Steam - Hall of Fame

Many people enjoy playing video games; a portion of which play on personal computers. With so many games, and other computer applications, available today, it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. This is what a once small company, Valve, noticed a few years ago. At the beginning, they were solely a game developing company but a few years ago they expanded their application horizon and developed Steam. Since its creation, it has changed significantly. Now people can manage all of their gaming and most of their other software content through Stream. Nearly any software application can be integrated into Steam, thus increasing the user community. However, most people still use it for Valve developed games. Everything else is just a perk. Aside from just keeping track of all games, it also lets your purchase new games through an online store. Also available is a “Friends List” option, which lets you add to a list of people you meet while gaming. Users can either chat with these friends, or join a game that the friend is playing in. Steam allows various other functionalities but these are the things that really appeal to its user community.

Among what Steam offers is a great user interface. As Steam has been continually updated and developed by Valve, it clearly shows a lot of thought has gone into its design. It is easy to use, easy to learn to use, aesthetically pleasing, and its application toward gaming is very flexible. This does not mean that it is perfect, as there are a few things that could be improved. Most of this paper is going to concentrate on one aspect of the Steam interface, although several others also get mention. Overall, it well deserves a nomination to the Hall of Fame.

The first thing to notice is the logon screen. It is very simplistic and consistent with many other logon screens – making it more familiar to users. All a users needs to input is a username and password. There is also an option to save the password, so users don’t need to be burdened with entering their password each time; usernames are automatically saved. This is beneficial for users because they already have to remember so many usernames and passwords for other programs. Users can only remember so much information. Incase of a lost username and/or password, the option to recover them is available. Users can also create a new account if they do not already have one. All of these options are similar to other logon screens, making it familiar to users. The way the buttons are laid out also makes things easy on the user, as they are clearly marked, and areas are not overcrowded. Also included is error prevention and feedback. If a user logs in by mistake they have the option to cancel the login process. If the user enters a username that does not exist or an incorrect password, they are prompted with a message indicating so. The only poorly designed thing about this, is that if the user is entering a username they think to be correct, the error message only responds saying “that username may not exist.” To be more useful to the user, the message should indicate whether or not the username really does exist or not.

Another simplistic and consistent part is the Windows system tray icon, which is always displayed. Aside from being familiar to users, it also provides feedback to the user about Steam’s current status. If the user’s internet connection goes down the tray icon turns from a white box into a white box with a red X in it, to indicate loss of connection. This not only provides the user with information about Steam but also provides useful information that the internet is down in general. However, in the event that the internet is up, and everything is working correctly, a right click on the icon brings up a menu with several options. The option most important for Hall of Fame nomination is “Games.”

The “My games” section is perhaps the best designed part of Steam. As depicted in the picture above it comes first on the tray icon list, as it is probably the more frequently used. This is helpful to the user because they do not have to scan a list of items – they need only to glance at the top one. Once in the “My games” section, there are many things a user can choose to do. To make things easy on the user Steam has everything labeled, and has applications categorized so they can be easily recognized. This not only makes Steam aesthetically pleasing but allows for cognitive offloading because users do not have to remember where everything is. They can simply glance at the interface, and easily determine what they want to know. It also makes for much less memorization by the user because everything is labeled and has a natural feel. With only a few glances the interface is comfortably recognizable.

As mentioned previously, every application is categorized. They categories are: installed, not installed, and favorites. The applications in categories are alphabetically listed, which makes searching for them much easier. Each category is also collapsible, so users do not have to sift through a large numbers of applications. They can simply go to which category they want and then the application name. To make it even easier, users can add games to their favorites list, which puts them in a separate category located at the top of the Steam interface. This is much like the real world – people tend to keep things they use often in the most easily accessible area.

Moving applications into a favorite category is not the only control and freedom Steam offers users. Users can do almost anything they want regarding games and applications. They can install or uninstall anything, activate products not purchased through the online stores, create desktop shortcuts for games, view help and documentation about specific games - the list goes on and on. Unfortunately the interface itself is not customizable but it would be unwise to change anything anyway. Everything is designed well already, including if a user happens to make an error while customizing their application needs. It is difficult to get lost in a loop of errors within Steam. Almost every button press presents a conformation window, or with other important information about what might happen. Some may think this would get irritating after a while, but it is far better than having no error protection whatsoever.

While on the subject of errors, there are some Valve should fix regarding the few poor design flaws Steam does have. The first of which, is that no help or documentation is available to the user when the internet connection is down. Applications can still be used, but there is no documentation incase something unexpected might happen within Steam, or if the user needs help figuring something out. However, considering Steam is rather intuitive for new users, this is only a minor problem. A more important design flaw has to do with the “My games” section. Consider a user with five-hundred applications installed. Although applications are categorized and alphabetized, searching for a specific one could take some time for the user. By implementing a search function, such as Apple’s Spotlight, this could be fixed.

In conclusion, I believe that Steam is well worthy of admittance to the Hall of Fame for its interface design. It seems obvious that much thought has been put into it to make the users’ experience as enjoyable and as painless as possible. Out of the things that could be improved for the interface, none of them are that significant and could probably be easily fixed. Overall it is a very solid design, well worth entry into the Hall of Fame.