A series of playful aesthetics are utilized by the MINT user interface to instill a game-like theme throughout the gameplay experience. For example, the coloration of each element in the program, including the menu interface (Figure ), the controllers (Figure ) and the 3D models rendered in MINT (Figure ), tend to fall on the brighter sides of the color spectrum, and are selected to have a high contrast with one another. The menu interface takes the form of a virtual clipboard that user can hold using the controller and the textual elements such as tooltips on the interface are pixelated and 2D image icons are used for representing each functional item on the menu. Furthermore, the toon shading technique is used in the program for rendering a surface model of macromolecules to give them outline on the edges and produce simple lighting visual effects, yielding an environment which imitates a comic book drawing.