So, I did some mockup screens and menu maps of my own and figured this thread is best for focusing combined community ideas.
http://imgur.com/a/hcp6S
First an early overview and collection of ideas I had:

http://i.imgur.com/G6eQZ.png

And here a few mockups done in illustrator. If someone is interested I clean up the files and upload the .ai or .svg for you to modify.

http://i.imgur.com/7JSuu.jpg

A normal inventory list view. Basically just the vanilla with more info and font size, etc. somewhat adjusted.
In the bottom bar, between the key descriptions and the character info, you could place buff/effect symbols that reveal more info on hover or take you directly to the corresponding magic screen on double click.
below armor rating, carry weight, etc, there still would be space for name, race, and level.

And I forgot another thing that would be very usefiul. Sorting items by "value per weight". Showing base damage and effects in the list might not be necessary. Ideally you would be able to right-click the sorting panel and choose for yourself which categories to dispaly, akin to windows explorer's detail view. The item view column on the right would scale accordingly. Oh and mouse drag rotates the object.


Next, the same window, switched to view the character, just as in oblivion.

http://i.imgur.com/HY1fw.jpg


I think it is great to view items as thumbnails/icons so I did a thumbnail view:

http://i.imgur.com/HuHJy.jpg

hover over an item to display information. Scrollable list. It would probably be great if you could change the size of the thumbnails (+ and -? ctrl scolling?)
I added a scroll bar as well. Don't know if it's really necessary.

http://i.imgur.com/NGtEm.jpg

Lastly a mockup of the skills window. at 1920x1200, the screen is large enough to show all skills in one screen. Hover over name to get skill description, hover over perk node to get perk description, click node to activate perk.
I'm not sure how well that translates to lower resolutions but I believe at most you'd have to add another screen showing only three skills (with the one in the middle bigger) by clicking on the skill name.
Again, you'd hover over nodes to display information. No viewing single perks.



Some more notes on the first image I posted:

-It feels like the current UI lacks some consistency in the keybinds. Ideally there would be one button to confirm/yes/agree/etc and one to cancel/no and so on. Additionally to the mouse, of course.
-I think file managers and spreadsheet applications of the various operating systems should be our main source of inspiration, because they serve a very similar purpose and have beenimproved for quite some while. Additionally, people are used to them so it's very intuitive. Sorry if that's an too obvious point.
-the sketch shows another idea for the skill menu, but after doing the mockups I think PC resolutions don't need that. See above.
-Magic menu should just work like the inventory. it might even be worth thinking about merging the two. That is, adding the magic categories below the inventory categories. Though it's not really necessary and it will probably screw up looting/selling. I'm just throwing ideas out.
-right now the map isn't primarily a tool for orientation, but a quick travel menu. That fits within the game but eventually I'd like to do a mod that changes this. I'm working on a topographic map right now (just waiting for the CS to be released, and TESannwyn to be fixed for Skyrim so I can export the necessary information). So the notes on maps would only apply if you want to change Skyrim to be more about orienteering with a map.


Oh and for anyone wondering, the font Skyrim used is a commercial font called "Futura Condensed". I used another font in the mockups.

I look at this, then I look at what we got and I weep.

I need a strong drink, though at this time of day, coffee will have to suffice...

Edit: very nicely done, btw! I really hope your vision becomes reality...

Bethesda: Hire this person!

Yeah, that pretty much hits all the points on my wish list. How possible is it to make that mod?

My hope is that Bethesda smartens up and releases a patch that corrects the PC UI problems. I don't want a mod. We shouldn't need a mod for something as basic as this.

I love it.

To me the worst part is that you can't really use the mouse to access things. Instead you have to scroll the lists up and down with the WS keys (or mouse wheel if you are lucky and it responds). Why not simply have a list and let me click on the item I want? The lack of icons is annoying as well. And tbh I don't care about the cooool, oversized 3D view of items, which is completely unnecessary in 99% of the cases. At least they could have done it similar to your Photoshopped image where the character is shown with the gear currently equipped.

Imo the menus in Skyrim are absolutely horrible. I could go on and on about it, like getting confused when trying to look at a certain perk. I fly around in the star constellations without knowing which direction I have to press to reach a certain perk until I'm lucky and the game finally shows me the perk I want to see. They could have easily fit all perks on a single screen, yet I only see huge stars and maybe 5 perks at a time, somtimes even less.

I can only hope UI modders like Darn can completely change this mess into something that works. I doubt Bethesda will do it.

And Bethesda was even bold enough to say the PC would get an adjusted UI so it works well for PC players. The UI is 10x worse than the already bad default Oblivion UI. And it's much harder to fix.

