Heuristic Evaluation for Dota 2-The application of usability principles for game User Interface design

HEURISTIC EVALUATION FOR DOTA 2:
THE APPLICATION OF USABILITY PRINCIPLES FOR GAME USER INTERFACE DESIGN
1
Heuristic Evaluation for Dota 2:
The application of usability principles for game User Interface design
Shengzhe Wang
George Washington University

2
Abstract
In this paper, we use Heuristic Evaluation, a method to evaluate user interface in Human-
Computer Interaction (HCI) field, to analyze a world-class popular Multiplayer Online Battle
Arena (MOBA) game – Dota 2. From the background and rules of the game, we start to analyze
the features of current UI components, and by compared with similar genre game, we stand from
players and spectators point of view to evaluate it with scales to quantity the degree of problem.
After discuss the results of evaluation, we provide some possible solutions to improve the current
UI design and solve the potential problems of it.
The first chapter is Introduction that briefly describe the video game and e-Sport development,
and HCI evaluation for game design. In the second chapter, we will introduce Heuristic
Evaluation method from reviewing pervious research, and background of game Dota 2. The third
chapter contains the different versions of Dota 2 UI design and the results of evaluation. In
addition, we will provide possible solutions for those evaluated problems after discussing the
reason behind. Finally, in Conclusion, the limitations of this research and future work will be
mentioned after summary.
Keyword: Heuristic Evaluation, HCI, Dota 2

3
Introduction
Video games and e-Sport
The video game is defined as an electronic software programming that involves human-
computer interaction (HCI) with a well-designed user interface to generate visual feedback on a
video device (Braeunig, 1990). In the 2010s, the video game industry is of increasing commercial
importance, with growth driven particularly by the emerging Asian markets and mobile games that
are played on smartphones. As of 2015, video games generated sales of USD 74 billion annually
worldwide, and became the third-largest segment in the U.S. entertainment market, behind
broadcast and cable TV (Michał B et. al, 2015).
Among video games, several types of games gather into a special category called e-Sport.
(Taylor, 2012) E-Sport is short for electronic sports, which are video game competitions played
most by professional players individually or in teams that gained popularity from late 2000s.
(Jonasson and Thiborg, 2010) Some similarities as regular sports where individual player or teams
are competing to be the best. Professional gamers also earn prize money and salaries as in any
other professional sports, such as football, basketball, and volleyball. In 2014, as SuperData
Research, a professional website to provide statistic data of game markets, pointed out that
approximately 71.5 million people worldwide watched e-Sports in 2013, doubling the numbers
from the year before, and the global e-Sports audience in 2015 was 226 million. Demographically,
Major League Gaming, a professional e-Sports organization, has reported in 2014 viewership that
was approximately 85% male and 15% female, with 60% of viewers between the ages of 18 and
34. Besides, the global e-Sports market generated USD 325 million of revenue in 2015 and is
expected to make USD 493 million in 2016. The most popular e-Sports genres right now are
Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), First Person Shooter (FPS), and Real Time Strategy
(RTS). In the mid-2010s, the most successful titles featured in professional competitions of the
Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games were Dota 2 and League of Legends (LOL), the
First Person Shooter (FPS) game was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), and the Real
Time Strategy (RTS) was Starcraft 2. In this paper, we will focus on the MOBA game Dota 2 as
an example to analyze, because the reason for picking this type of game is that it is one of the most
popular genres of e-Sports games, and it is also the game that we have the most personal experience
with. As far as EEDAR report of Dejan in 2015, MOBA games have done the best job of
popularizing e-Sports through leagues and tournaments while also providing the best visual
experience, which resulted in a lifetime participation rate of 75 percent.
Thus, in this paper we introduce Dota 2 to expend the topic, and we will further describe
the details of Dota 2 in the background chapter.
HCI evaluation in game design
Human-Computer Interfaces is a sub-discipline of Computer Science, which includes study,
design, construction, and implementation of human-centric interactive computer systems (Screen,
2013). The User Interface (UI) is defined as how a human interacts with system, whose aim is to
design screens and menus that are easier to use, and study reasoning behind building specific
functionality, analyze long-term effects that systems will have on humans. This is because that
HCI is not only based on Computer Science field, but also combined with Sociology and
Anthropology. (Screen, 2013) For considerable cultural relevance, games have also been the object
of study in several different fields, ranging from computer sciences to psychology, design, and
healthcare. The field of HCI is particularly notable in this aspect, given its proximity to both

