Overwatch: A Li'l Bit o' UI
Quality of life UI fixes & features for Overwatch by Bailey Kalesti.
OVERWATCH:
A LI’L BIT O’ UI
Whilst at Blizzard, I had the opportunity to help the Overwatch team with UI tasks for a few months. I wasn’t scheduled on the team for long, and I was learning new tech, so I didn’t make a lot. Still, they helped me learn, and I helped them cross off quality of life features. But the best part was getting to know the team. Such a great group!
The Overwatch League announcement banner I put together.
Info on the new Capture the Flag rewards I put together. Did compositing work (the characters are from different scenes, put them together, did fx, yada yada).
Icon I made to represent the Ayutthaya map.
QUALITY OF LIFE
I did a lot of little tiny improvements throughout the UI. Some were things the team wanted to do for a while, but didn’t have the time to get to. Others were things players were asking for. AND a few were things I wanted to change. 😁
HERO SELECT
The hero select character lineup was getting crowded and we needed to fit more heroes as they were added. So, I made a small change to buy the team some time:
The role icons were crowding the lineup.
So, I moved them up and made the titles stay on. I didn’t like having to hover!
ULTIMATE PERCENTAGE
Or because of player requests and Reddit posts like this, I added the teammate Ultimate percentage number to the tab screen (and cleaned up the death timer indicator while I was at it):
LISTBOX IMPROVEMENTS
This is something I wanted to fix on my own, so I did! I didn’t like how the lists had all kinds of icons that weren’t aligned, and the prices were hard to read for me. I wanted them grouped in columns.
But even for my trying, I still forgot to align the “New!” icon properly. Special thanks to Roph for fixing it! What a champ. 😅
The old prices (in red) used be flush with the title, among other things.
Giving each icon and indicator its own place and aligned typography, etc. Cleanup!
SKIN SELECT BEFORE GAME STARTS
But the biggest change I helped realize was adding the ability to change your skin right before a game started. Previously, players could only do this in the main menu before they queued up for a game. Special thanks to Jason Boyle for his engineering support.
I tried a lot of designs, but the simple approach worked best. So, we went with that.
And it was well-received by a lot of people. Blizzard tweeted about it too. Yay! It felt good to give people something they wanted. 😄
When we showed this off to the whole team, they cheered! It was SO fun!
On the whole, the Overwatch team was a blast to work with. I learned a lot about team culture…which I took to the next team I worked on (and they liked it too!).
I’m grateful to Rophillar Loch and Jayson Kirby for their outstanding help, UI love, and good vibes. They’re a pleasure to work with and very cool people. Alex Serio, Ryan Chew, Keith Miron, Chris Chen, and Jason Boyle were also amazingly helpful and kind. Couldn’t have done much without their programming magic! Thank you to Bill Petras for pointing me in the right direction a few times. And a special thanks to Seth Spaulding, without whom I’d never have had the opportunity to help. Seth has been a great friend and mentor to me over the years. Tremendous respect! And thank you to the whole Overwatch team for being so welcoming, enthusiastic, and supportive. Miss you!
Lastly, all images and videos of the artwork are owned by Blizzard Entertainment.