Author Topic: Human interface guidelines?  (Read 1230 times)

congusbongus (OP)

  • Posts: 80
    • congusbongusgames
Human interface guidelines?
« on: February 09, 2015, 03:11:37 am »
I was wondering if enough folks are interested in compiling a set of human interface guidelines for GCW-Zero?

Unlike the software porting guidelines, these would be optional, and for developers who want to improve the accessibility and consistency of their programs, by following consensus advice on how programs should look and handle input. This could include things like minimum font size, using start to pause/unpause. Some guidelines are universal and followed widely already (e.g. A to confirm, B to cancel) so there's no need to include those.

A good example of HIG would be the one for iOS: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/

A pet peeve of mine is that quitting programs is inconsistent, which is all the more annoying since the GCW-Zero doesn't have a "home" button. SIGHUP is less than ideal since the game may not save progress. One option is to have the select button always navigate back to the previous screen, so pressing it repeatedly will eventually close any program, similar to the back button behaviour in Android.
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fiver

  • Posts: 84
Re: Human interface guidelines?
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2015, 06:49:59 am »
Quote from: congusbongus on February 09, 2015, 03:11:37 am

A pet peeve of mine is that quitting programs is inconsistent, which is all the more annoying since the GCW-Zero doesn't have a "home" button. SIGHUP is less than ideal since the game may not save progress. One option is to have the select button always navigate back to the previous screen, so pressing it repeatedly will eventually close any program, similar to the back button behaviour in Android.

That is a pet peeve of mine, too, but I think I see a problem with your solution. Some emulators already use the Select button (e.g. to emulate the NES's Select button). For those, pressing Select to quit wouldn't work.
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David Knight

  • Posts: 577
Re: Human interface guidelines?
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2015, 09:30:49 am »
There's already the firmware button combos:
Powerup+START+SELECT: reboot
Powerup+SELECT: reset
Powerup+A:fullscreen scaling
Powerup+B:mouse emulation
Powerup+Y: screenshot
Powerup+D-pad: Volume/brightness

I believe there may be some issues with using certain button combos on emulators (don't know which ones), otherwise I'm all for a unified interface.

I think the START+SELECT and slider-up may be the best menu/exit trigger. Many emulators use the SELECT button as the original console had one. Menu's should contain an exit option. This avoids triggering it accidentally.
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