Reddit reviews Human-Computer Interaction (3rd Edition)

Hi there, thanks for keeping it friendly in light of my rather harsh comments.

I think my main problem was that the article appears to present your UI as something new or innovative, even though it's clearly not (as the other commenter pointed out). Games have used tables and infographics to represent things and processes for decades.

There are whole genres of games that play like this - from turn-based strategy browser games, management simulations like Football Manager, Economy Simulations, War Games, etc. Some of these games focus around a central map, but many do not.

Picking on terminology was a crappy thing to do, sorry about that. I don't want to dump a list of books on you, but maybe as an introductory reading it would be good to familiarize yourself with the difference between Implementation Model (how the tool or simulation works under the hood), the Mental Model (what a User believes to be true about something, their personal understanding of a subject matter) and the Representation Model (how a digital tool presents the model/simulation to their Users via its interface). Maybe this guy here.

This is pretty much the domain of Human-Computer Interaction, or HCI. That's the Cognitive Psychology focused academic underpinning of the analysis and design (design as in crafting and shaping, not decorating ;) ) of digital tools. Any introductory HCI book would give a good foundation, I like the works of Alan Dix & co, and Jenny Preece & co.

Can recommend two books if you’re after more practices examples.

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Interaction+Design%3A+Beyond+Human+Computer+Interaction%2C+4th+Edition-p-9781119020752 (or earlier edition - I know the 3rd edition and would recommend it).

Also

Human-Computer Interaction https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0130461091/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Om3TAbHWPTF4V


Both form a large chunk of my research and were what my university courses were based off of.

My two cents:
Big thing is designing with the user not for them. Reflecting and co-creating (working with all the stakeholders at a cooperative level). Practical experience with design experts > reading the books.