i agree! it’s much more fun to learn when you are making things that interest you rather than just following tutorials

yes! ikea has some great designs, but they just felt so much like 3d game assets and i’ve been working on learning to 3d model that i was like “i must try this”

unfortunately walking through ikea is not as magical anymore. lots of “no teenager would have a room this organized!” and also “what adult has the time and money for a perfectly guitar themed living room?”

i think then maybe play around with it! I often find when it comes to designing ui in games i tend to lean towards how players would describe what they are looking for or doing. Like out loud if you were to ask a player which one they liked better you would probably say “this one” or “that one”

you could also go the pokémon “which one are you” route where you show both options on screen and ask players to pick which one they want and that way there’s no words. or you can change it to like “this one” and “that one” because ultimately players are choosing based off how it looks not the words

wow a lot of typos on my end. my bad but hopefully that made sense!

Sorry i don’t have an “answer” per se but i think it’s important to not get too hung up on it when trying to brainstorm. honestly i would playtest them out. even paper prototyping which just showing the options and asking people which words they respond to better / responded to in the way you want

i think detaching sex from the labels is a good start but without making a very detailed and customizable model it might be very hard to find something that doesn’t play into stereotypes.

i mean without having a lot of in game models, it’s hard to really avoid having premade models that really skew towards a stereotype so i think that nothing will end up feeling perfect.