11. Lesson Review

In this lesson we learned…

How do I design a UI?

1. List the goals of the UI. What do you want to accomplish with this UI?
2. Sketch the UI. Most UI sketches start with a rectangle panel. Don’t forget to take pictures of your UI sketches. They can be included in your documentation.

Why is sketching a part of the UI process?

Sketching is an easy and quick way to plan your UI design. It’s also very easy to try out a variety of designs in a small amount of time and a lot less work than implementing each idea.

How can I create a UI in Unity?

1. Create a canvas. All UI elements must be on a canvas.
   Canvases in Unity are automatically scaled to the screen space. We’ll need to switch the Render Mode of the canvas to World Space and scale it down to a more appropriate size.
2. Add UI elements like panels, text, and buttons. These may need to be rescaled to the new size of the canvas.
3. Be sure to do some user testing after building a base for your UI. This will allow you to ensure that your UI is readable in VR and that your users can understand what you UI is supposed to do.

Tip: Add a panel to a canvas and change the color to give your canvas a simple background.

What is feedback and what is feedforward?

Feedback is a way of telling the user that he or she has taken some action. It essentially tells the user about an event they did moments ago. Feedforward is a way of telling the user that if they take an action something will happen. It’s allowing the users to predict the future. Clicking on a button that says “Restart”, for example, might indicate to users that the button is how users would restart an experience.