Philip Rosedale and I were just discussing the challenge of creating user interfaces for virtual worlds, and this post on pass-through technology by my colleague futurist Amber Case, really helps crystalize why Minecraft's UI is so powerful (and successful):
All Minecraft’s on-screen UI functions are based around the game’s initial core purpose: Use your creativity and gathering skills to Survive a night against the Creepers — in-game enemies that you must build defenses against in order to have another day of gameplay.
That way, players can remain focused on learning all the game’s functions and how they relate to each other, all for the purpose of surviving and defeating the Creepers and the world’s other attacking beasts. It’s only after this that players realize that the UI they first learned for survival purposes can also be leveraged to thrive — creating beautiful and ambitious homes for themselves, or even the collaborative artworks with other players, all of which helps make Minecraft enormously popular over a decade after launch.
Minecraft's user interface is actually pretty complicated, but its singular purpose makes it become, with repeated usage, intuitive and pass-through:
When you look through a window, you focus on the view, not the window. It’s the act of using it that renders the window invisible. We can see a window at the corner of a room. We know it is there. It makes its presence known to us, but when we look through it, the window disappears.
This illustrates a key point made in a famous quote by Xerox PARC’s Mark Weiser, which many designers misinterpret: “A good tool is an invisible tool… By invisible, we mean that the tool does not intrude on your consciousness; you focus on the task, not the tool.”
Much more here. The ongoing question is whether we can create a virtual world with many multiple uses but an onscreen UI with a singular purpose.
Comments