It is always easy to get intrigued by the graphical representation of user interfaces. Fancy animations, glamorous UI interactions are the main attraction and key elements of many UI/UX websites these days . But all this might have overshadowed the importance of identifying the defining elements of an app and the necessity these elements in the design process before applying visual depiction . Fallout Shelter is the very evidence of a well designed UI without incorporating alluring animations or UI behaviours and rather focusing on the necessity of the defining elements.

The game revolves around characters which each are generated based on certain attributes ( Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck ). The goal is to manage these, ever expanding number of characters to survive yet another day by providing enough supplements in a post apocalyptic world. The three vital supplements, electricity, water and food, are generated in different rooms within the vault. The key task for the user is to meticulously assign each character to these user generated rooms.

The focus in the review is going to be only the key UI elements.

ASSIGNMENT:

Assigning a particular character to a room, is been implemented through a drag and drop process, were you drop the chosen person to the desired room within the vault. In real life in most cases when a person is given a specific task or job, it will require the present of that individual in a specific room or office. So going back this UI at hand, Fallout Shelter, couldn’t define this behaviour any better with what is familiar to most people,”to put the individual in that room as their present is required”, in other words, dragging and dropping the person to a room.

METICULOUS ASSIGNMENT:

The above mentioned element of dragging and dropping might seem an obvious one, as it’s a common UI behaviour these days, and that is expected from most Apps and Games. So what makes Fallout Shelter so special? The identification of this very extra adjective to the word assignment , meticulous, makes all the difference. The importance of it to be prioritise as a necessity to the basic assignment behaviour is what makes this UI, intriguingly different and better than many other ones.

Commonly the definition of similar adjectives as a necessity within the UI is easily being ignored by designers, and rather explained as the expected behaviour or documented within the game as hint and tips.

But the developers at Bethesda, rightfully signified the importance of this by presenting the key attribute of the character relevant to the room whilst hovering the character on top of the room as shown below.

Fig 1- The higher the Agility attribute of a character is within a diner, the fast the food is generated within the vault

METICULOUS REPLACEMENT:

Fallout defines limits for the number of people that can be assigned to a specific room, which this in turn results to a conceptual UI change. Since assigning a character a to a full room causes another character leaving the room, therefore the definition of “assignment” changes to “replacement” . Even though the necessity of the adjective, meticulous, still stands, but now the importance to indicate the required attribute for the relevant room doesn’t seem to be at the utmost significance.

Choosing the best person for the given task in the game which needs to be focused on here. So rather adding a comparison element to the UI behaviour. As shown below the character is being assigned to a full room, causing a switch in UI behaviour. Displaying the difference that the new character can bring to the room when a replacement is going to the take place.

Fig 2- Strength is the main attribute required for the power generating room. The additional character displayed, will reduce the overall strength attributes of the room by one unit.

To conclude, it’s easy to be distracted by the creation of a hint and tips system to introduce UI interactions, UI mechanisms or graphical presentation. Relying on the unrealistic assumption that the users would read all of it and/or remember what they read after few days. Fallout Shelter triggers intuitions by identifying necessary UI elements without any unrealistic assumptions.