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You select the priority of the research field, it can be Primary or Secondary or ... well, I called it "minimum" (hate it). It's supposed to be the "standard/not focused" level of priority. The research will go on there at a slow pace.
So, how to phrase the "minimum" one better?
Hey Acharis,
I took the liberty of simplifying your UI to make your problem disappear. Do you like it? :)
Cheers,
Chris
“Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”—Bruce Lee
Hmm, I'm not sure :) The interface looks kind of empty without the third option. Plus it's more confusing (now the player needs to click the active button again to switch it off (disable primary/secondary), with 3 buttons it's easier and more straightforward...)
Minimal would be the grammatically parallel form to primary and secondary. But you might just want to go with high, medium, and low. Or you could choose terms to convey some story - gold, silver, and bronze; red, yellow, and green; def-con 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5; turbo, normal, and idle; cheetah, horse, rabbit, and tortoise; there are many sets of terms indicating intensity or severity, or you could make one up.
Tertiary would be the proper word in that succession.
But I agree that if this third status is the default research level unless they're activated at a higher level (secondary, primary), then it doesn't make much sense to make the player choose the tertiary status. In that case, what I might suggest is to label this status as something like "Research schedule", and then have the secondary status be "active" and the primary status be "aggressive" -- that would communicate to me that everything else advances at a natural ambient pace, as it normally would do absent additional funding or pressure.
I might also propose an alternative UI entirely, wherein (based on the 5 categories you have in the screenshot above) you have a 5-pointed polygon (a.k.a. a pentagon) -- with two inner rings (actually, kinda like the pentagon building, in fact) where in the center you have how many research points you have to spend, and a point on the pentagons corresponds to each research category -- so the outer-most point on the Construction category means Primary/Aggressive, the middle point means Secondary/Active, and the inner-most means Tertiary/Ambient/Minimum.
As an addendum to my alternate UI proposal, I might propose that any "unspent" research points remaining in the middle might represent and influence the pace of "ambient" research -- so if you had two points to spend, you could put them both into construction and all other research would progress slowly or not at all -- or you could leave them both "unspent" which would increase the pace of ambient research in all categories.
In that system, if we assume that the "active" pace costs 1 research point, then having 5 research points unspent is effectively the same as having them spent 1 to each category -- but the advantage would be that if you got a 6th point, with 5 unspent and one allocated to construction, then all categories would behave as base-line "active" with base-line "aggressive" in construction -- and the twist would be that active maybe costs 1 point, but aggressive research costs 3 (which would emulate diminishing returns of one category getting too far ahead of other research, which is often the case in the real world). So in effect, the "unspent" points would become a sort of base-stat, that could be sacrificed to gain advantage in one or a few categories, but your pace is always increasing so you can put your research discoveries on a curve to balance them.
Obviously this is a different design than what you have, and its balanced differently (e.g. in this system, with a discovery curve, you couldn't plow everything into 1 category and master that while being downright rudimentary in others, but that seems possible in your system.) so take it or leave it 
I'm imagining all kinds of good uses for what I just described, so I'm definitely keeping it for myself -- but feel free to use it too if you like.
In the end I went with Nyaanyaa's suggestion and kept these 2, just redesigned the interface.
So, since we are here already, what you think of these names of fields of research? Especially the last one "Sociology" (it should represent all "strange" technologies that don't fit anywhere else, especially related to psychology/sociology/diplomacy/propaganda/xeno-something)? Also I wonder about "Bio-Chemistry" (biological implants and some metallurgy/material alchemy things).
I bit dislike that both Energy and Electronics start with the same letter, but I doubt there is some alternative here (since I like both of these categories and renaming Energy to Power is "meh")...
Hello again,
A good principle in UI design is to design your UI in greyscale first, allowing you to focus entirely on contrast, space, alignment, and so on. A good UI should work perfectly in greyscale. Afterwards you would use colors with similar value to finish your UI.
A game design principle I learned from Tomonobu Itagaki is, “Never add anything meaningless to your game.”
