The best user interface is the one you don’t notice.
User interface (UI) is a critical part of any game. Done well, it’s invisible and carefully woven into your application. If done poorly, however, it can frustrate users and detract from the gameplay experience.
A solid UI is an extension of a game’s visual identity. Modern audiences crave refined, intuitive UIs that seamlessly integrate with your application. Whether it’s displaying a character’s vital statistics or the game world’s economy, the interface is your players’ gateway to key information.
As UIs become more sophisticated, so does the artistry behind them. UI design mainly depends on two types of specialists:
UI artists: They master the fundamentals of design, color, shape, typography, and layout. UI artists design for the target audience of the game world. Their eye for detail motivates them to create “pixelThe smallest unit in a computer image. Pixel size depends on your screen resolution. Pixel lighting is calculated at every screen pixel. More info
See in Glossary perfect” UI.
UX designers: They research user behavior and the broader needs of the end user. UX designers control how someone interacts with a digital product. They build navigation flows with the intent of making the experience as intuitive and delightful as possible.
These roles work closely together, alongside other 2D or 3D artists and designers. It’s through this collaboration that stronger, more effective UIs come about.
Another key role is that of the UI programmer, who will team up closely with the previous roles. They will work with a chosen tech stack, establish a process or pipeline to ingest all of the UI design into functional interfaces, wire gameplay code to UI, and feed data back into the game systems from UI.
In our previous e-book User interface design and implementation in Unity we demonstrated how UI artists and designers can build interfaces in Unity with its two systems for user interfaces: Unity UI, the older GameObject-based system and the newer UI Toolkit. We also covered how studios design UI from scratch and import art into a game. This guide was based on Unity 2021 LTS.
In this new e-book, we focus on the UI Toolkit in Unity 6 that is tailored for maximum performance and reusability, with web-inspired workflows. UI designers with web experience will find it intuitive, while UI programmers can gain a clear understanding of UI Toolkit’s capabilities for game creation. This guide’s modular structure allows sections to be read in any order, making it a useful reference for learning UI Toolkit.
Let’s begin.