4
computational and human aspects of games. Understanding how the user interacts with the data
provided by the game might impact gaming. For HCI and game interaction, numbers of devices or
controllers are applied nowadays, which could be known as physical input, and while, the physical
output is that the player can see what is happen in the game world by certain devices, such as a TV
screen or computer monitor. Common controllers include gamepads, joysticks, mouse, keyboards,
the touchscreens of mobile devices and buttons, and players typically view the game on a video
screen or television with game sounds from loudspeakers. Some games in the 2000s were
developed with new technology including haptic, vibration-creating effects, force feedback
peripherals and virtual reality (VR) headsets. Players use Physical Input to control roles in game
by sending signals to Virtual Interface, and then, Virtual Interface transmit those commands to
game world, which is creating by software programming. After calculation of game algorithm, the
result would be sent back to Virtual Interface again so that users could see the results from Physical
Output. In the whole process, we could realize that the Virtual Interface, in other world, game UI,
is the pivotal part for whole interaction between user players and the game (Schell, 2014).
Figure 1. Players interact with game world through process according to Schell’s book in 2014
So, several features in HCI fields should be considered when designing a game UI. Thus,
game UI is following the basic rules of HCI, and we could analyze or evaluate UI quality by certain
principles of HCI. (Nielsen, 1994, p25) Heuristic evaluation is a usability engineering method to
find the usability problems in a user interface design so that they can be attended to as part of an
iterative design process. It has a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its
compliance with recognized usability principles (the "heuristics"). In Jakob Nielsen's book, 10
general principles for interaction design are used for evaluation, meanwhile, for game design,
especially, for e-Sport game UI analyzing, we could also evaluate MOBA game Dota 2’s UI based
on those principles, which will be discussed in next section.
In summary, based on e-Sport game introduction and HCI evaluation principle discuss, the
topic of this paper is that evaluating and analyzing current Dota 2 User Interface and providing
suggestions on how to improve interface for Dota 2 for next generation.

5
Literature review and Background
Heuristic Evaluation for UI
In Jakob Nielsen's book, he summarized 10 original general principles for interface design
evaluation at an evaluation session. They are following: Simple and natural dialogue; Speak the
users' language; Minimize the users' memory load; Consistency; Feedback; Clearly marked exits;
Shortcuts; Precise and constructive error messages; Prevent errors; Help and documentation
(Molich and Nielsen 1990). And then he pervaded evaluators should be decided on their own to
proceed with evaluating the interface. So in Nielsen’s later article in 1994, he revised the list of
Heuristic Evaluation list from 249 usability problems. (Nielson, 1994, p30) The new version of
Heuristic Evaluation set are following:
 Visibility of system status, which means the system have to keep users informed about
what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time;
 Match between system and the real world, which let the system speak the users' language,
with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms.
Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical
order.
 User control and freedom, which is that users often choose system functions by mistake
and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without
having to go through an extended dialogue, or supporting undo and redo.
 Consistency and standards, users should not have to wonder whether different words,
situations, or actions mean the same thing. Following platform conventions.
 Error prevention, which means even better than good error messages is a careful design
which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone
conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they
commit to the action.
 Recognition rather than recall, minimize the user's memory load by making objects,
actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one
part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or
easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
 Flexibility and efficiency of use, accelerators (unseen by the novice user) may often speed
up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced
and experienced users. Allowing users to tailor frequent actions.
 Aesthetic and minimalist design, in this evaluator, dialogues should not contain
information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a
dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative
visibility.
 Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors, which is that error messages
should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and
constructively suggest a solution.
 Help and documentation, even though it is better if the system can be used without
documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such
information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be
carried out, and not be too large.

