My Concept Screens for a Management UI Overhaul

robdood

robdood
Disclaimer: I am in no way belittling the hard work that the guys and girls at Frontier who've busted their guts delivering the game. I <3 you guys!


I don't think I'm alone in my frustration with the UI in Planet Coaster, disregarding the obvious bugs / niggles, the Management screen in particular is a massive bugbear of mine, for generally the following reasons:

- too many clicks to do anything
- too much white space
- covers a large portion (75%!!!) of the screen so cannot 'do' things in the park with it open
- closes itself all the time
- doesn't remember what you were last looking at.

It's strange, it's almost been designed like a corporate web system, which is fine in of itself, but I can't help but feel the people who designed it haven't actually spent a good chunk time playing the game. It hinders / is in the way more than it helps.

So I spent much longer than I should have putting some concept screens together, see below. In no way are my suggestions foolproof or fully through through (resizable panels would be a bit difficult the more I thought about it!), but please use this thread to chip in your thoughts and get some ideas flowing, so we can help Frontier polish this aspect of the game right up!

imgur link:
http://imgur.com/a/2JMfX

Screens:
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One again, thanks to all at Frontier, keep up the hard work! :)


UPDATE: 15th Nov 2016

Based on the kindly-provided feedback of the community I made a few adjustments, and just mocked up the kinds of things I want right now. Yes, I'm selfish like that.

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Sirius360

Sirius360
Wow that is amazing!! [woah] I love your concept. It would be much better like that.
You made a very good job. I hope the devs will see this thread.
+1 from me [big grin]
 

Acid1

A
Really great effort mate.

I think it would be nice to view your finance breakdown directly by clicking on the money you have. We need more hotlinks like that, there seems to be plenty of opportunity to.
 

breezerHOG1

breezerHOG1
holy moly frontier made a huge mistake only giving us 8 days with the beta

isnt this what "supporting the community" is all about? i bet this thread goes ignored by the devs [sad] nice work tho OP

personally I think there is wayyy too much clicking, researching a new ride requires 6 clicks through 4 windows to unlock the new item once you finish researching it before you can even buy it, hiring staff sucks too and I refuse to set prices and condiments on EACH INDIVIDUAL item within a shop. RCT3 allowed shop condiments to be optional for each guest (much better) and in RCT3 setting prices for one shop would effect all of them so clearly the UI has made some major mistakes in it
 
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Kicks

Kicks
Fantastic effort and very well done. A hearty +1 from me - which this forum had the Rep function turned on, as it stands I almost accidentally reported you :D
 

robdood

robdood
Thanks all for the kind words!

I work in software so can appreciate the kinds of changes I'm suggesting here could be large amounts of work under the hood, but I really think in a game that is mainly about menus and stats, the menus and stats have to be super slick, and not frustrating.

I want to hear YOUR ideas though, share them! :)
 
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ShepPC

S
robdood said:
- too many clicks to do anything
- too much white space
- covers a large portion (75%!!!) of the screen so cannot 'do' things in the park with it open
- closes itself all the time
- doesn't remember what you were last looking at.

It's strange, it's almost been designed like a corporate web system, which is fine in of itself, but I can't help but feel the people who designed it haven't actually spent a good chunk time playing the game. It hinders / is in the way more than it helps.
Click to expand...

1000% agree. The current UX isn't designed with QoL in mind. Yes, it technically does every task that was written in a design document somewhere, but seems like nobody stepped back and asked if it was the right way.
 

Jordumus

J
Nice job! :) looks much cleaner, more dynamic, more adjustable, ..

The loading times should improve as they don't have to load all the data at once, with the tabs you're using..

I hope we can go towards this with future updates!
 

dixinormous

D
This is awesome and is very similar to how I *wish* it had been implemented.

On the staff screen, I'd completely do away with the 'Hire' tab, and just have a 'Hire' button on each role tab.
I'd also do the same with the Rota tab. Get rid of it... have different rota's for each role. I end up creating different rotas for each role anyway.
Move the tab icons to the top, creating more horizontal space for a tabled layout.
I'd also treat all entertainers equally, and have them swap costumes - like how it worked in RCT. Just makes more sense.

The finances screen lacks a lot of detail. I want to be able to drill down to see how much each shop is earning, for example.

I don't know about you, but I personally find the 'Overiew' tab to be completely useless. I have to really think when I look at it. I'd treat it less as an 'information' screen, and more of a functional screen, where I can perform park wide tasks, such as opening / closing, set gate prices, etc.

Both the Research and Marketing features are a bit underwhelming, but in terms of UI I can't really pick much faults there. Those parts of the game feel underdeveloped though.

Other random bug bears:
- Windows 'forgetting' state / selections between open / closes is annoying as ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎
- Coaster / Ride / Buildings menu - some filters are on the left hand side of the window, others are RIGHT aligned at the top of the window. Lots of eye travel!
- In fact, just the sheer number of filters and sub filters is really annoying.
- Certain screens seem to be mutually exclusive without good reason
- In general the balance of scale across the UI feels off. For example, the windows take up lots of space, but some of the text is tiny.
- I strongly dislike the way they've split up coaster types that are extremely similar. For example, Wendigo Vs Dragon. Wing Coaster vs Wing Coaster Launched (really...?)
- There is a lot of missing information in general across the whole game. Information that clearly exists! Like item cost for example. Missed sales - why were sales missed?

You know, even beyond the actual visible UI - there are certain feedback elements that seem to be missing. Example being: an audible 'cha ching' when a sale is made. We can see 'Trashy' areas of the park without opening any screens or windows, but can we see crime hotspots (in fact does crime even exist in the game?), can we see customers who are unhappy with scenery / prices / queue times without opening a window?
 

ConstructStruck

ConstructStruck
The resizable panels would be a huge step forwards, and probably worth the work.

Overall, the look of the buttons on the left kinda reminds me of RCT3 and interrupts the beautiful views that we get in the game, which is my biggest gripe with this system. I would consider a mouseover button stack that expands up by the notifications button or something like that, or even just smaller buttons on the bottom toolbar. I would just hate to loose the seamless, balanced interface that makes this game pleasant to look at.

Otherwise, fantastic work, I can't find much wrong with anything else here. It's not perfect and I would like to see some substantial updates to management going forwards, but this is really good for what we've currently got.
 
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