Working session · decide the interface
Heuristic Audit & Mocks
UI/UX Proposals & Architectural Audit
An honest read of the shipped HUD, then eight decisions with named options you can switch between and look at. Same shape as the animation lab: the animations decide how things move, this page decides what is on screen and where.
How to use this page. Every proposal has a switcher. Press through A, B, C and read the note under the mock. Mocks are built from the game's own palette, type and card art at roughly 1:1, so what you see is close to what it would look like in the build. Each proposal ends with a Decision box; those boxes are the output.
Where it stands: Nielsen Heuristic Audit
Scored against Nielsen's ten heuristics, 0 to 4, where 4 means genuinely excellent rather than acceptable. The total is 30 of 40, which is a good interface with two specific holes rather than a weak one with many.
| Heuristic | Score | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Visibility of system status | 3 | Phase rail, prompt pill, live deck meter, CPU-committed tag, event ticker. The gap: nothing reports the one quantity the game is about while you are choosing. |
| 2 · Match with the real world | 4 | AWAY / HOME, ▲ / ▼ halves, B / S / O, a bases diamond in real geometry, "signs from the Bank", "LOCK & MILL". Baseball vocabulary the whole way down. |
| 3 · User control and freedom | 3 | R undoes picks, ESC closes. No undo after commit, which is correct: this is a commitment game. |
| 4 · Consistency and standards | 4 | The commit button occupies identical pixels in every phase. One slab primitive, one card widget, one phase-colour language. |
| 5 · Error prevention | 3 | Commit stays disabled until the selection is legal; MIN 14 marker on the deck meter. Nothing prevents the classic beginner mistake of allocating Catcher and Ace into a batting deck. |
| 6 · Recognition rather than recall | 2 | The weak one. Counting is a rule, and the counting aid is collapsed half off the left edge. The CPU's repertoire is published in the fiction but never surfaced in-match. |
| 7 · Flexibility and efficiency | 3 | Keyboard parity for commit and undo, hover previews at a fixed reading position. No number keys for card selection, no way to speed through CPU turns. |
| 8 · Aesthetic and minimalist design | 4 | Genuinely strong. Restrained palette, one type system, and almost nothing on screen that is not load-bearing. |
| 9 · Recognise and recover from errors | 2 | The interrupt panel names the consequence of passing, which is excellent. But an invalid-pitch walk, a deck-out or a guard trip all arrive as one line of ticker text with no explanation surface. |
| 10 · Help and documentation | 2 | The card inspector's HOW IT PLAYS and FLAVOR panel is very good. There is no in-match rules reference and no interrupt-priority aid; the player aids exist only on paper. |
Cognitive load
| Check | Result | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Single focus | Pass | One prompt, one commit, everything else is reference. |
| Chunking | Pass | Score bug is four cells; decision stack is three parts. |
| Grouping | Pass | Your zones bottom-left, theirs top-centre, decision bottom-right. |
| Visual hierarchy | Pass | Red commit against cream and ink. Never ambiguous. |
| One thing at a time | Pass | Phases are strictly sequential. |
| Minimal choices | Fail | BUILD shows the whole pool at once: 30-plus cards, ungrouped, against one number. |
| Working memory | Fail | To play well you must remember what the CPU has shown this half, and carry the ball / strike / out count across the full screen diagonal. |
| Progressive disclosure | Pass | Interrupts appear only when live; the BALL! chip only above zero. |
1 · What the screen tells you while you are choosing
Decision · combination feedback
Chosen:
2 · The counting aid
Decision · counting aid
Chosen:
3 · Opponent state in the seat strip
Decision · seat strip telemetry
Chosen:
4 · Discard pile affordance
Decision · zone browsing affordance
Chosen:
5 · Mini linescore
Decision · match scoreboard telemetry
Chosen:
6 · Pitch family colour roles
Decision · colour assignment
Chosen:
7 · Settings & Accessibility
Decision · accessibility suite
Chosen:
8 · Allocation grouping during BUILD
Decision · BUILD guidance
Chosen:
Input map
| Screen | Mouse | Keyboard (today) | Gamepad (proposed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Menu / Setup | Click | — | D-pad between cards, A to select, B to back out. Set initial focus on PLAY BALL. |
| Draft / Sign | Click a card, then COMMIT | SPACE commit, R undo | D-pad left/right along the showcase row, A to pick, X to inspect, menu button for the zone browser. |
| Build | Click to toggle each card | SPACE, R | D-pad across the grid, A to toggle, Y to accept a suggested preset if P8·C ships. |
| Play | Drag to a slot, or click | SPACE, R | Left stick along the fan, A to stage, B to unstage. Also add number keys 1–5 for the hand. |
| Interrupt | Click RESPOND / PASS | — | A responds, B passes. Focus must land on the panel the frame it opens. |
| Zone browser | Click to open, ESC to close | ESC | Menu button toggles, B closes. |
Accessibility checklist
| Item | Status | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Non-colour channel for pitch family | Done | Family badge: wedge, crescent, ring. |
| Non-colour channel for B / S / O | Done | Dots, crosses, dots in separate labelled rows. |
| Motion intensity control | Partial | Shake scale exists and is respected. |
| Occupied bases without colour | Missing | Base diamonds differ by fill colour only. |
| Colour-blind simulation modes | Missing | LMS separation tested, but software modes missing. |
Prioritised backlog
| # | Change | Impact | Cost | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Intel rail, open by default | High | Low | The enum and counting maths already exist. |
| 2 | Coverage chips during PLAY | High | Medium | Needs a small read-only view model. |
| 3 | Reduce-motion setting | High | Medium | Global setting in Options. |
Related: the animation lab, for how these things should move →