6
For universal interface design, the revised version of evaluators is enough to use to analyze.
Similarly, for game design, especially for in-game design, those evaluators will work as well,
although few dialogs and forms can be seen when playing game, only at certain circumstances,
such as login a new game, or show the results of the game, or pause options. Thus, based on the
10 new evaluators, we will discuss the various Dota 2 UI design.
Dota 2 information and Background
What is Dota 2? Dota 2 is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game which puts
two teams of 5 players in each competing for supremacy in a fixed-layout arena. Players take
control of “heroes”, the characters with specific sets of skills that require different gameplay
strategies to win. The aim is to fight their way to beat enemies (both human and computer-
controlled), grow stronger by purchasing magical items and winning team battles, and finally strike
the enemy base to destroy a trophy-like structure that will grant them victory in the match.
(Tok, 2006) The Dota series began in 2003 with Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a mod for
Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, created by the pseudonymous designer
"Eul". An expansion pack for Warcraft III, entitled The Frozen Throne, was released later that year,
so a series of Defense of the Ancients clone mods for the new game competed for popularity. DotA:
Allstars by Steve Feak was the most successful (Augustine, 2010). When Feak retired from DotA:
Allstars in 2005, a friend, under the pseudonym "IceFrog", became its lead designer. (Feak, et. al,
2009) The popularity of Defense of the Ancients increased significantly: it became one of the most
popular mods in the world, and, by 2008, a prominent e-Sports title.
Then Valve Corporation (commonly referred to as Valve), an American video game developer and
digital distribution company in Bellevue, Washington, was interested in this game property began
in 2009. They employed the “IceFrog” to develop a whole brand new system for this game. Valve
adopted the word "Dota 2", derived from the original mod's acronym, as the name for its newly
acquired franchise. Soon, Dota 2 became one of the most popular games on the PC platform with
a player base reaching peaks of over a million active players simultaneously and a monthly average
of around 500,000 players (MacCallum, 2014).
Features and rules of Dota 2. To understand each part of interface functions, we should
know some basic rules and game features.
Figure 2. Minimap for Dota 2, a map divided by river into two parts standing for two team

7
Dota 2 consists of two teams, called The Radiant and The Dire, with five heroes each
fighting to destroy the opponent’s Ancient basement. The Ancients are placed at the far ends of
the map surrounded by buildings and towers (Yin-Poole, 2011). Each hero is controlled by one
player and they focus on gaining experience points, collecting gold, and killing enemy heroes.
When experience is gained in combat, more abilities will be unlocked and the attributes of the hero
are increased as well. Heroes are divided into certain roles depending on what functions they did
in game battle. (CARLSSON & PELLING, 2015, p10) Strength heroes grows stronger by getting
more hit points, making them harder to kill, which results in that they are good at taking damage.
Intelligence heroes are more reliant on casting their spells from afar, making them more suitable
for a supportive role. Agility heroes which are the serious damage dealers as agility increases the
attack speed. There are computer controlled creatures on the map that can be killed for extra gold
and experience. The toughest of these creatures is Roshan, who drops the aegis when killed. The
aegis brings the hero that carries it back to life when they die. It is consumed when it is used. Dota
2 has the most UI components out of the games than the other similar MOBA game, such as League
of Legends (LOL) and Heroes of the Storm because of the complexity of the game.
In this paper, we focus on the player interface mainly, but some features of spectator
interface would be mentioned as well, because they are majority of similarity. In next section, we
will discuss the different versions of Dota 2, and analyze the latest version with Heuristic
Evaluation methods, and summarize the results to discuss.
Method and Discussion
UI from DotA: Allstars to Dota 2
At period of DotA: Allstars in Warcraft platform, the UI was limited by the development
engine, because certain UI was fixed so that designers could not resize or move UI components,
while, from 2003 to 2005, this type of UI amazed numbers of people and accumulated amounts of
fans. Although the pictures had not high definition presentation and the model of each element in
game looked poor, the system still had the advanced interaction features at the time, such as head-
up displays (HUDs), message pop-in and pop-out system, and statistic display when game over.
Those UI features satisfied the Nielson’s Heuristic Evaluation principles mainly, which we will
not discuss it in this paper however. But the old version indeed gave a good direction for
development next generation, Dota 2.
As so many players come from DotA: Allstars, it is difficult to adapt the whole new UI of
Dota 2. Instantly, new players even think they are different game. Despite that the models of heroes
and items changed majorly with fine-details and high resolution for big screen, some features in
game has changed for convenient, for example, in DotA: Allstars, players must buy items at
different stores, as shown in red rectangles in Figure 3, but in Dota 2, players could buy all items
in one store panel, as shown in red rectangle in Figure 4, which improves the efficiency. And
another great change from DotA: Allstars to Dota 2 is allowing players to see all heroes’ status
instantly on the top of the screen, including own team and enemies. This great change influence
the strategy at certain moment, for instance, if one team approach the basement of enemy, they
should focus on the respawn time of enemies so that they can decide to continue pushing or retreat.
The other difference are minor because the majority UI components inherited from DotA: Allstars.
Overall, the UI of Dota 2 is absolute extension and evolution of Dota spirits.

