a cycle of build… allow to decay… build again. Because even with power cubes, I am finding that I am having to go through portals several times a day just to gather the XM to recharge, and sometimes even only do a partial circuit before I run out of XM… and this was before the changes to XM cost for deploying resonators, firing bursters, etc. And this has been true not only here, but when I go to a much more populated area such as Pittsburgh PA.
Got the itch and had to give it a try. 🙂
On the white background the colors look overbearing, but you get the idea.
http://i.imgur.com/KPBvblR.png
wth, here's a dark version 🙂
http://i.imgur.com/1sADiTX.png
+Douglas Needham – In addition (and I hadn't actually thought of this prior to just this moment), accessibility standards dictate not just relying on color (there are any number of color-blind people for whom the use of color in the current game would be highly problematic).
[Post is currently at +172.]
Sorry for everybody else's luck but I do believe 15 levels would fit on a 1080p phone…
I love this idea!
+Dave Hill Okay, since I've had some time on my hands, I decided to have a go at this. Here's my take on both recharging and upgrading, all in one screen. I tried to incorporate all the suggestions that I could remember from the comments. – http://lh6.ggpht.com/-aTLWPL_kNCM/UZEj4Y_PNAI/AAAAAAAAEPI/9fScRC_3m0o/s640/PortalUpgrade_Rev.jpg
Most of it looks a bit fuzzy, but that's because I started it in the same small low-res size as the OP's pic, which worked just fine for that one. But when I dropped the layers on mine it blurred all my pretty work. 🙁 But when I went back to put in the XM bar that I forgot, I went ahead and enlarged it to a proper resolution for my phone first. So, if it looks hard to read, view it on your phone. Then look at the XM bar to see how sharp it could really be, even with everything kept small to pack it in the interface.
After working on that, I agree with Dave about the colors. When I got to the bottom, I decided to just go with white text, because most of the other ones are just hard to read except yellow and black. (I meant to use black on the shield buttons to further distinguish them from the resonators, but I forgot.) Now, I crammed the shields in with the rezzies, but that wouldn't have to actually be like that. That section, with just 8 rezzies, could be made to swipe to one side for shields. Or to the other side for more levels of resonators, if Niantic decides to add them.
The Undo button is there for a reason. I still contend that it would be excellent to, either drag or tap-tap multiple items into place and see if you like the setup before you lock it in by hitting Deploy. If you don't, then you can just Undo how ever many steps back you need to change it. This would make upgrading one level at a time to maximize your AP a breeze, not to mention visualizing your rez placement strategy.
Back to the colors. Most of them are fine on the black background. But on that teal one, they suck. It should be okay for the portal level to show the appropriate color. And, obviously, the XM bar color and faction logo would be yours if you could get to the recharge/upgrade screen.
I also thought that the XM meter could be a ring around the logo, instead of the bar. Or, there could be a meter ring for the portal's percentage of total strength.
Yes, Niantic Labs, I would like a job. Thank you. LOL
Oh! And if they just gotta have something that moves, they could make the resonators and the compass points rotate as you turn. That is, if they could fix how the game throws the compass out of whack on so many phones.
Very nice, +Dar Dudley! I think it may be too busy for actual use with human-sized (or my-sized) fingers, but some interesting concepts in there.
I like spreading the shields in ring … but would people then think that the shields are directional?
+Dar Dudley GREAT idea with the UNDO – DEPLOY buttons, and one that I haven't heard or thought of yet! There are things to be considered with it though. Good or bad is in the eye of the beholder…
I like the idea of pre-setup & undo before locking in changes via the deploy button when it's me claiming the portal. This means my portal would be fully deployed/upgraded in an instant when I click deploy.
BUT, it would suck when I'm the one who wants to try to prevent someone from fully deploying a portal. I would no longer be able to destroy resonators before someone is finished deploying. So in that regard, it would change a whole dynamic of the gameplay at the head to head level.
So that's something to consider. In a way, that might actually be good considering how difficult it is to defend portals and how easy it is to destroy them. Also, when collaborating with team members to build/upgrade a portal, it could be confusing for obvious reasons.
All of our suggestions will make it faster to deploy, but with previous suggestions, you still have a chance (although less of one) to prevent/delay full deployment.
I personally love the idea; just trying to think of some effects of such a big change for discussion's sake.