Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

Consider the UI

I just got Wolfenstein RPG for my iPhone because I felt I wanted something RPG-ish to play and I hadn't yet played any of the Id FPS RPG-thingies, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Anyhow, the thing I wanted to share with you was something that happened to me. Have a look at this first screen and look at the top of the screen and then in the center at the syringe that's referred to.

Evade Syringe

When I noticed the open hand icon and the text "Evade Syringe" I thought; "Whoah! That was close. I almost stepped on the syringe! I'd better avoid it.", so I left it alone and moved on.

STOP!

I read the open hand as "Stop!" and "Evade Syringe" as a warning. But lookie, lookie, what I noticed shortly thereafter:

9mm Rounds

The hand means to pick up and not to stop and the text was the name of the object. The "Evade Syringe" was a usable item that I could use to gain some evasion skill for a short duration.

It's not a huge deal, and I won't be making that mistake again. But the hand in combination with that name sure fooled me.

So lesson learned for me, when making user interface you have to think on how it's read.

This is more how a pick up hand looks in my head:

I actually made this pic.