Ramble

I’m thinking of starting a mini-series of posts on Good/Bad UI examples I encounter in everyday life.  Our first example is courtesy of the fantastic Nintendo Wii and Metroid Prime 3.  This Good UI design example is also a bonus example of graceful error handling!

While in the middle of a furious battle (for about the fifth time in a row), with my character’s health nearing critical and the enemy finally on the ropes, the worst possible failure occurred, my Wiimote’s batteries died!  Now, if Nintendo hadn’t thought through the implications of having wireless controllers for their game console, I might have been one unhappy gamer.  But, thankfully, they did think about this scenario.  And, instead of me scrambling to find batteries as my character was summarily slaughtered for the fifth time, my battle was replaced with a black screen and a message about losing connection with the Wiimote.  The game was automatically paused and I could leisurely grab some new batteries, put them in the Wiimote and when I was back in optimal playing position on my couch, click the “A” button to resume play from the exact moment when the Wii lost communication with the Wiimote.

Instead of blistering my trigger finger in a sixth round of battle, I was able to eek out a victory and then go get something to eat.  Good UI is not just about the aspects of your software that users interact with 90% of the time.  It is about edge cases and error handling, too.  Software crashes are an inevitability.  The hallmark of good design is being able to handle them gracefully.  This requires good error detection and handling, but also good UI design that quickly and comfortingly moves a user toward a resolution and back to business.