Video games inspire intuitive and delightful UX design
Problem
Users find game interfaces more intuitive and engaging, yet they are unwilling to pay to learn UI of ordinary software. They seek to adopt game design techniques—such as storytelling and animations—to increase delight and user retention in non‑game products.
Pain points
- Unwillingness to pay to learn software UI
- Game UI perceived as more intuitive and delightful
- Game design techniques can solve UX issues like loading screens
Questions to verify
- Have you ever paid to learn the UI of a software?
- Do you find game interfaces more intuitive than traditional software?
- Would you be willing to adopt game‑style design elements to improve your product's user experience?
Evidence
quote · @Anonymous
I found games ux really transformative , where they almost become work UIs. Everyone pays to learn photoshop, nobody wants to pay to learn to use an UI for a game. Not even in tutorial ttime.Total annhilation was such a milestone to RTS games UI. Programming unit routes and behaviour via factories was peak intuitiv design. It was such a boost to the experience of strategy compared to the clicks per minute juggling competition that was starcraft.
quote · @Anonymous
I didn't read the entire article but the headline reminds me of a programme I use: Treesheets. It's a spreadsheet/note taking app made by a person in the games industry, and I find it really fun to use.
quote · @Anonymous
Great article. I’ve been in the UI/UX space for years. Prior to that I studied gamedesign at uni and graduated engineer in art and tech. Principles of gamedesign always allowed me to solve ux problems in sometimes unusually delightful ways. One tiiiny example was a search function for a piece of software that was incredibly slow. The engineers couldnt get it to go any faster. I helped solve it with an old gamedesign technique, which is to add story to the loading screen. Just adding a fun animation and text on what’s happening helped decrease dropoff and increase delight.
Disclaimer: this card is distilled by AI from community discussions as “pain point evidence”. It is a starting point for need analysis and validation, not a “validated market need”. AI has analytical limits; please open the original discussion above to manually verify before key decisions.