8
Figure 3. UI of Dota: Allstars, and in red rectangle, shops are located in different places
Dota 2 had UI update since the first release at 2013. At first UI version as Figure 4, some
details were not enough for players, for example, players could not see the teammates’ or enemies’
health in the center of teammate panel, and icons in abilities panel looked small because blank
panel took some parts, and the old version UI bottom components took about 20 percent of whole
screen, while the current version, as Figure 5, only takes around 16 percent. The whole battle arena
looks bigger so that players could observe more details in current sight.
Figure 4. First version of Dota 2 UI released in 2013, a little different with current version.

9
Figure 5. Updated version of Dota 2 UI released in 2014, a new UI improved from old version.
Figure 6. Explanation for Dota 2 UI
As the Figure 6 shown above, it shows a team information panel in the middle-up of the
screen, with the health bars, hero pictures, ultimate icon, and colors. The team name and logos are
next to each teams’ information panel. In the middle, a game timer panel shows the in-game time
and indicates either the day or night. The small functional icons to the left and right are shortcuts
to tabs panel and full-screen overlays. Those tabs panel can show statistic information, such as last
hits or denies on creeps that have been done by each hero, and experience and gold each player is
Battle area

10
gaining per minute, the current gold, net worth, buyback status etc. (Gamepedia, 2015). The full-
screen overlays show graphs with the experience or gold difference between two teams. When
playing the game, the tabs panel and full-screen overlays are disable for the players, because they
would get too much information as hints. The team information panel is visible to players, but only
shows the hero icons and colors without health. The minimap and the selected player panel is at
bottom of the screen, where the minimap is positioned in the left corner with large icons for the
heroes that are colored for each hero. To further distinguish the teams, the icon of one team has
round circles with a pointed edge, while the other team’s icon is a red cross. The selected player
panel takes up the space to the right of the minimap. Starting from the right of the panel, a golden
shop button where players can buy items, a glyph button that makes buildings invulnerable for a
short time, gold of the currently selected player, hits and denies states, kills, deaths, assistants
(KDA) and shortcuts for the courier. To the left of this section are the inventory slots followed by
the spells and the yellow squares underneath the spells shows which level that have been obtained
for the spell. Above the spells are the health and mana bars with green and blue color respectively,
and to the left are hero statistics like movement speed, armor, strength etc. Underneath the hero
portrait is the level information.
Simultaneously, the same genre of MOBA games, such as League of Legends (LOL) and
Heroes of the Storm, have similar UI for both player and spectator. Because this type of game are
all 5 versus 5 players, and they all adopt the HUD interface design with the most important
information shows in the screen, such as team status and current statistic information. However,
the difference do exist among those game, and each of them has their own features. For example,
as Figure X shown, the League of Legends (LOL) shows the team information along the both side
to distinguish each team, and the hero information and minimap are set to the left corner and right
corner at the bottom, which has more space for battle arena for both players and spectators.
Figure 7. UI components for League of Legends (LOL), which is different from Dota 2’s UI

