HCI for Games - Pre production: Forms of feedback, Control setups, Mind Mapping and Mood Boarding.

To begin building a HCI system for my project, I first needed to do a little research into HCI within current games on the market, no matter the genre and no matter the platform.
I would be looking into layouts, options and features within HCI systems in games.

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I began by quickly assessing the different sorts of control methods which are in use across many platforms as this plays into the construction and functionality of the menu systems found in HCI. Control setups can utilise Mouse and Keyboard and also various types of controllers, which can usually be used on both PC and Console platforms besides portable consoles which tend to have their own built in controls. Where more mobile devices are concerned, floating joysticks are used predominantly in mobile games, utilising touchscreen technology to map functionality to the controls.

As the project which I have been building on this year has been aimed solely at PC, I decided I would need to implement control functionality for both Keyboard and Mouse based controls, and Controllers also, taking into account the design of my game and the menus prior to creation.

As a point of research, I thought of the features I wanted in my menu system and features I may like to implement at a later date, in terms of forms of feedback, and referred to them with an industry example.
I decided that I would like both visual and audible feedback within the menu system to alert the user to menu selections, these can be seen in the below video, a menu walkthrough taken from Id Software's 'DOOM', released in 2016;

The visual feedback would com in the form of different button transitions being designed, with normal, hovered and pressed variants being implemented, and the audible feedback would come from sound effects to signify a forward and backward movement within my menu setup.

Whilst I have decided that to start I would utilise a simple menu setup comprises of buttons which are scrolled over using the mouse, I would like to look into a special cursor setup, similar to that which can be found in Destiny, created by Bungie and released in 2014, the style of the cursor and selection setup within their menus can be seen below;

Adding to this, there are two more features I would like to implement as and when they are necessary, further in the production pipeline, starting with haptic feedback via controller vibration. To note, this is not usually found in menu systems, but in games themselves and is an inclusion for any game which can be played with a controller in this era of games development.
Taking that into account, I will be looking to add vibration into the functionality of my level, but this will come at a later stage as extra functionality on top of the core control setup once the core is complete.

I would also like to add a colourblind setting allowing for easier viewing of the UI for colourblind end users, though I do not have the first idea how to go about this, whether it is a simple process or a strenuous one, as with an increase in UI elements, surely comes an increase in work required to make a colourblind setting a possibility. Again taking this into account, this will more likely be a function I will aim to add in much further into the development pipeline, once I have the core of my project complete.
There are examples of the colourblind setup in many games, but for this purpose, I will be using the below example, once again taken from Destiny.

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Following the research into control methods and forms of feedback I began mind mapping elements which are usually included within a menu system, originating from both the main menu and in-game pause menus and also elements which can be found in a heads up display.
My mind map can be seen below;

Following this, I began searching for images of menus already existing in video games, and types of menu navigation which I may like to implement into my system at any point. I created a mood board which can be viewed here;
https://uk.pinterest.com/plissken1989/unit-79-human-computer-interfaces-for-games/

To accompany my mind mapping and mood boarding I would need to assess which elements I would need in my menu system and create a flowchart to reflect the way in which the menu would operate, my flowchart can be seen below; Note that the arrows between the options tabs are to imply that the options widgets will be capable of transitions to and from one another, and each options tab will be reversible, to return to the previous screen, signified by a double headed arrow, pointing back to its previous tab also.