Source metadata
- Type: Course teaching material — explanatory text accompanying a diagram of interface types
- Author: Darryl Charles (course lecturer), drawing on Fagerholt and Lorentzon (2009)
- Date added: 2026-10-25
- Underlying model: Erik Fagerholt and Magnus Lorentzon, Beyond the HUD: User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games (MSc thesis, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 2009). The thesis has now been ingested; see source-beyond-the-hud. These bibliographic details are confirmed by the thesis itself.
- Relationship to the thesis: The diagram’s two questions match the thesis’s final design space: whether an element exists “in the fictional game world” and whether it is “visualized as a part of the 3D game space”. The four labels are a simplification, though. The thesis calls the spatial quadrant geometric elements. It splits “meta” into meta-representations (fictional objects shown off-world, such as the Grand Theft Auto IV phone) and meta-perception (full-screen damage and health effects, which it describes as usually not part of the fiction). It also adds signifiers as a sub-group of diegetic elements (Fagerholt and Lorentzon, Beyond the HUD, pp. 51–52, see source-beyond-the-hud). The diagram’s meta example, a crack or blood effect on the screen, is therefore meta-perception in the thesis’s terms.
Key takeaways
- Game interface elements (maps, health bars, dialogue boxes, quest markers) can be classified with two yes/no questions: is the element part of the game’s fiction, and is it located in the game’s 3D world?
- Combining the two answers gives four categories: diegetic (fiction yes, world yes), meta (fiction yes, world no), spatial (fiction no, world yes) and non-diegetic (fiction no, world no).
- The categories describe how information is presented, not what information is presented. The same quest objective could be delivered through any of the four.
- Each category carries design tendencies, not fixed rules: diegetic interfaces tend to support immersion, meta interfaces convey the character’s condition without a physical object, spatial interfaces aid navigation, and non-diegetic interfaces make essential information easy to find.
- A worked example (a first-person adventure in which the player must find a key) shows one objective expressed four ways: a physical watch, a screen warning flash, a floating marker over a building, and a corner quest list.
Notable claims
- Diegetic: “The interface exists within the game’s fiction and in its 3D space. The character can see or interact with it, just as the player can.” Example: the health indicator on the protagonist’s suit in Dead Space.
- Meta: “The information relates to the game’s story or fictional events, but it is presented directly on the screen rather than as an object in the world.” Example: a crack, distortion or blood effect across the screen when the character is injured.
- Spatial: “The interface is placed at a position in the 3D world, but it is not necessarily something the character can see.” Example: a floating quest marker above a non-player character’s head.
- Non-diegetic: “The interface is separate from the game’s fiction and world.” Example: a conventional health bar, ammunition counter, minimap or score display in a corner of the screen.
- “These are design tendencies, not fixed rules. A diegetic interface may be harder to read than a conventional HUD, while a non-diegetic interface may be exactly what a fast-paced game needs.”
- Central lesson: designers should choose the presentation method that best serves the intended player experience.
Relevance
This source primarily informs:
- game-interface-types — the dedicated concept page for the two-question model and its four categories
- ui-design — the wider UI design page, whose interface taxonomy section now points to the two-question model
- diegetic — glossary entry for the fiction axis of the model
It also bears on presence-and-immersion and immersion-models (diegetic presentation as a route to immersion), player-guidance (spatial markers as direct guidance) and gestalt-principles-ui (grouping and readability of non-diegetic HUDs).
Open questions raised
- Where do hybrid or borderline elements sit? For example, an “augmented vision” mode that the character is said to possess but that draws outlines in the world for the player.
- Does the immersion benefit of diegetic interfaces hold across genres, or mainly in first-person shooters, the genre Fagerholt and Lorentzon studied? Their own tests suggest the benefit is not automatic even there: players accepted non-diegetic and meta-perceptual elements, and the authors argue that a fully diegetic interface is not automatically more immersive (Beyond the HUD, pp. 63–64, 75, see source-beyond-the-hud).
- How should student teams weigh readability against immersion when a playtest shows players missing diegetic information?