11
For Heroes of the Storm, the feature of this game is using transparent to expand the battle
area. It is an excellent way to present, because the transparent is not only preventing losing
important information for current situation, but also showing the natural transition for in game
elements and the boundary.
Figure 8. UI components of Heroes of the Storm with transparent way to display
Heuristic Evaluation Method
The heuristic evaluation need evaluated standard quantify for the result of evaluation.
Based on Nielsen’s research, we decide to use 0 – 4 to identify each evaluation. 0 stands for
disagree with the evaluation, which is no problems to be solved; 1 is for cosmetic problem; 2 stands
for minor problem with low priority; 3 means major problem with high priority; 4 is usability
catastrophe that should be imperative to fix. This evolution is like the agile development to set
points for each assignment to complete with different propriety.
Table 1. Heuristic Evaluation for current version of Dota 2 UI
Evaluators In-game explanation Details Scale
Visibility of
system status
Team information
panel, hero status
panel, and other
statistic information
panel display at all time
 The whole game time, team scores,
hero status shows in up-panel
 Hero’s health and mana status show
on the top of hero and hero status
panel with skill cold down states with
attributes information
0
Match between
system and the
real world
Numbers and words in
game to present skills
or item name and
instruction
 Based on different countries, game
could be changed languages, such as
Chinese, English, and Russia etc.
 Every equipment and skills of hero
has introduction
0

12
User control
and freedom
In game, players use
mouse and keyboard to
control
 Players could customize the keyboard;
 Both keyboard and mouse could
control each skills and items
 If skills or items are not available,
cool down with numbers and alert
message appear
0[1]
Consistency
and standards
For every situation of
hero or item, markers
(icons or words)
mention to players
 Each status of hero (stun or skills
disable) has unique icon to mark
 However, sometimes for new players,
it is hard to find the right place, for
example, hard to find needed item in
shop within more than 100 items,
although search bar exists, but few
players use it during playing
2
Error
prevention
Only skills or items
disable to use have
messages alert
 Player could buy wrong items, but if
selling it, half price was penalty
1[2]
Recognition
rather than
recall
Each item and skills
have unique icon to
indicate
 The instruction label is good for each
item and each skill
 It is hard for new players to remember
all items at first time and each skill of
hero with more than 100 heroes
 The game allows each hero customize
shape that is hard for spectators
especially who intersect within on-
going competition
2
Flexibility and
efficiency of
use
The game will give a
tutor assignment if user
play the game at first
time
 The game set different level
competitions for freshmen or
professional players
0
Aesthetic and
minimalist
design
The UI components
could be modified by
different theme
packets, and no
irrelevant words exist
 For players, current UI design is
enough, however, for spectators,
when big team fights happened, if
Observers did not set right position of
screen, details will be neglected
2
Help users
recognize,
diagnose, and
recover from
errors
The item is the same as
Error prevention
evaluator
 No codes when show error message,
and some of them use colorful words
to mark
0
Help and
documentation
In game, player could
see instructions and
help document at any
time
 The help shortcuts locals at the up-left
corner of the screen
 But for new player, they want some
tips appear to help with when playing
1

13
[1] Note: this principle is not very important for game design, because minor redo or undo could
be used when playing.
[2] Note: It is a competitive game, which test player’s reaction, thus the score is low.
Other features should be observed that Dota 2 uses green and red to distinguish teams that
is not good for colorblind people as both are yellow. Thus, a colorblind mode for Dota 2, but it is
not used a lot in events, the reason is that the blue color for mana is hard to differentiate from the
blue team color when using color blindness mode. But it is satisfied with the HCI design principles
that belong to “Flexibility and efficiency of use” evaluator.
Especially, experienced gamers are more efﬁcient when using information displayed in
HUDs and perceive the spatial layout, for example, the health and mana number above on the
header of hero, as more organized compared with novices (Caroux & Isbister, 2016). This provides
further evidence that experienced MOBA players are likely to be sensitive to the consistency of
the spatial placement of game information, because elements in game are complicated so that the
interface of game is very significant, which belong to “Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover
from errors”.
Discussion
From the evaluation table, we can see that majority of evaluator was given 0, which means
the current UI satisfy majority of the principles of design. Two evaluators, “Error prevention” and
“Help and documentation”, were given 1 score, which majority design is fine to use, but only at
certain circumstance, the design did not perform well. Three evaluators, “Consistency and
standards”, “Recognition rather than recall”, and “Aesthetic and minimalist design”, were given 2
score. Because in these design, minor problems exist to some extent. When players or spectators
are involving in the game and wrongly triggering those inappropriate situations, they could be
interfered. For “Aesthetic and minimalist design”, it is one possible solution is that maximize the
battle area, one of solution of the problem is that players could observe more details, and
circumstances, such as enemies’ position when doing a complicated team fight, and the other one
is that different players can get the personally defined data they want to know for getting more
useful information at current situation. It is because that different roles in game has different
abilities, for example, supporters need to know battle status to decide to how to arrange themselves
to do, such as making perspective (i.e. buying observe ward) or going “gank” (i.e. ambushing
enemies). For them, the data of the latest positions of enemies and the carry status in their team
are significant especially. And for spectator interface, the original interface has been successful to
some extent. However, as the results of analysis, increasingly fans would like use mobile platforms
to watch game competition, while the screen of mobile phone is pretty limitation. For instance, on
one hand, some micro icons, and buttons, even statistic data could not be easy to capture on the
small screen although the live stream has high resolution. On the other hand, it is not good for
watchers’ eyes and could cause myopia, which is against to the principles of HCI design and
anthropology.
Thus, by analyzing the results of the problems and search correspond solution, we will
provides some possible solutions for each evaluated problem.
Possible Solution
For “Error prevention” and “Recognition rather than recall”, the universal solution is
adding some description nearby, however, it is not compatible with game design, because the space
of game UI is limitation. Error prevention, such as wrong operation and against game rules
problems, could be solved by practice mode, which allows player familiar with game rules quickly,