With that in mind, I've polished your UI a bit:
[attachment=26846:pocket space research screen 1.png]
Fig. 1, polished UI
As you can see, I've removed quite a lot of “meaningless” information, and brought more consistency into the design. I used the Gold symbol as a placeholder for a Planet symbol and a Research points symbol that I strongly suggest you create for UI consistency. The Research button at the top received a simple color inversion to highlight that it is the active menu. Clicking the Research button again should remove the highlight and close the window. I moved the Prestige symbol a bit down for consistency, I would also suggest making the star edgier to make it more clearly visible as a star on higher resolution monitors; right now the edges are too rounded. A simple bit of whitespace between Sociology and Artifacts makes the distinction clear. I would suggest brightening the Artifacts button to something inbetween its current value and that of the Sociology button—right now it looks like it can't be selected. I completely removed the scientist image in the initial design because it is superfluous to the actual function; because of this I did not want to be influenced by it.
Once I was done, I thought of how to best add the scientist image to the UI. To make it look as though part of the UI, I made the edges transparent:
[attachment=26847:pocket space research screen 2.png]
Fig. 2, polished UI + scientist image
If you have any further questions about changes I made, please don't hesitate to ask.
Now as far as functionality is concerned, and this is where we come to your question, a good UI requires little to no explanation. If I see a button, I should have an idea of what function it serves. This is what I think of your buttons, any buttons I don't mention are perfectly clear:
M: no idea what function this serves
D: no idea what function this serves
Electronics: no idea what function this serves
Bio-Chemistry: no idea what function this serves
Sociology: semi-clear
I've highlighted some other problems in your UI:
[attachment=26849:pocket space research screen - problem areas.png]
Fig. 3, problematic areas in the UI
(1) The menu is labelled Research, yet the text uses the label Science. Always use the Research label when referring to Research for consistency. Similarly, always use the Research points symbol instead of text when referring to Research points for UI concistency. Mousing over the Gold, Planet, or Research points symbol at any point in the UI should bring up an explanation of the symbol. Refer to Civilization V for an excellent UI in this regard. Also, generally try to phrase explanations as actions. A better text would be, “Spend [research points symbol] to research new technologies. Select Primary or Secondary to enhance [research points symbol] acquisition in the corresponding field of research. Artifacts ...”
(2) The two boxes are not aligned.
(3) Why is the Reports button down here? Move it to somewhere in the UI where similar functions can be found. Move the End Turn button to the right and up, so that it has similar space from the right edge as the bottom edge, and some room to breathe from both edges.
(4) Use commas to separate every third digit for clarity with large numbers (e.g., 5,478,100 or 1,644 or 2,108).
Cheers and good luck with your devin',
Chris
Yeah, I think I should remove some of this text and replace with icons. Thanks.
These are fields of research (there are 5 of these). You click the button and you get to the list of techs.
Electronics: no idea what function this serves
Bio-Chemistry: no idea what function this serves
Sociology: semi-clear
M is menu (will be replaced with three "-"), D is for dev stuff only (won't be in game).
M: no idea what function this serves
D: no idea what function this serves
EndTurn is a dangerous button, it must be far away from normal buttons. Also it has a completely different meaning than all other buttons on the main layer, it does no open any screen, but proceeds with an action.
(3) Why is the Reports button down here? Move it to somewhere in the UI where similar functions can be found. Move the End Turn button to the right and up, so that it has similar space from the right edge as the bottom edge, and some room to breathe from both edges.
Reports will be displayed on separate boxes on the most left part of the scren (that's why the "big" reports button is there, below other reports (it will grant access to reports you have already closed).
(4) Use commas to separate every third digit for clarity with large numbers (e.g., 5,478,100 or 1,644 or 2,108).Already done, this screen is a bit dated.
(1) The menu is labelled Research, yet the text uses the label Science. Always use the Research label when referring to Research for consistency.I have a problem with the "field of research", while "Sociology field" it sounds decent "Energy field" is outright confusing :D How to call these categories/fields of research? Maybe call these sciences (Energy science, Construction science, etc)?
