The Look-Up Table
What Tool?
This project was made using Figma and Google Sheets.
A Basic Summary
To make the process of designing menus easier, I created a spreadsheet that tracks different genres of games and their related menus. With it, I'm able to create menus much faster, as long as I know the genre of game.
Solo or Team?
I worked on this as a solo project.
Length of Project?
This project took me a total of 3 months to make, at least so far.
Lessons I Learned
UI analysis, interaction design, UX research.
Sole UX Designer?
With me working solo on this project, I was also the sole UX designer.
Highlighs/Constraints
Constraint
One of the constraints that I had to deal with was making sure that I didn't majorly overscope this project, as it could've very easily turned into a non UX project.
Highlight
My biggest highlight from this project was making the wireframes. I felt the research that I was doing was finally coming together.
Planning
Ideation
The idea occurred to me when I considered simplifying the UX process for designers. I wanted to help UI designers get a portion of their workload done fast.
Setting the Rules
For this project to work, I needed to make sure I didn't go off the rails. 3 games per genre, one old game (20+ years ago), one recent (10 years ago), and one new (1-2 years ago).
The Process
Researching
I used the Game UI Database to look at main menu screens across different genres, recording things like placement, colors, fonts, hover states, click behavior, and existing borders.
One Issue
I then created a spreadsheet to catalogue all of the information. Though due to the small sampling size per genre, some genres just didn't have enough info to make wireframes on.
The Solution
This is a plan for the future, but I'd like to add more and more data to these genres to both eliminate any sampling bias and to have a more robust spreadsheet to use for industry work.
Final Product and Conclusion
Conclusion
This is an example of one of the final main menu screens that I created at the end of this project. The first one is the regular screen, and the second is a hover state.
This was a really exciting and satisfying project to work on, and the best part is that it's not done yet.
In my off-time, I plan on continuing to grow this spreadsheet more and more, making this an asset to my game development toolkit.
