UI artists Eduardo Carril and Di Zhong share their experiences creating UI in two very different Rovio games, Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds Legends. Whether it is through on screen menus, buttons, or pop-ups, players navigate and make sense of a game through its UI. It’s down to the UI to take all of the most crucial information and resources for playing a game and put it right where players need it. Effective UI can contribute to longer play sessions and increased retention. Conversely, UI challenges can contribute to early player churn. After all, in a competitive space like mobile games, players are not likely to grapple with an unintuitive interface for long. The slightest sign of friction can send a player moving on to the next game. Therefore, crafting intuitive and effective UI is instrumental to creating games that are revisited by players again and again. So how is effective UI created that allows players to get right to the fun and keeps them coming back? It turns out t...