I found games ux really transformative , where they almost become work UIs. Everyone pays to learn photoshop, nobody wants to pay to learn to use an UI for a game. Not even in tutorial ttime.
Total annhilation was such a milestone to RTS games UI. Programming unit routes and behaviour via factories was peak intuitiv design. It was such a boost to the experience of strategy compared to the clicks per minute juggling competition that was starcraft.
I didn't read the entire article but the headline reminds me of a programme I use: Treesheets. It's a spreadsheet/note taking app made by a person in the games industry, and I find it really fun to use.
Refreshing take on exploring the "delight" aspect of UX with lots of nuance as well. I read too many comments on here that seem a little a too spartan in their perspective on good UX, but it feels silly to be spartan on a topic that is so, so far from being solved.
Yep. Most people here tend to think that software should be as unfriendly and retro as possible so it feels like “real computing, you know, from the golden age” which is just absurd. Computers should be a delight to use. Interfaces should delight users. The experience should make the user feel good. That was always the point, right from the beginning.
I don't want "delight" from an interface. I want to do whatever I need done. Interfaces should make work easier, not focus on irrelevant nonsense that delays input and feedback for the sake of looking shiny and new.
Great article. I’ve been in the UI/UX space for years. Prior to that I studied gamedesign at uni and graduated engineer in art and tech. Principles of gamedesign always allowed me to solve ux problems in sometimes unusually delightful ways. One tiiiny example was a search function for a piece of software that was incredibly slow. The engineers couldnt get it to go any faster. I helped solve it with an old gamedesign technique, which is to add story to the loading screen. Just adding a fun animation and text on what’s happening helped decrease dropoff and increase delight. Now transitioned to more design and engineering allows me to own the full ux even more. [1]
One difference between games and apps is the way of development and release. A game is build and then released to the community in one go, so everyone is assumed to be a learner.
Games are explicitly tested by new testers all the time to identify learning bottlenecks. App features are build for existing customers where the assumption is they already know how to use it, testing with new users seems to be rare.
Many games would cease to be games, had they a good UX to solve the nominal problem. E. g. many management games would be way easier with a spreadsheet.
There will never be a time when I'm configuring my UI in a rendered page or on my desktop on Linux or BSD that I'm not thinking about the pre-CU UI and sounds of Star Wars Galaxies or mostly Japanese PSX / PS2 video games of a certain design style of the time.
When I traveled to Japan I realized that many of their vending machine interfaces are totally in the style of literally any Nintendo game UI I ever played: a bit cute, a bit whimsical, but ultimately very easy to read and fun to use.
But the biggest differentiator in my eyes was sound. Where in Europe most non-broken vending machines are silent apart from the noise they make when the product comes out, in Japan every action, every button, and every step produces a host of sounds, often the machine literally talks to you.
Of course machines with sounds exist here as well, but it is often "just" a layer that has been added to improve accessible with no considerations given to the quality and aesthetics of the sounds. The Japanese machines I interacted with all had their very own consistent character.
I found games ux really transformative , where they almost become work UIs. Everyone pays to learn photoshop, nobody wants to pay to learn to use an UI for a game. Not even in tutorial ttime.
Total annhilation was such a milestone to RTS games UI. Programming unit routes and behaviour via factories was peak intuitiv design. It was such a boost to the experience of strategy compared to the clicks per minute juggling competition that was starcraft.
Have you seen Beyond All Reason's Move Line Drag command? (which can also be queued)
Being able to scribble the exact spread of positions you want your units to take, as a series of waypoints, at the speed of thought, is incredible.
https://www.beyondallreason.info/commands/move-line-drag
I didn't read the entire article but the headline reminds me of a programme I use: Treesheets. It's a spreadsheet/note taking app made by a person in the games industry, and I find it really fun to use.
link: https://strlen.com/treesheets/
A few past discussions:
TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer (Hierarchical Spreadsheet) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654219 - April 2026 (1 comment)
TreeSheets: Open Source Free Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34184993 - Dec 2022 (55 comments)
Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27614912 - June 2021 (90 comments)
TreeSheets: Free Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15057392 - Aug 2017 (58 comments)
TreeSheets: Free-Form Data Organizer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11247372 - March 2016 (28 comments)
That looks like an interesting program. I can hardly believe I’d never heard of it before—and it’s in the Debian repository, too.
I could be wrong, but I think he wrote Treesheets before he was "in the games industry" (but after he wrote Cube!).
wow. thank-you. i'd never heard of it, and it is a thing of beauty.
I swear I’m having déjà vu. Didn’t this exact post go up on HN like 2 days ago and somebody mentioned tree links as one of the top comments?
this is not me being all “OH MY GOD REPOST” I’m just scratching my head because I swear I saw this exact thread the other day ha
I believe HN revives posts and rewrites the timestamps of comments sometimes to give them another chance of visibility
That would explain it!
Refreshing take on exploring the "delight" aspect of UX with lots of nuance as well. I read too many comments on here that seem a little a too spartan in their perspective on good UX, but it feels silly to be spartan on a topic that is so, so far from being solved.
Yep. Most people here tend to think that software should be as unfriendly and retro as possible so it feels like “real computing, you know, from the golden age” which is just absurd. Computers should be a delight to use. Interfaces should delight users. The experience should make the user feel good. That was always the point, right from the beginning.
No one here thinks that. Yes there are some Linux tryhards but 99% of users on HN understand that UI/UX should be least friction.
> No one here
> Yes there are some
Which is it?
They said “most people” which is wrong.
I don't want "delight" from an interface. I want to do whatever I need done. Interfaces should make work easier, not focus on irrelevant nonsense that delays input and feedback for the sake of looking shiny and new.
I'd assume that "delight" here means making work easier and doing what you need done. Delays/shininess are the opposite of what I'd call delight.
Great article. I’ve been in the UI/UX space for years. Prior to that I studied gamedesign at uni and graduated engineer in art and tech. Principles of gamedesign always allowed me to solve ux problems in sometimes unusually delightful ways. One tiiiny example was a search function for a piece of software that was incredibly slow. The engineers couldnt get it to go any faster. I helped solve it with an old gamedesign technique, which is to add story to the loading screen. Just adding a fun animation and text on what’s happening helped decrease dropoff and increase delight. Now transitioned to more design and engineering allows me to own the full ux even more. [1]
[1] https://designshippers.com
One difference between games and apps is the way of development and release. A game is build and then released to the community in one go, so everyone is assumed to be a learner.
Games are explicitly tested by new testers all the time to identify learning bottlenecks. App features are build for existing customers where the assumption is they already know how to use it, testing with new users seems to be rare.
Many games would cease to be games, had they a good UX to solve the nominal problem. E. g. many management games would be way easier with a spreadsheet.
There will never be a time when I'm configuring my UI in a rendered page or on my desktop on Linux or BSD that I'm not thinking about the pre-CU UI and sounds of Star Wars Galaxies or mostly Japanese PSX / PS2 video games of a certain design style of the time.
When I traveled to Japan I realized that many of their vending machine interfaces are totally in the style of literally any Nintendo game UI I ever played: a bit cute, a bit whimsical, but ultimately very easy to read and fun to use.
But the biggest differentiator in my eyes was sound. Where in Europe most non-broken vending machines are silent apart from the noise they make when the product comes out, in Japan every action, every button, and every step produces a host of sounds, often the machine literally talks to you.
Of course machines with sounds exist here as well, but it is often "just" a layer that has been added to improve accessible with no considerations given to the quality and aesthetics of the sounds. The Japanese machines I interacted with all had their very own consistent character.