Humans vs the Machine

User interface design meetings are a sure way to raise the temperature in Moviestorm Mansions. There's no right way to do anything - it all comes down to personal taste. What's obvious to one person is incomprehensible or stupid to another; what I find ugly, someone else (usually the artist!) really likes the look of; and everyone works in a different way, so they have different expectations of how Moviestorm should behave - something I do a lot and want to have on-screen is irrelevant to someone else.

And then there's the whole issue of functionality vs ease of use. Obviously, the more functionality you make readily available, the more powerful the tool is. However, if you add loads of buttons and widgets, you risk making everything look far too cluttered and complicated. On the other hand, if you hide all that functionality away, you don't know it's there and it's not just a mouse-click away. Easy to use and powerful - that's headache material!

Compromises, compromises ...

twak (right) is stealing Eddz' (left) pixels. again.