"First DLC announced!

a new, working UI for only $5.99"

Usually, when I think of paperclip, I think of that annoying thing at the bottom of my word document..


..not anymore ever.

Really nice design paperclip... now please go talk to the modding section, make it a reality so that we can raise you're status to that of Godlike existence.

And Zeno's famous, because rock, paper shotgun mentioned him... and.. and.. and.. he's my friend

so I'm almost famous

Don't give them ideas!

And I'm Andy's friend, so... er...

Hi

When I bought Skyrim not expect that it will by so frustrating. The game has a great story but the interface and options are set at very low levels. Something that works well on consoles, is tragic in many cases for the PC. For example, playing a warrior who does not use magic does not pose major problems because it uses not a lot of things - a sword, shield, bow, potion, scroll - you can easily fit in the eight keys. In this case the favorites menu is not so bad. My second character is a magician who uses all the available schools - currently at 19 lv I use 27 spells, depending on the situation, plus shouts, scrolls and potions. My fight look like time-lapse movie because every time I need to open the Favorites menu and search for a spell that I want to use. It is annoying and makes the whole game not very dynamic.

The solution was to restore the bar with pages system and allow assign any key or key combination. You can also do grid instead of the bar which will be open as your favorites menu and will have for example 36 slots to which you can assign keys. In addition, certain functions assigned to keys on a permanent basis - for example Tab - is uncomfortable. For me, this involves removing hands from the keyboard controls.

I look forward to some changes that will be the sum of the solutions proposed by the community.

sorry for language mistakes, if any appeared

If the mouse wheel is not responding, you probably aren't hovering over the list. You CAN click on things. They did - your character is equipped with the items in the background (i.e. switch to third person and then go into the menu).Why not click on the stars?The UI IS adjusted to work well. Note; adjusted. They said nothing about completely redesigning the UI to work mildly better with mouse and keyboard. It's a waste of resources to spend time and money redoing an entire UI when, in the end, people are going to like or hate it the same anyway.

I...will you marry me?

I absolutely adore that, even as a mock-up: it keeps what I do like about the original (the overall look), while also adding in the things it still dearly needs. Like being able to compare armor/damage stats for more than one item in your inventory at a time. And being able to see all the perk trees at once: now that I'm finally leveling up my character a lot, this is getting more and more annoying. Yeah, the perks menu is gorgeous. But I've got a thief-y mage. Moving between the skills she's most likely to use (light armor, one-handed weapons, sneak, magic classes, etc.) is clunky and beyond frustrating as it is now, since I can never get them all on the screen together.

Now, if only there was a way to swap between inventory and spells without having to jump through an added hoop and unnecessary key presses. But I suppose that's more hardcoded than the other UI tweaks.


...That's not funny.

I'm a spreadsheeter and like to see many stats (or at least selected stats) of many items at one time. The whole idea of looking at one, large, purty image of a piece of equipment at a time boggles my mind.

Um and no representation of a timer for effects?

Just some food for thought:
I had one class in designing interpreative signage (nature center/zoo/museum). One of the biggest things was that no more than 50% of the area should be covered with text. Also, that the important stuff should be in the upper left - text or images. Yes we can retrain ourselves to look elsewhere, but why break someting that works?

I loved MW's HUD map, and kept it up most of the time as a timesaver.

I thought OB's GUI was adequate, but never really LIKED it. Then I got Darnified, and it was one of those moments where one realizes they've been missing something.

Thanks for the info in this thread; I'll definitely keep waiting until some modifications take place. Voting with my money and all that.

Hope there's something in here soas to not make it just a complaint.

[mode=cynicalhumor] Hmm...I can see a DLC for a new interface for the PC for a price in order to recoup the costs of making it better
Damn...ninja'd!

I totally agree with the OP.

The Skyrim menu design is asinine. The UI was definitely not tested, it wasn't well thought out at all, and is extremely cumbersome to use.

Even for gamepad gaming it is ridiculous to navigate.

I do like that the main view, when actively moving around, is pretty empty. It's clean and shows what is important, minus maybe showing any effects you have, such as health/stamina/magicka/resist buffs. I can understand not showing disease icons, since villagers will tell you that "you look sick".

However, trying to swap weapons or spells is just dumb. The "favorite" menu is awkward and doesn't really serve a purpose. Setting hotkeys 1 - 0 works OK... given that Dual Wielding and using the hotkeys is totally broken. They should have done something like 1 - 5 is the left hand and 6 - 0 are items for the right hand.

