As the resident UX Designer, I can tell you that the UX (User eXperience) is a very important part of the process. We’ve been through countless prototypes, whiteboarding sessions, and play testing sessions to help build a great product.

What is UX?

UX is “the design of the process”. As much as the Developer is responsible for building and maintaining the code, a UX Designer is responsible for building and maintaining the ideal interface. UX is about anticipating how the user (you) will interact with the code. A good user experience means that you don’t need a manual, and the functionality to accomplish tasks is natural.

Our UX Philosophy

There is a fallacy that “more choices is better”. It seems like a simple idea; if you have more choice, you can tweak things so they fit you perfectly. We disagree. Our goal isn’t just to make a great product, but it’s also to make a product that is super easy to use. Tabyltop owes its existence to the fact that other products on the market are either overly complex (for no good reason), or underpowered.

So our philosophy is “simple” (which, ironically is not a simple process). We know that this may require you to change your play style, or your house rules. These decisions aren’t made lightly (you should see our internal discussions), but they do allow us to be deliberate in our development. One of our guiding ideals is that any player should be able to use all of Tabyltop’s capabilities within 5 minutes of starting a session.

The Future of Tabyltop

Tabyltop is not a destination. We are working toward a v1.0, but we already have a long list of v2.0 features that we know we want to add. Part of that process is community feedback. We know that our users are going to have amazing ideas that we didn’t consider as part of our initial release. By simplifying now, we can continue to add features, deliberately, and make sure we continue to hold onto that idea that any user can start using all the capabilities of Tabyltop from day one.

We want everyone to be welcome at the Tabyl.