The pain... the pain

[hrothgar]

The question is a complement to my last post. I'd like people to think of different ways in which they use Bridge Base Online. Speaking as a customer, where do you think that there are real “pain points”? (When I say pain point, I'm talking about a part of the application that doesn't work quite as smoothly as you would like). For example, from my own perspective my big pains points are

 

1. The chat system

2. Matching players/pairs/teams quickly and efficiently to allow them to find a pleasant playing experience

 

How about it folks? Any rough edges that you wish could get smoothed down?

[pbleighton]

This is not "BBO", per se, but:

 

The tournaments are too slow. 6 minutes per hand is plenty, IMO. No shuffling, scoring, moving to another table between rounds, revokes, bid/play out of turn, etc.

 

Peter

[barmar]

I play regularly in OKbridge tourneys, which I think use 11 minutes minutes per 2-board round or when 75% of the tables are finished, whichever is later (the pairs who are late get to finish their current board and are then paired among themselves). My partner and I are not slow, but we still frequently end up late. While online bridge doesn't have some of the delays that f2f bridge does, it has many delays of its own: poor network connections, interruptions (phone, doorbell), disconnections, typing explanations of alerts. 8 min/bd is definitely too long, since it's longer than most f2f games (typically 7-7.5 min/bd for regular clubs or tourneys).

[inquiry]

This is a good point... when you set tournaments, you have to choose time per board in full minutes. I think for 3 boards per round, 7 minutes if fine. For 2 boards per round, 7.5 minutes would be better, but now we have to choose between 7 (a little fast for 2), and 8 (too long for two board).

[Sigi_BC84]

My pain spots:

 

1. Chat system (as discussed before and mentioned by others).

 

2. Too much functionality hidden in context (right-click) menus; for example I only recently learned that you can short-cut browsing the lobby through a context menu. I don't think a user interface should be like a dungeon in an RPG where you discover hidden secrets one by one.

(@Fred: you have mentioned before that you don't like menu bars because users tend not to find functionality there, but the current approach is certainly worse...)

 

Edit: I'm not against context menus per se but I think they should only apply to actual entities. For example, a name in the lobby or a player at the table should have a context menu, but not just any button on the user interface. Also I found it highly against intuition right from the beginning of using BBO that certain settings relating to your own account can only be accessed by going through a context menu attached to your own name (which doesn't happen to be visible at all times). So it happens that I can't change my profile (or edit my friend list etc.) when I'm browsing the tournament list (because my name is nowhere visible in this case) -- meanwhile, there is the cog wheel button suggesting a central access point for all kinds of settings, but it doesn't include your profile and the other stuff you have to go to via the context menu.

 

3. Too coarse granularity of friend levels (friend/neutral/enemy is not enough, I need at least one level more).

 

4. Too many pop-ups. Pop-ups suck. One advertisement per login is OK (BBO makes their money that way), but I don't want to acknowledge ten messages from various clubs one after the other. Create an inbox of some sort.

 

Edit: A few more example: popups when somebody invites you to a tourney, when the invitation is accepted, when somebody knocks at your table, when you knock at a table and are declined, when you successfully register at a tourney, when you try to register but are declined and probably more cases I have missed. This is nuts. The main problem with popups is that they steal focus and cover parts of the screen you might happen to be looking at this moment... This is especially problematic if it's not you who is causing the pop-ups (but events happening on the internet, as in this case). The tourney invitations should go via a simple chat message (you can query the additional information then) for example. In most other cases the information could simply be displayed at an appropriate spot of the main window.

 

5. Non-standard user interface (custom-made buttons, no menu bar, window doesn't maximise properly), dodgy in some places; I strongly hope this will be different with the (yet to be developed) "new" BBO.

 

--Sigi

[pigpenz]

1.chat system

2. it would be nice if interface was windows(MS) based not DOS like

[1eyedjack]

As intimated in my post in the other thread, [non-]ease of creating team games is top of my pain points. I also tend to feel that the development of services for those playing in the main playing area have been a bit sidelined in the interests of tourneys ... I did have some examples and will rack my brain for them if needed.

 

Oh, and I NEVER got to grips with creating FD files. Looks like it is just me, though, so pay no attention to that.

[hrothgar]

2. Too much functionality hidden in context (right-click) menus; for example I only recently learned that you can short-cut browsing the lobby through a context menu. I don't think a user interface should be like a dungeon in an RPG where you discover hidden secrets one by one.

