The tag skill selection menu, part of character creation in Fallout: New Vegas

This image, a menu, is part of the user interface (UI) for a video game, so it has to do a few things. First, it must make its purpose clear; this menu is for choosing “tag skills,” which in this game provide starting bonuses to those skills. Because these choices are permanent once confirmed, the menu must also make it clear what each skill does so the player knows what they are choosing. Most importantly, this menu must be easy to read and understand, because many gamers may be put off by confusing menu screens and end up not playing the game.

To accomplish this, the designers used alignment to create a grid, onto which almost all of the elements fall perfectly. The top and bottom, including the border, inform the player what the menu is for: selecting three skills to tag. It’s not pictured here, but once a skill is selected, it gets highlighted and the number next to it is boosted by 15 points, which lets the player easily keep track of which skills they’ve selected and shows the effect of tagging a skill. On the left we have a left-justified list of skills in one column, and a right-justified list of values associated with the skills. This column is also aligned with the “SKILLS: 0/3 Selected” text, which creates a visual break between the skills list on the left and the description on the right. The description is further broken into two elements, separated by the line: on the top is a picture related to the skill (Survival involves cooking at campfires, so the picture reflects this), and below is a brief description of its effect on the game to help the player decide whether or not they want to tag it. The only element that isn’t strictly in alignment is the text on the far right, “Reset R)” and “Done A)”. Placing them outside the menu’s grid draws attention to them, which is useful because they tell the player how to perform two common functions and because the “Done” option is the only way to progress past the menu. The menu looks organized, and separates into distinct, informative elements that make it easy for the player to read it and understand what they’re doing.