Building a Clean UI

A good UI is not pretty — it is fast. The goal is a screen where the information that changes your decisions sits where your eyes already are, and everything else gets out of the way.

The center belongs to the fight

• Move what you watch constantly near the middle: your character, your resources, enemy casts, your critical cooldowns.
• Your own health and buffs belong near your character, not the corner of the screen.
• Eyes should travel millimeters, not inches — every far-apart element is attention spent on commuting.

Evict what you do not use

• If you have not looked at a UI element in a week, hide it or shrink it.
• Duplicate information is noise — you do not need your cast bar, an addon cast bar, and a WeakAura all saying the same thing.
• Default Blizzard frames can be moved and scaled without any addon; start there before adding complexity.

Iterate, do not rebuild

Change one thing, play a session, judge. UIs that get rebuilt wholesale every month never settle into muscle memory — and muscle memory is the whole point.

Stuck on something here? Post a note on the Academy Learning Board — someone aboard has been exactly where you are.