BattleReport — visual and interaction design
A compact notebook, not a ranking interface
The current interface is a 720×652 movable dark window with soft gold heading, pale text, bounded cards and category accents: orange for damage, blue for defense, green for healing, purple for casts, teal for recovery. It is intentionally a personal fight explorer, not a raid leaderboard.
Seven tabs separate Overview, Damage, Defense, Healing, Casts, Effects and Recovery. The top navigation moves between the latest/live encounter, saved fights and a separate Average view. Lower arrows and wheel scroll through the seven visible detail rows. Hover details explain what the observations mean.
Making context visible
The activity display uses dealt and taken bars for the fight's time bins, adapting the bin width when long fights exceed its bound. Cards can show a signed difference versus prior average; the initial baseline is frozen before a fight, so this is not self-comparison. An unavailable baseline is presented honestly as No baseline.
Color direction isn't a universal score. Higher damage or healing can be green; lower incoming damage can be green. Duration, healing received and resources spent have neutral signed differences because context determines value. The interface shouldn't imply a fight against a trivial mob proves better skill.
The optional quick-report choreography
The prompt added September 7 shows three randomly chosen facts for about twelve seconds after its entrance. It animates the movable launcher out, into the temporary position and back, using a gentle pulse. Clicking opens the associated saved fight. Another combat start or disabling the option dismisses it.
A September 9 revision made the quick report itself draggable, with its own saved location, distinct from the normal launcher. Dragging pauses the display countdown and restarts it on release. The checkbox that disables the feature does not stop normal recording.
Information ethics of combat numbers
A tick isn't a cast, an effect refresh isn't a unique proc, and a sampled resource gain doesn't identify a specific regeneration source. Good visual design includes those qualifications in tooltips and category descriptions rather than hiding uncertain assumptions behind attractive totals.
Open usability tests: keyboard/escape and focus, fixed-size window on small clients, tab contrast and dense rows, tooltip readability, prompt motion comfort, and usability when an older report has no resource/recovery field. Those checks were not performed in the current audit and no redesign has been approved.
Document information
Creative director: Babuni.dev. Implementation evidence: current UI.lua, README, GUIDE and September Git revisions.