The Spells and Powers menu is just worthless. Why didn't they just keep that as a part of the Inventory screen? They've already made it awkward to use, but now we've got a completely separate menu and key to access the spells and powers? I don't know how often I hit my Tab (Inventory) key to get to Spells and Powers. I mean, scrolls and magic books are in there anyways... so why not just port it over to that side of the screen? And for that matter... why move the spells menu over to the right side vs the left? It's not like you can bring up both anyways... CONSISTENCY people!

I totally agree with visual being a good indicator of what is equipped. Especially since there NO WAY to organize your lists at all and show what is equipped without scrolling or clicking other menus. So, essentially they tied your hands behind your back by giving you no way to sort your menus, but they've also blinded you by not giving you a visual. Oh... I'm sorry, you can do a visual by hitting F, for the third person view, BEFORE you go into your inventory... but... damn... your menu lists cover up your character because your character gets moved to the left third of the screen! So, forget that idea as well.

It seems to me that the menu was entirely untested and not thought out at all. It's like they just said, "Crap! We forgot the inventory/menu UI... release date is next week... what do we do?!"

If the UI was adjusted well, they wouldn't've made the lists force you to scroll. There's more than enough room to put the list at the top so I don't need to scroll to see that I have Books.

It's probably been mentioned already, but... the container interface.

- Containers are not categorized which forces us to scroll through all items. Scrolling through a single, large category (like ingredents) is bad enough, but with packrat enabling games like the TES series, the additional scrolling seems to be an unnecessary burden.

- Storing items in chests should work like mercheants do: click on an item and it's sent to the container. Instead, the item is equipped, or worse, consumed. This has been the most maddening problem I've had with the UI aside from reserved keys, and it's easy to forget since mercheants work differently (and as it should work.)

Sense, it makes none.

You can't have it both ways, "like or hate it the same". That's a huge fallacy and an obvious indicator of a white knight that wants to keep the status-quo.

Redoing the UI to optimize it for PC would make people like it more. End of story. They optimized it for consoles and didn't even TOUCH IT for PC. They're supposed to optimize it for the advanced platform first (PC) and then downgrade for the consoles.

Wow I read this thread and went "I CAN SCROLL?" I wasn't even aware of the possibility.

guys, you are making me laugh trying to defend a mess like this. I am talking about the inventory.
It's clearly done for console. and this is not surprising since it's selling much more on console than pc, or it's 2vs1. (xbox,play-pc).
So it's clearly made for console.
This does not mean it's good for pc, which is not in fact !
I can not do anything but scrolling. Everything is computer handled. I ended up selling some armory I was wearing.
Think about it. Bethesda, if this is not clear for everyone, then something is wrong, do not you think?

Five years to build a static WORD MENU ? Are you guys joking ?!

A more efficiently designed and intuitive interface could also be similarly easy to use -- in fact, easier because it would require less clicking. Imagine if hitting TAB gave you access to all of your character's basic information like stats, skills, equipped items, active effects, etc. without you having to click a single additional button. Wouldn't you consider that a vast improvement?

I neither agree nor disagree, if that makes any sense.

I don't like that it uses so little "screen real-estate" because it makes for more scrolling and tabbing and clicking and whatnot; but I do like the look of the UI. The UI looks slim and great, and if you cluttered everything up the way you propose, that visual pleasing would be gone.

Which weights the most? Visual pleasing of use more of "screen real-estate"?
In my opinion, none; they must be balanced. In Skyrim, I'd therefore like it to use a little more screen real-estate and with much easier clicking and mapping, because sometimes having to click and sometimes having to use w,s,d,e is a pain in the ass.

Therefore, I neither agree nor disagree.

No, you agree with little UI while playing, and major UI when looking at inventory/active effects/spells. So you agree with a major UI overhaul for the TAB interface.

The user interface in Skyrim represents the simplicity of an apple operating system with absolutely *ZERO* of the functionality or usability that one would usually associate with such a UI.

My first time shopping (chick by the river near where you first enter into the outer world), I was absolutely dumbstruck that the shopping system is just a couple lines of text separated by a line followed by more lines of text. THAT'S LITERALLY ALL IT #%!*&%# IS!



Come on Bethesda, we're in the era of graphical interfaces. The right step forward is *NOT* a UI that could be re-created in MS-DOS.


I feel like I'm being trolled every time I open up a effing menu in this game. I hope the UI mods come quick so we can dump this abortion overboard.

Greetings

Classic case of the new developer disease. Use one engine to design a game for multi platform release. So game performs poorly on all systems . This sadly is becoming more and more common...as per ID's latest game RAGE? Increased prevalence of major bugs at game launch as well...hello the first day patches. Even on consoles now! It was bad enough when companies tried to port games across platforms. Skyrim could have and should have been a lot better...mind you it does look good though eh?