After my last post about UI design, I’m sure you’re expecting me to show you a brilliant, flawless UI. Prepare to be disappointed! Creating a good UI is a continuous process. It’s also a very personal and subjective thing, so what works for me may make you shudder. I know I still have a long way to go. I can talk big, but implementing my own suggestions is another thing entirely.

I am going to share with you a quick rundown of my redesigned UI (which has changed even since I wrote the first draft of this post). I’ve divided this into two parts in an effort to reduce the massive wall of text. This first post will focus on UI elements and addons that are helpful while in raiding or running heroics. The second will consist of other quality-of-life addons that I cannot live without, but don’t really help during combat.

Here’s two screenshots of my UI, the first on a healing character and the second on my rogue. I completely fail at taking screenshots during raids, but this will at least give you an idea of how it all comes together.

Healer version of UI

DPS version of UI

Action Bar

The first thing to get tossed out the window was the default bar — those eagles have been consuming precious space for far too long. I grabbed Bartender4, which was very easy to setup. I have a bar on the left for quest items, professions, and other things that don’t need a hotkey. That bar will fade out unless I hover over it, maximizing my visible space while in combat.

The bottom two bars are filled with crucial combat related abilities, as well as health potions, and my mount. All the bars have easily adjustable sizing, spacing, and alignment. One neat feature is that abilities will turn red when you can’t cast them — such as when you’re out of range of a target. I use the default hotkeys for combat as well as a few additional ones on the upper bar with a random assortment of keys that are easy to reach (I’m still working on that, so don’t judge my weird keybind choices please).

My rogue's main Bartender bar

Unit Frames

Unit frames were the other key change I had to make. This is something I’ve resisted for a long time. I played with other unit frames before and uninstalled them in a fluster. My biggest issue was the display of combo points — I couldn’t figure out how to get them to display with Pitbull or whatever I had tried before, and so I gave up on the idea. This time I knew I had to try harder. Having myself and my target on the upper side of the screen seemed inefficient, as I had to constantly glance back and forth between the unit frames, cooldowns, cast bars, etc.

There are a ton of unit frame addons out there, but I chose Shadowed Unit Frames at the advice of Jardal. It is supposedly easier to configure than Pitbull or Xperl. I didn’t have any trouble with it – you can easily position each type of unit by simply dragging them. The configuration options are very extensive, but it works quite well out of the box. The combo points automatically display as little yellow blocks at the bottom of your target frame. Shaman totems similarly show up as four colored blocks on the bottom of your player frame that grow smaller as their time runs out.

Combo Points

I placed myself and my target at the bottom of my screen, above my cast bar and action bar. I turned off the raid frames as I don’t need them — I use grid for healing. For 5-man groups my party is to the left side of the screen, with my focus target beneath them.

You can configure what buffs/debuffs show on these units easily.

Target Unit Frame With Filterable Debuffs

Cast Bar

Quartz is a recent addition to my addon arsenal – it is a configurable cast bar that can show latency, and the global cooldown. The global cooldown is fantastic — by default a little white blip that crosses your screen. You can customize cast bars for targets and focus targets as well as yourself — I didn’t need this feature as Shadowed Unit Frames already does what I need there. It might be helpful though for certain boss abilities to have the cast bar appear in the center of the screen (especially if you’re assigned to interrupts).

Quartz cast bar with latency and global cooldown 'spark'

Timers

These are buffs and debuffs you want to know about, and they should be situated in a place your eyes can quickly glance at. As a mutilate rogue I need to know that my Hunger for Blood and Slice and Dice are up, as well as keeping an eye on my Envenom uptime. As a elemental shaman you need to know that Flame Shock is still ticking so you can throw out that critical Lava Burst.

This was one of the more difficult decisions for me on what addon to use. I flipped back and forth several times between the Quartz Procs module and the ClassTimer addon. I ended up going with Quartz Procs because I liked the integration with Quartz. It is functional for any class as far as I know, and works very well by default (although position takes a little fidgeting).