14
and even applying sound alert instead of words, because human is more sensitive for sounds more
than the text. For recognition design, in the shop panel, the items could be categorized for solving
mess problem so that players could find the correct item according to labeled sections.
For “Consistency and standards” and “Help and documentation”, they are the problems
relevant with user habit. So, customized UI for different players is one possible solution. Because
professional players usually have their own habits when involving competition, such as, they will
use their own mouse, keyboard, and headphone instead of arbitrary. And in game, they do
customize the each hot key so that enhance their action per minute (APM). Those are very
important to them, because only with that equipment and in this environment, they will show their
best status to win the game, just like professional athletics has their unique shoes or equipment.
As the game World of Warcraft (WOW), a famous online game of Blizzard Entertainment, and in
this game, players could import various plugins to reset UI to help them during playing so that
satisfy different requirement. And players could set whether help and tips showing or not
personally.
Figure 9. World of Warcraft (WOW) allow player use plugin tools to help during interaction
For “Aesthetic and minimalist design”, redesign is a possible idea to solve. Some fans, or
researchers of Dota 2 has tried some new prototypes to improve the current circumstance. In
CARLSSON and PELLING master thesis in 2015, they has a prototype that redesigned the
spectator interface by surveying on Reddit (a famous bulletin board system that has numbers of
fans of Dota 2), as shown in Figure 10. They removed some unnecessary components, such as
personal gold status, statistic of hero properties, and some useless icons. The idea of this redesign
is to maximize battle arena for spectators so that the whole team fight and certain details happening
around could be seen. Furthermore, others, who are Dota 2 fans or designers, also published some
versions of prototypes on the Internet to share, and some of which have certain supporters, but
some of which still beyond the HCI design principles although their design solve some parts of
current UI problems.

15
Figure 10. CARLSSON and PELLING’s redesign of spectator UI of Dota 2, and in this
prototype, they remove amounts of useless HUDs space for more battle area
Figure 11. One redesign of Dota 2 is simplifying the hero panel icons and information
In this design, the designer remove irrelevant decoration on hero panel, which can see more
clearly for this part as shown in red box in Figure 11.

16
In this example, the designer set the team panel to the bottom and redesign the hero panel.
This design looks different, because set free for the battle area, so that players and spectators have
more space to see that team fight.
Figure 12. Another design combines the team and hero panel into integrate for saving space.
Figure 13. This is simplified design, which extremely reduce useless panel blank space into
showing useful information.

