Designing the User Experience of Game Development Tools

Design ◾ 91

Newer versions of Microso Oce provide an interesting example of

representation to build your table. is design allows the user to move

their mouse inside a grid to set the number of rows and columns for their

table visually, which matches most users’ mental model of what a table is

much more closely (see the right side of Figure5.20).

Using this technique does have a small downside: it limits the total

number of rows and columns the user can choose. is limit is likely

based on the maximum number of columns and rows that the average

user needs. For the edge case of an expert user who needs to go beyond

the maximum, the “Insert ...