She isnt pretty but you'll get the idea enough to offer feedback. Little background about the game: It's a space vessel combat simulation. Here’s the first batch of icons. Going clockwise starting from 12 o clock -Tactical -Hanger Bay -Engineering -Medical -Sensor Map -Security Forces (formally Marines) -Helm -Communications I’d like some comments and criticism. Specifically do they make sense and can you accept these images to represent the stations aboard the ship? Please be brutal but fair. If my skills aren’t up to par, tell me. You wont hurt my feelings. ;) This is how the rose will work. When the player opens it up, it’ll come up on his screen much like you see it in the pic. When you select one icon (a command) from the outer rim it and the rest of the icons will move down one level and they will be replaced by sub icons. Now, I can make an icon for every sub-command BUT that may be a bit too much for players to remember. 8 icons are easy to remember. 15 or 30 icons would just be a mess. Don’t you think? For example, Engineering simply leads to 2 other sub commands. “Power Plant” and “Damage Control” and icons for those would be easy enough to remember because lead to command panels. The panel is another window that opens up where the player can make adjustments to his vessel like adjust the power going to his engines, weapons, or where he can assign damage control teams to areas of the ship that needs repairs. But Helm leads to at least 7 non-combat orders and at least that many combat movement orders like “Come to…”, “Dock with my target”, “Form up with…”, etc. So here’s the question. Should all the sub commands be text? And if they are text should the first level commands be text as well? The only problem I have with text is that, if we use it, the text in the 2 side boxes will be vertical and it’ll be tough to read.

The icons could work, but perhaps you can make a few changes to the overall interface. I suggest that you keep the ones that are easy to catch (e.g. medical) and redesign the others. The style of the icons should also match. Notice the medical and helm icons "pops out" a little more because they have some black in them?

The icons need more space to "breath". They are located very close to the edges of their containers. Some of them are small, like medical, and communications is very wide compared to that.

Perhaps you can change the width of the outer "ring", so that there is more space for the icons, and reduce the size of some of the icons so it doesn't look too crammed up. The smaller "rings" could be slightly smaller (unless there's a need for it) so the design balances out.

As for your text showing up, perhaps you can have it pop up next to the icon. e.g: for security forces the text will show up at the area above the sensor, with a box around it with a light grey, transparent background.

I hope my comments help. Interesting concept!



[Edited by - digimax on July 22, 2006 10:32:21 AM]

The icon designs need work to be easier to read. The only clear ones are medical and marines. For example, Communications can be a satellite dish or antennae, helm can be the front of a helm with one of those one-eyed overlay visors, sensor map maybe what you have with an N^ arrow. Things have to be overly-simple to read (and tooltips would help, but not replace that).

And don't forget you can use things like arrows quite effectively. For example, when you need things like come to and go to, you can use hand signals, or maybe a soldier with arrows.

This sort of thing is most effectively done through some kind of focus group, make a few icons (or use existing ones for samples) to get some feedback on what works for each item, and then choose the best ones. Ask your friends and family and coworkers and peers.

hey, thanks for the help guys. ill work on it while i'm at work tonight and upload more.

btw, you're all right on all points. mucho appreciated.