17
This redesign is another example for making bottom panel small and removing majority
useless space. Personally, I recommend this type design for spectator UI, because this design not
only save more space for speciation, but also did not lose any important information for this game.
This redesign is applying the transparent design. For this design, I recommend to use at
spectator UI as well, especially for mobile platform design, because for a small screen, if a lot of
information is needed to show, the transparent design is a good way. Or even, each panel could be
set to display or hide by press the screen.
Figure 14. Transparent example of Dota 2 UI design, different from the other prototypes.
Conclusions
In this paper, we analyzed the current version of Dota 2 UI on both players and spectators
view with a useful evaluation method in HCI – Heuristic Evaluation.
Generally, by knowing the background and history of Dota game from DotA: Allstars to
Dota 2, we established the overwhelming concepts and details of the game in order to help us
understand rules and relation to dismantle the system. The evaluation process is based on those
relations of game functions and rules at players or spectators views, and the UI is like a door using
by human to interact with game world, which is valuable to analyze and improve. From the result
of the evaluation, we can see that heuristic evaluation is perfect to analyze not only general
software UI design, but also satisfied with game UI design. By quantification for each evaluator,
we could learn each problem occupies how much weight in problem sets, which help testers and
designers solve those problems according to the degree of serious so that improve the efficiency
of development and maintenance.
For the evaluation of Dota 2 UI, the results are positive because the final score are low. In
10 evaluators, only 5 of them are marked as problems, and furthermore, no evaluators’ score more
than 3, which is major problem. The possible solutions are provided after discussing the results,
some of which are quite feasible to solve the problems, such as expanding battle area, and using

18
transparent to enlarge the main game area. However, some limitation do exist to some extent. Few
prototypes collected from pervious articles and online materials provide the rigid solution for each
evaluators, and no a comprehensive design with data set or detail instructions for how to redesign
a new usable prototype as a solution. In future research, we will continue to provide suitable
solution for Dota 2 UI design, and by further evaluating iteratively for Dota 2 new UI and similar
game UI, we hope to summary a design principles and guidelines for designing MOBA genre game,
not only for Dota 2, but also for all of them which has similar contents and regulations.

19
Reference
Augustine, Josh (August 17, 2010). "Riot Games' dev counter-files "DotA" trademark". PC
Gamer. Archived from the original on February 3, 2013.
Braeunig, T. F. (1990). U.S. Patent No. 4,925,189. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
CARLSSON, C., & PELLING, A. (2015). Designing Spectator Interfaces for Competitive
Video Games.
Caroux, L., & Isbister, K. (2016). Influence of head-up displays' characteristics on user
experience in video games. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies,
87, 65-79. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2015.11.001
DEJAN, ZALIK, (2015). SURVEYING THE SCENE: EXAMINING THE
DEMOGRAPHICS OF ESPORTS. Retrieved from
http://www.esportsbets.com/998/who-makes-up-esports-community/
Feak, Steve; Mescon, Steve (March 19, 2009). "Postmortem: Defense of the Ancients".
Gamasutra. pp. 1–5. Archived from the original on December 7, 2010. Retrieved
January 8, 2014.
Gamepedia A (2015). Game modes - Captains Mode.
http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Game_modes#Captains_Mode (2015-02-17).
Jonasson K and Thiborg J (2010) Electronic sport and its impact on future sport. Sport
inSociety 13(2): 287–299.
MacCallum-Stewart, E. (2014). Online games, social narratives. Routledge.
Michał B, Patrycja R.S., Mariusz S. (2015). The State of Polish video games sector report
2015.

20
Nielsen, J. (1994). Heuristic evaluation. Usability inspection methods, 17(1), 25-62.
Taylor TL (2012) Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of
ComputerGaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Tok, Kevin (January 25, 2006). "Defense of the Ancients 101". GotFrag. Archived from the
original on June 24, 2009. Retrieved January 8, 2014.
Schell, J. (2014). The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. CRC Press.
Screen, A. T. (2013). What do these things have in common?
Yin-Poole, W. (2011). Dota 2 Preview. Eurogamer. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-
08-19-dota-2-preview (2015-02-17).

Heuristic Evaluation for Dota 2-The application of usability principles for game User Interface design

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (18)

Destacado

Destacado (20)

Similar a Heuristic Evaluation for Dota 2-The application of usability principles for game User Interface design

Similar a Heuristic Evaluation for Dota 2-The application of usability principles for game User Interface design (20)

Heuristic Evaluation for Dota 2-The application of usability principles for game User Interface design