Atanas Laskov 🏳️‍🌈

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Alternative Layouts

February 26, 2024 11:04 GMT

Here are some variants of the main UI screen for my Surrealist city design app. I selected four of the best thumbnails that I had sketched previously. At this stage it was especially important to know the exact number of buttons and links that are required by the UI, because this affects the graphic design.

In my old prototype the buildings used to be organized according to economy sectors, but this didn’t make much sense because the app is not a simulated economy. It’s a casual city design sandbox. Therefore, I changed this according to psychological effect. The building are now organized into “Dreams, Fears and Follies”. Dreams are positive emotions, Fears are negatives, and Follies are paradoxical things. Each building in the city is a personification of one of these categories. I feel this is better because it emphasises the Surrealist influence.

The first alternative below is my personal favourite. It has a bit of Salvador DalĂ­ in it, this connects thematically to Surrealism, and the layout is simple and clear. The next two have some thin lines and jazzed up rectangles influenced by Kadinsky. The last one places the buttons in “diegetic perspective”, that is to say, the UI is in same perspective as the city grid; I got this idea from the classic game Populous.

In the last variant the content area is surrounded by a large circle, this will work better if it is a diamond shape.

User Interface Sketches

Yet More Sketches

February 24, 2024 18:23 GMT

I’m doing tonnes of these small UI sketches. There’s 27 of them in this batch, I’m going to resolve 5 into larger sketches with the exact number of buttons on them that my “information architecture” requires.

I’ve specified this architecture, it is a simple sandbox city building experience. However, I was a bit random with the number of buttons, only having the idea there are “some” main buttons, “some” secondary ones, and a content area. I didn’t want to inhibit by creativity while I was doing the thumbnails. This needs to be more accurate in the larger sketches that I will do soon.

Small UI Sketches

UI Sketches

February 15, 2024 10:21 GMT

Here are some quick conceptual sketches for the UI of my city design app. The idea is to go crazy and explore many different alternatives.

Quick user interface sketches

(1) This literally is the idea of an architect’s desktop, the city appears on a piece of millimetre paper. There are tools on the desktop such as pencils and erasers that are interactable and can be selected; (2) The city can be constructed on a sphere, like a small and over-populated planet. There are two curving arcs of UI controls in the top-left and bottom-right corner, and the planet can be rotated with swipe gestures; (3) Japanese folding screen with clouds painted on it, a slice of the city appears in front of the screen; (4) Old television box, the city appears on the CRT screen and there are skeuomorphic knobs on the box; (5) Slice of the city is visible in isomorphic perspective, the UI controls are placed in the same perspective grid; (6) The user builds towering blocks starting with a very small foundation, they become increasingly unstable as they get grow higher; (7) Triangle grid with two UI panels in front of it; (8) Borg cube type of a city, the four small cubes contain navigation controls in the four directions; (9) Slot machine for randomized city design; (10) Jewel, or bracelet, that encircles a vignette of the city. There are gems on the bracelet with the UI controls on them; (11) Another triangle grid, this time the UI controls are in the aqueduct structure behind the city; (12) Spherical orb with ribbons of UI controls floating around it.

© 2024 Atanas Laskov

Atanas Laskov 🏳️‍🌈