The Psychology behind your UI

[Sn00p]

Intro:
First off, this is going to sound absolutely insane; I discovered this from my studies & personal experiences with performance in dungeons/raids. I play a holy paladin, and use the standard Blizzard grid - I moved server and changed my race. I assumed that was what affected my healing - I was wrong. It was my UI entirely, and I discovered some psychology behind it.

What was wrong?
I was using the wrong side of my brain to play. Seriously.

What does UI have to do with this?
The positioning of my grid was changed - so that my right eye was dominantly seeing the grid I was using. This was a mistake. I'll go into more depth in a moment; the jist of it is, the very positioning of your UI in association with your hands & eyes is INCREDIBLY important. More so than people would give credit for!

Each side of your brain has trained functions, and you too can train them with proper knowledge and layout to make you a better gamer.

What the **** are you talking about?
A psychologist named Sperry proposed that people have 'two half brains'. This is because, and I'm sure you've seen it before, there's a divide down the middle of the brain.

These two sides are connected together, but act fairly independently. But we know from this and a few other experiments, that certain functions are in certain parts of the brain.
Think of it as two computers connected by an ethernet cable - it's not as fast when you're loading information, but it still works nonetheless!

The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body, while the right side of your brain controls the left. This may seem unimportant, but it is.
Please note that the follow may be reversed for left handed people, I'm not sure on that one.

An example of this is writing - while of course your motor skills are different in each hand, the ability to write will be stored in the left hand side of your brain (provided you're right handed).

A few things the left side controls:

• Complicated words
• Advanced mathematics
• Systemization

A few things the right side controls:

• Emotion
• Simple language

It is now important to take a few small tests to improve your UI.

Clench your hands together, interlocking your fingers. One thumb placed over the other.
[SPOILER]The thumb on top means the OPPOSITE side is your dominant side. If your right thumb is on top, you're a left brained thinker![/SPOILER]

Now put one hand out at arms length in front of you, roughly central to your face. Cover up each eye and notice which keeps the image the most steady. This is your dominant eye.

You've filled my head with these pointless facts, but what does this mean?
If you're dominantly right eyed, and left brained, then you want to put the vast majority of your UI where your right eye will focus on them. This will relay the information to the left hand side of your brain, where the advanced computing is done and then control your right hand (your mouse hand).

If you find yourself playing more with your keyboard you'd want to lay it out vice versa, ensuring the right side of your brain retrieves information and the left side of your body outputs faster.

The ideal:
You want to place your UI elements effectively on your screen, so you get an effect like this:



Rather than the extra step like you see here:


If there's one thing you take away from this...
Train your brain in a similar way when playing WoW or any other game with a custom interface - it'll help you build your gaming skills up with ease. Don't suddenly swap your UI drastically because it looks shiny!

Thanks for reading guys,
Sorry for all of the psychology lingo, tried to keep it as simple as possible!
Yours
Sn00p

This is an example for you guys, hopefully it'll also explain a few things and give you a better chance to visualize how it should be done.





---------- Post added at 08:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:34 AM ----------

Preserved for colour association update

[eSko]

WOW, this is really interesting.. I've never thought about it this way...
Thank you for bringing it to my attenton +3rep

[Aes]

Very interesting, +rep

[MadameGrip]

Wow.. Actually I tried to compare it with the things I do when I build my UI's.. And you're actually hitting it pretty straight And very interresting read, you should make more of these threads

[Sn00p]

I'll do one on colour association in the future, this is something I stumbled across while healing a heroic dungeon. :P Suddenly cropped up from my psychology lessons that 'hey, maybe..'

[eSko]

So if I get it right, this should also be used as a decision maker when it comes to choosing keyboard binding versus mouse binding...
Right handed left-brainers should be faster while pressing mouse buttons, right?

btw, imho this post should be shared via mmowned's facebook page.. totally deserves it

[Sn00p]

When they see things with their right eye yes

[CheeseProphet]

So if I have a dominant left eye and im rightbrained or w/e im fine? ^^

[Sn00p]

Yes that means that viewing things through your left eye will provide faster visual analysis

[hellixist]

hmm, what if im right eyed and right brained? seems like im screwed

[Unholyshaman]

Very interesting post, good job.

[Sn00p]

That just means your keyboard reactions will be better than your mouse reactions Hellixist. Because your dominant eye has a better visual processing part of the brain, it means it's faster at decoding the light information it receives.

Right brain -> Left hand
Left brain -> Right hand

So that just means your keyboard reactions will be quicker than your mouse reactions if you're playing as a clicker try playing as a keyboard player

[samvx]

omg! awesome info! nice job!

[abhorsenjay]

Very interesting! +Rep from me

[Hank Moody]

I most say this is defiantly interesting but Im not sure how a good UI wound be then if I am Right handed and no clue about what eye is dominant, could you give some pics of the UIs for deference eye,hand and brain combinations ? if so 3rep!