UI taste sight (production criteria from pixels)
Cross-check for HIER / CTRST / AFF / SPACE / TYPE / SLOP. Prefer production game UI criteria over SaaS “pretty.” Primary scores live in taste-receptors.md. This file is the narrative checklist — do not substitute it for receptor IDs.
Score only visible pixels. Tone never excuses unreadable HP/ammo.
Anti-patterns (AI / default-taste tells)
Judge co-occurrence. One trait alone is weak; three or more without compensating art direction → crush SLOP and often HIER.
| Tell | Looks like | Maps to |
|---|---|---|
| Purple / indigo / pink wash | Tailwind-ish gradients | SLOP-PURPLE |
| Neon glow-as-hierarchy | Box-glow every card | SLOP-NEON / LIGHT-BLOOM-HIER |
| Cream + terracotta + italic serif | Warm field + serif + clay | SLOP-CREAM |
| Cardocalypse | Nested equal cards | SLOP-CARD / SPACE-NEST-DEPTH |
| Equal visual weight | HP=XP=social | SLOP-EQUAL / HIER-WEIGHT-MATH |
| Glassmorphism everywhere | Frosted low-contrast | SLOP-GLASS / CTRST-SCRIM-DEPTH |
| Lucide soup | Outline icons in gradient squares | SLOP-LUCIDE / ICON-LUCIDE |
| Garbled text | Fake glyphs | SLOP-FAKE-TEXT / TYPE-GLYPH-INTEGRITY |
| Style over urgency | Ornate critical readouts | TYPE-DISPLAY-HUD-SPLIT / HIER-URGENCY-LADDER |
| Input-model mismatch | Tiny corners; no focus | AFF-HIT / AFF-FOCUS |
Positive criteria → receptor families
| Theme | Score in atlas |
|---|---|
| Urgency → prominence | HIER-* |
| Pressure contrast / plates | CTRST-* |
| Affordances / states | AFF-* |
| Spacing / safe area | SPACE-* |
| Type system | TYPE-* |
| Tone without parse death | HIER-DIEGETIC-SPLIT + TYPE-* + CTRST-* |
| Anti-slop | SLOP-* |
Deep loads: hier-contrast-receptors.md · space-affordance-receptors.md · typography-sight.md · anti-slop-sight.md
Sources
- WANDR — Game UI Design (frequency/urgency, pressure reading)
- Digest kinship: private
06-game-ui-taste.md,10-granular-type-hierarchy.md