Lessons in user interface design in the procedural city generation for games tool Ürban PAD

Procedural content generation design often involves configuring an array of abstract choices at each stage of the creation process. For new tools users, or for a non-specialist user, these choices are often complex and uncertain. A good interface that guides the user in their choices helps overcome this uncertainty and subsequent frustration with the process of generating procedural content. Since good user interface (UI) experiences facilitate adoption, procedural software tool developers constantly refine UI design in order to accommodate the engineering demands of procedural content generation architecture and translate them into a coherent user experience. This paper discusses Gamr7's experience in creating, testing, and refining procedural user interfaces based on our experience with redesigning the user interface for our procedural content generation software, Ürban PAD. This case study will address user expectations, architecture, and execution flow considerations as well as solutions to some of Ürban PAD's specific user interface challenges.