Quartz Procs Timers

Damage Meters/ Threat Meters

I recently switched to Skada from the traditional Recount + Omen combo. It’s a very lightweight addon, and quite easy to use. I have mine set to show threat meters while I’m in combat, and DPS or Healing at the end of the fight. It’s aesthetically pleasing, and captures all the data I need in an accurate way. I find it easier in Skada than in Recount to flip around from looking at DPS to Damage Taken to Healing, etc. It is a great, minimalistic tool for analyzing what’s going on in a raid.

Skada in Threat meter mode

*notice the rogue who is failing to use ToT to help her threat level

Skada's Mode Panel

Boss Mod

Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) is an addon that I cannot live without. Unless you’re passionate about making things pure and hardcore, I can’t see why anyone would want to raid without this addon (or its alternatives such as BigWigs or Deus Vox). I placed my DBM timers on the right side of my screen under my buffs/debuffs. When something really important happens a notification flashes in the middle of my screen and plays a warning noise.

DBM Timers

Warnings and DBM timers in center screen

Nameplates

TidyPlates + ThreatPlates — I find this crucial for those few times I tank, and it’s even helpful as a DPS because you know right away you’ve pulled threat when that nameplate turns red large and angry looking.

Angry red threat nameplate (or lost threat for tanks)

Raid/Group Frames

I use Grid in combination with Clique for healing. It’s very configureable and allows you to see debuffs, buffs, incoming heals, threat, etc. I also found it useful when tanking to quickly target a DPS who has threat problems and taunt off them. It’s a little bit of work to set up, but none of the other healing addons I’ve tried work out of the box well either.

Grid

Combat Text

Parrot is pretty combat text that scrolls across your screen in a nice arc. It is nice confirmation that things are working properly — I know I’m hitting the mob or healing my target. I can also see easily things like how much my shaman’s Lava Burst crits for without rummaging through the combat log. Plus… it just makes me happy. I know that minimalists would consider it distracting, but I love it.

Parrot Combat Text

Class Specific

I have a shaman addon called Totem Timers that is a nice replacement to the default totem bar. It allows you to hotkey practicaly everything. Currently I hotkey SHIFT-a, SHIFT-f, SHIFT-e, and SHIFT-w to open up the air, fire, earth and water menus respectively, and then each totem has it’s own number. So if i want to cast my fire elemental while I’m in combat I just hit SHIFT-f, then 1.

TT also includes a little bar to monitor your weapon buff, shield, and reincarnate timer.

Totem Timers Tracker

On my rogue I grabbed a simple addon called Mojo Poisons to scream at me if I don’t have my poisons on – these warnings will pop up in huge flashing text in the middle of my screen.

That’s it for part one of UI Design.  Overall I’m fairly happy with it, but I will continue to tweak things (both aesthetically and functionally). Stay tuned for next time where I go over some other Addons that are more quality-of-life UI enhancements.

Time to dive into a topic that has been on my mind lately — the UI of WOW. WOW’s default UI is not optimal, but we can get around this due to it’s extensibility. There are a plethora of addons created by the community to enhance or replace it.

IRL, I am a software developer and have a bit of a fascination with UI design, useability, etc. I know quite a few people who actually went to grad school specfically for HCI (human computer interaction). It’s a neat subject, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is, for someone interested in that kind of stuff I have been absolute fail at designing my own UI properly in WOW.

Until a few weeks ago I had a mishmash of addons strewn across my screen. Odd things ocurred while in combat like my class timers covering up my target’s cast bar. I  stubbornly used the default unit frames and action bar. Every time I discovered a new addon I would try to cram it in somewhere. When playing my eyes zigzagged across the screen in an endless, frenetic dance to keep aware of everything that was going on. It was an inefficient, unattractive mess.

I finally sat down and had an intervention with myself. “Self,” I admonished, “you really need to clean this up. You know better than this.” I began pondering what I needed to do. I took some inspiration from some principles that UI designers generally follow, such as these, and thought about them in the context of WOW.

Here’s my criteria for a “good” WOW UI, in no particular order.

