Reader UI of the Week: Diligent planning with Amaus

Each week, WoW Insider brings you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com.

Reader UI of the Week is here to turn your UI frowns upside down. Each week, WoW Insider community members send in their own UI creations for us to marvel at, learn from, and occasionally question why people do the crazy things that they do. All in all, it works out pretty well and people seem to have fun. Why should I stop the fun from happening?

This week, we're going to take a look at Amaus' user interface, which includes some impressive pre-planning as well as layout control. I've preached over and over that the first step in interface creation for players new to old should be drawing a picture of what you want and where you want it. Not only does it give you a sense of scope, shape, and size, but the drawing gives you a template to work from when you finally get ready to move each addon into place. When the real deal starts to happen, you'll be glad that you had that drawing.

Amaus' UI: healer UI, Grid-based, handling children

Lay it on me, Amaus:

Thanks for the email and the submission, Amaus. You may laugh, but UIs designed for dealing with kids as well as playing the game are not uncommon. Many parents enjoy World of Warcraft, and fashioning a UI around being able to quickly gain bearings and situational awareness on a fight right after your attention is pulled away by kids is a huge boon to playing while parenting.

The art of planning

Planning out your UI by drawing it or throwing together a quick sketch on the computer can go a long way to not only solidifying your entire vision for your screen, but give you a general idea of where things will be placed once you get to the actual building stage. As a healer, one would expect and understand Amaus' hefty addon load, and I think despite the large number of addons everything is handled well. Each target or focus has each set of buffs, debuffs, and information compartmentalized to make for easy access awareness. In fact, a good number of the addons don't even come into play during combat, but are accounted for on the main blueprint just to make sure no other addons intrude on another's vital space.

Keeping the center free of static addons is a smart move, as usual, with healers. Power Auras always seems to work nicer in the middle, due to people's focus and where the eyes want to be, etc. Plus, it just feels good there, doesn't it?

Check out Amaus' original UI plan. You can give yourself rough approximations of size and shape for addons, as well as see if things will be too cluttered before even moving a single action bar or interface element. A little planning goes a long way and allows your vision for your UI to take center stage, opposed to hastily throwing together addons right before raid night.

Nesting vertical bars

One of the cooler aspects of Amaus' UI is his use of vertical health bars in tandem with traditional horizontal bars. Rather than waste space building the middle of the UI up towards the center, Amaus has changed his Stuf target and focus target bars to be vertical, resting next to the action bar setup. This approach not only allows for more overall symmetry, but is also clever, and I'm a fan of clever things.

Target's target bars are usually not meant for deep information. Most of the time, target's target bars are used for the snap information grabs like who and what, while not necessarily the details. My boss target's bar is really just there to show debuffs on an off-tank or to make sure the boss is looking at me. If he decides to change targets, a well-placed Taunt would be in order.

With the vertical target's target bars, you get the quick information that target's target bars afford with the space-saving awesomeness of nesting your addons up close to each other for symmetry's sake.

Grid like a pro

Amaus' Grid setup is detailed in his email above, but I wanted to spend a second to discuss why I feel Grid is so powerful in the raiding game. Grid's configuration is deep and dense, so getting acquianted with every feature is daunting and potentially impossible for many people. That's why you read this column though, right? Glean ideas off of someone's setup.

Some healers work better when health bars are plain and unnoticeable when full and prominent when healing is needed. Amaus' setup is similar to this train of thought -- keep your safe targets out of the way and push information on targets that need your attention. Splitting the healing notifications on the left and right sides is also a good idea, since the UI is being built for maximum information gathering when attention has been pulled away. As a healer, I would think these are some pretty solid moves, allowing enough time for snap decisions, even in the face of kids doing their own things.

Conclusion

I don't know if I would recommend anything substantial to change, Amaus, other than tightening up some of the addon placement, but that's one of those pesky preference concerns that really doesn't have any bearing on your UIs functionality. I don't know how sold I am on the vertical list of player and target buffs and debuffs, because I don't even know how I could read through a list like that in the heat of battle, cherry-picking a bar to check a duration of or to cancel.

You've got a good setup, Amaus. A lot of addons relatively under control while still keeping a cohesive vision, made possible by a little bit of planning. Hopefully other players will take that lesson to heart -- a little planning goes a long way towards not stacking all of your addons on top of each other in the corner and just giving up.

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Interested in getting the most out of your user interface? Come back once a week for more examples of reader UIs. For more details on individual addons, check out Addon Spotlight, or visit Addons 101 for help getting started.