ASK AN UXPERT
Sprung Studios CEO JAMES CHAYTOR on UI, UX, and why they’re so important
James Chaytor and his teams have worked on Apex Legends, The Elder Scrolls Online, multiple Call of Duty titles,
Microsoft Flight Simulator and far more than could ever be listed here. Yet Chaytor’s story begins before Sprung Studios; even before his videogame work. UI and UX are important elsewhere, too.
After working his way up to creative director in a web marketing firm in the late 1990s, he began consulting with the mobile company Three, who at the time had just rolled out 3G. Chaytor helped the firm with the challenge of making new kinds of content usable on small devices. It was at this point that he founded Sprung Studios, and expanded its services to more clients. But by 2009, the recession had hit budgets hard and companies were pulling together teams for this work.
Chaytor moved Sprung’s focus to games, via a small team who had been laid off from Disney Interactive. These developers had a console background, and needed Chaytor’s help to make a game equally visible and playable on a small screen. That game was CSR Racing… which went on to feature in the 2012 Apple keynote, and make about $12,000,000 a month. This propelled Chaytor into the wider game industry with a bang.
A common misconception is that UI and UX are interchangeable terms. They’re not. “The way I always explain this,” says Chaytor, “[is that] UX is how something works, and UI is how something looks. When you’re working with UX, you’re not trying to think about the theme of the game … the questions you’re asking are: ‘Can I understand this menu system? Are the buttons in the right place?’”
HEADS UP
That said, the lines between UI and UX can blur, as one often informs the design of the other. While Chaytor and his teams at Sprung are now experts in this design, they back up their work with research, to ensure that everything they’re designing is working as it should. This research can turn up the occasional surprise.
One piece of research was a simple survey, which included a question asking where players would go in the menu to turn on subtitles. “It was surprising that people were spread between three options. It was very interesting to me that some people went to audio as a place to find subtitles. It makes sense when you think about it. [These short surveys] really cut down on a lot of the little mistakes that might persist through to a final product.”
Sprung will ordinarily have 7-14 people working on a game, and they’re all similarly trained. While some in the industry specialise in UI or UX, this goes against Chaytor’s design philosophy. “I don’t believe in separating those roles,” he explains. “When you’re working on UI, you have to have an understanding of UX in order to do it. There are so many tiny decisions all through the UX period of the game, because you start with flows, then you have wireframes.
“So we have the UX UI designers, but we also have other areas of UX UI that are so hugely important, like motion. Motion will help to instil certain emotions in the player. You might find that you feel more excited when the UI comes to life to present you with a new card that you’ve just got or a character you’ve upgraded.”
The industry has made great strides in accessibility and people like Chaytor and his teams are vital to this. “We still find ourselves reminding our clients,” he says, “that if you’re going to use colour to define different statuses, you also need to have a symbol so that people who have difficulty seeing colour or are colour-blind would be able to see the difference between those cards”. It’s a keen reminder that if developers want their games to be for everyone, then UI and UX will have to be assigned the importance they deserve.
“UX IS HOW SOMETHING WORKS, AND UI IS HOW SOMETHING LOOKS”