So I've got a question for the dev's working on the in-game UI sidebar. We currently have a very bland (no offense to the artists) UI that shows the champion portrait, health + resource, and the ominous green ult orb.

Is there any specific reason why we can't have the UI used in spectator mode (perhaps without the player's names?). Displaying friendly summoner's and ults greatly helps communicate alot of information that would help sync up ganks/team fights without having to take time out of player's hands to write.

Also, is it possible we can get small HUD indicators that show who owns red/blue buff?

Yes there is a good reason. They are implemented completely differently! Spectator is structured differently than the in-game HUD because it doesn't have to be as high performance. Also the way the data is sent in is different (spectator has full information, players only see their side).

It's also unclear to the game designers if in the context of a team fight or just playing the game having this information is that important for decision making. So given the effort necessary and the uncertain benefit, this has not been worked on yet. We are definitely thinking about it though.

That would be really awesome. Would be nice to know what summoner spells are available. And this might be far too complex but it would be nice if we could customize what ability the side bar shows as active (for each champ). For example I really don't care if Blitz's ult is off/on CD, but I do care about his grab. Elise is another example since her E being on or off CD is more useful info to me than whether her ult is (when gauging how ready she is for a gank for example). Not sure how one would go about changing something like that for every single champ.

It'd be really nice to see that stuff for organizing ganking and such.

Thinking about jungling, I'd really like to be able to see if my teammate's flashes are up, so I know what lanes need more help and when.

Hey boourns! Thanks for replying.

I guess I should clear up my message a bit. I wasn't suggesting that we have access to -everyone's- information like spectator mode, but definitely have a more clear UI for our respective team.

This may not be prevalent to everyone, but as a jungler I know that communicating ult-timings can be crucial to landing successful ganks (especially if your laner has a CC ult). The green dot currently does the function in its lowest form. It's a binary display of information (lit = yes, unlit = no). If we had their ult icon with the cooldown cycle on it, I think I'd help immensely.

How? First off veteran players can sync up their attacks at a glance (no more waiting on a green dot to turn on, or asking a teamate for the cool down). Secondly, it reliefs the burden of knowledge on new players. I can't tell you how many friend I've talked with that didn't even -notice- the green dot, much less know what it meant.

With that in mind, knowing friendly summoners would be equally helpful. (Ex: waiting on your support bot lane's exhaust to come up).

I understand that UI architecture has been written up differently, but it seems it would be extremely beneficial to import over the tech.

To be fair, the current setup is extremely easy to read and digest at a glance, and while the spectator UI is much more informative, it has alot more visual noise and less distinctive elements (all lined up in a row with thin borders) that make it harder to read in just a glance.
If they did implement showing your allies summoners, they'd have to make it as readable as the big green orb; maybe even only putting that information in the Scoreboard over your teams summoners.