1. Maximize visible screen real estate. You want to be able to see the boss, the nasty stuff on the floor, and be wholly aware of the situation around you. If your UI hides this from you then it is very bad. Its a bit like a puzzle sometimes, it’s worthwhile to keep your screen as clear as possible — utilize your sides and corners efficiently.
2. Group similar things together. If everything you need to see while in combat is all in one portion of the screen, the less your eyes have to travel and the less likely you are to miss something. This also means grouping elements that serve specific tasks near each other. An example of this is keeping your buffs and debuffs next to each other. As a mutilate rogue you might want to see your Hunger For Blood buff, Slice and Dice, etc. near where you see the Deadly Poison debuff on the target (and Rupture in the old days).
3. Minimize distraction. Don’t clutter your screen up with things you don’t need. This works hand in hand with #1. The important things should be big, obvious and easy to see — everything else should be out of the way or just not there at all. Do you really need your QuestTracker out while in combat?  Think about the Google search page – it is incredibly minimal and everything serves a specific purpose. <angry_rant>Except when they clutter it up by putting an annoying little box telling me to switch to Chrome. </angry_rant>
4. Provide good feedback. This one is a little more vague. What I mean is that it should tell you when you’re doing something good, when you’re doing something bad, and when you should do a specific task. So, is that any clearer? No, I doubt it. Oook… so I guess we’ll go with the examples. Your UI should do things like: tell you when an ability is off cooldown, make you aware that you’re standing in nasty stuff, let you know when something procs, let you see debuffs that you can remove, alert you when your self-shield has dropped (like water shield, or inner fire), tell you when you can’t cast something, etc. Your UI should help contribute to your awareness of the situation. Some people are good at picking up on subtle clues, but why make things harder on yourself (unless that is what you enjoy). These shouldn’t be things you have to hunt for – they should be obvious and prominent.
5. Aesthetics. You’re going to be staring at it a lot – it should be pleasing on the eyes. If you’re OCD about that bar not lining up with the other one then you should probably fix it — you don’t want to be distracted in a raid by that thought crossing your mind.  If you have a big flashing block in the middle of your screen saying “You forgot your poisons dummy” will it’s ugliness bother you? Perhaps there is a more tasteful but still obvious way to indicate this, such as with a Power Aura. Another thing to think about is maintaining a theme or color scheme across your addons. Some people strive for clean lines, and a minimalistic look-and-feel. Others want to maintain the “style” of the original UI like this guy.

For those of you who have lots of alts, another key thing is consistency. You don’t want to spend hours fiddling with your UI on each character, so think of something that will work across the board. Think about the roles you play — how are they different, and how are they similar? Keeping addons and UI elements consistent across your characters will help form habits and make things comfortable as you switch back and forth. This is why many altoholics tend to keybind “similar” abilities to the same key on each character.

There are thousands of addons out there that can help you create a fantastic UI. Often the difficult part is choosing which ones to use. The only advice I can really offer is to experiment. Think about what purpose you want an addon to serve and try a few that meet that need. Look at what is most popular — there is probably a good reason for it. Some addons are difficult to configure, while others behave exactly how you want out of the box. It’s a huge community, and one that is quite fun to explore. Don’t be afraid to try something new, as you can always just delete it and start over. I don’t think I’ll ever be perfectly satisfied with my UI. I know there are always things I can improve upon, so I just keep trying.

There is another issue that you may face when using various addons — your available resources. Not everyone’s computer can handle having fifty billion addons installed. Sometimes it pays to choose addons based on low CPU usage, low memory usage, or the fact that a single addon might serve several needs rather than having three separate ones installed.

Creating your own UI is a fun task for some, and an ardous one for others.  It’s not a terrible thing to run with the default UI — you can still play the game — just not as efficiently or effectively as someone who has put some thought and effort into customizing it. This isn’t a priority for everyone, especially a casual player who has no interest in min-maxing. For me, it is all part of the “metagame”.

I was going to include a breakdown of my UI in this post but then realized I’d blathered on long enough. That will come in one or two more posts later this week.