Exclusive FM2011 blog with Miles Jacobson day 20: The new user interface revealed

By Miles Jacobson in Football Manager 2011

Published 14:00 04/11/10

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The user interface, which is basically what you see on screen whilst playing the game, is something that we spend a very long time on each year, looking at things not just with our own skills, but also with third party usability experts to ensure that the games navigation is as simple and intuitive as it can be.

There've been loads of changes in the look of the game this year, and I'll now pass you over to Martin who has been here for many years working with his team and the graphics team who work on the interface for the game.

Hello to everyone out there in MirrorFootball land, my name is Martin and I'm part of the User Interface Team at Sports Interactive. We are the guys that decide what should be shown on each screen and where each image, piece of information and button should be placed, as well as designing and creating all the images you see, and writing the code that allows us to layout each screen and makes the buttons work.

As an avid player of Football Manager myself, I feel the same frustrations as you do when any part of the interface isn't right, no matter how small that issue is. Combine this with the fact that the user interface is one of the largest areas of the game, and more often than not our team has the longest task list, with jobs ranging from moving a piece of text to completely redesigning and programming a whole section of the game interface.

Of the roughly 100 new user interface features our team worked on for Football Manager 2011 over the course of the last year, some of them will be very easy to spot - like the new skin, which subtly improves the look of the whole game. But some, hopefully, you won't really notice. You'll just find it easier to get around the game screens, locate the information you need and perform the actions required to get your team on the path to silverware. This is what we call 'usability', and we spend a lot of time trying to make sure that every button is exactly where you expect it to be.

One of the first big interface changes you will notice in Football Manager 2011 is that we have redesigned the News and Inbox system. Based on feedback from fans of the game, we decided that having a separate News area meant that you might miss out on hearing about events going on in the wider football world. So we have combined the two separate screens and expanded the News Subscription system to give you even more control of what you receive in your Inbox.

News items and messages will inform you of who has sent you a message or which newspaper is reporting the latest piece of juicy gossip, and the Inbox screen is now laid out in a way that gives you more flexibility in how you read your messages and news items. There are more filtering options and the ability to hide messages by date. The Additional Information box which gives you extra relevant information on the subject of the news item can also be hidden if you so wish.

Another useful addition this year is the new Set Piece Creator, which came about after seeing how well the Tactics Creator was received in Football Manager 2010. In the same way as we did with the Tactics Creator, we wanted to give you a method of customising your corners, free-kicks and throw-ins in an easy step-by-step way.

Using a clear, graphical, drag and drop interface, you can customise lists of which players should be taking each type of set piece, give individual instructions to each player and instruct the taker where the ball should be delivered.

Other major improvements include a redesigned Contract Offer screen to help you in your negotiations with Agents, designing the Conversation screen so you can easily get your point of view across to that awkward striker and creating the Match Preparation, Pre and Post Match Analysis screens.

Not forgetting the many little tweaks which add that final layer of polish to the interface, such as the won/drawn/lost indicators in the Fixtures screen, the player on/off indicators when you make a substitution, the penalty shootout bar, or the ability to minimise and maximise all the match widgets with one button click.

As I mentioned above, these visible changes are only a part of the work we do. Another area where we spend a lot of time is in making improvements 'under the hood', which improve the navigation speed and allow us greater flexibility to add new functionality to screens. Like the ability to resize the two parts of the Tactics screen or making information tables scroll more smoothly.

All of which we are sure will make your experience of Football Manager easier and more enjoyable than ever before

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