Author

Designed the StarCraft 2 interface to be clear, engaging, and intuitive.
Role: Lead UI / UX Designer, interaction design, usability, cross-function collaboration

Cross-functional Collaboration

Crafted the design vision and coordinated a large, cross-disciplinary team to bring it to life.

  • UI Designer

  • UI Artist

  • Technical Artist

  • Developers

  • Producers

  • 3D Artist

  • 3D Animator

  • 3D Scene Builder

  • Sound Team

  • Community Team

Scaling Collaboration

Coordinating across so many roles was challenging, but the results made the extra effort worthwhile.

Teams Invovled

  • UI Designer

  • UI Artist

  • Technical Artist

  • Developers

Teams Involved

  • UI Designer

  • UI Artist

  • Technical Artist

  • Developers

  • 3D Artist

  • 3D Animator

  • 3D Scene Builder

  • Sound Team

Interaction Design

Pain Point

One of the biggest pain points for players was the sense the game lacked a community, caused by low activity in chat channels. This stemmed from both the UI design and the algorithm that populated the channels.

Personas

Leave-me-alone guy

Who: Doesn’t like to chat.
Findings: Prefers playing solo, little social interaction.
Thoughts: Easy to accomadte
Solution: Give them a way to leave chat.

TV-noise guy

Who: Similar to those who are alone but have the TV on
Findings: Enjoy watching text fly by
Thoughts: Likes passive engagement, can benefit from chat visibility.
Solution: Text can fly by without a background; doesn’t need to be fully legible or ADA-compliant

Watcher

Who: a lot of people
Findings: Large portion of the player base.
Thoughts: Potential to convert into active participants with better chat design.
Solution: Add a background for text to improve legibility, but keep it from taking up the whole screen.

Guys-who-like-to-talk guy

Who: Actively talks in chat.
Findings: Core social players we want to support.
Thoughts: Driving chat activity, most important persona for engagement.
Solution: Make chat tall, pinnable so it’s always visible, and doesn’t hinder important navigation.

Watchers can pin a chat box open to easy to read, persistent text.

Text on the bottom right and scrolls by as users talk for TV-noise guy.

More UI Examples

StarCraft 2 User Interface Revamp

YouTube comments show user excitement over some upcoming UI changes over social features and content for casual personas.

About the author

Alexander Sun is an indie children's book author who writes as Mr. Sun. He lived near LA working at the game company Blizzard. He was there for 11 years and loved his job, but after having his son Nathan, Alexander switched careers to have a better work-life balance and salary.

He was employed at Marriott as a UX designer when the pandemic hit and was furloughed. His second son, Ryan, was born around this time. While trying to get him to sleep, Mr. Sun would think about ideas for children's books. He loves sharing his creative passion by involving his kids in the story-creating process.

He hopes that by reading his books with your children, your parent-child bonds will be strengthened and that your kids fall asleep faster so you can enjoy the rest of your evening in peace.