(@Fred: you have mentioned before that you don't like menu bars because users tend not to find functionality there, but the current approach is certainly worse...)

Sigi has obliquely referenced what I think might be the trickiest part of the BBO redesign effort: "Usability" Its not enough to provide features and functions. You have to provide features and funcitons that the user based is going to be able to use.

 

Case in point: As I've mentioned in the past, I dearly love the chat system that's built in to the World of Warcraft game. The system is MUCH more powerful than anything that's present in BBO. As I mentioned before, players have the option of joining multiple chat "channels". Players can also create multiple chat windows that sit over the main WoW interface. Players might chose to have three different chat channels (color coded "Red", "White" and "Blue") in one window. A fourth channel would be resident in a second window. Channels 5+6 would be in a third window.

 

Many functions that are provided by the BBO main lobby are actually subsumed into the chat system. Case in point: Suppose that i wanted to search for all online players with "Hamman" as part of their user ID. I'd simply type "/who Hamman" in a chat window and voila! I get all the information that I want. Alternatively, assume that I wanted to search for any all members of the HomeBase bridge club currently playing. I'd simply go and type /who HomeBase.

 

Speaking as a relative young, relatively computer savy individual I LOVE the power and flexibility that this interface provides. My worry if that the wide range of options that I appreciate might overwhelm other elements of the user base who are more comfortable with TVs sets than computers.

 

This is all gonna be a caareful balancing act....

[mike777]

As TD I find subbing for people in teamgames difficult. I just sort of hit button after button until something works.

[1eyedjack]

2. it would be nice if interface was windows(MS) based not DOS like

Suppose that i wanted to search for all online players with "Hamman" as part of their user ID.  I'd simply type "/who Hamman" in a chat window and voila!  I get all the information that I want.  Alternatively, assume that I wanted to search for any all members of the HomeBase bridge club currently playing.  I'd simply go and type /who HomeBase.

Aye, there's the rub. Pigpenz reckons it is too dos-like, Hrothgar too windows-like. Personally I reckon it is windows-like in its functionality, although the "look" of the thing lacks a bit of finesse (you know, the bevelled edges and shadows etc).

 

Facility for command line interaction immensely increases the power of the system ... for those willing to take the trouble to learn it up. Remember 4DOS by JP Software? Windows was developed really as a dumming down exercise. And to be fair, wimp interaction has its moments where it is superior. The optimal design gives a combination of both. (Using the successor to 4DOS ("Take Command") is highly recommended, in my view, at risk of thread drift)

[ducky_rh]

As a neophyte TD, I find that having one director call after another is very distracting and annoying, because while I'm chatting to the first caller, the second call bombs onto my screen and the chat disappears, and although the "Help" notes tell of a way to handle this situation, it never seems to work for me...so all I can do is deny the second call so that I can get back to the first.

 

Also, since subbing is such a frequent occurrance, it seems that a better way than having to have two windows open could be found. Sometimes a simple substitution takes a few operations, with impatient players all around.

 

But the worst thing about BBO is when there are 8,000 players online, it takes sometimes 10 minutes and three tries to log in. Part of the problem is local...our cable system is oversubscribed and that is the time all the kiddies are home from school and jumping on the internet, but still, waiting for 8,000 names and 2,000 tables to load is mighty tedious.

[andych]

This is a good point... when you set tournaments, you have to choose time per board in full minutes. I think for 3 boards per round, 7 minutes if fine. For 2 boards per round, 7.5 minutes would be better, but now we have to choose between 7 (a little fast for 2), and 8 (too long for two board).

 

 

 

 

I play regularly in OKbridge tourneys, which I think use 11 minutes minutes per 2-board round or when 75% of the tables are finished, whichever is later (the pairs who are late get to finish their current board and are then paired among themselves). My partner and I are not slow, but we still frequently end up late. While online bridge doesn't have some of the delays that f2f bridge does, it has many delays of its own: poor network connections, interruptions (phone, doorbell), disconnections, typing explanations of alerts. 8 min/bd is definitely too long, since it's longer than most f2f games (typically 7-7.5 min/bd for regular clubs or tourneys).

My only pain is tourney too too s...l...o.....w......

 

7.5 mins seems too slow. I figure that my experience in okb tourney is also roughly a bit more than 1 hour, so it is similar to 66 mins. It means 66/12 = 5.5 mins per board.

 

In BBO ACBL, the 8pm tourney (the most popular one, which resembles no. of tables in okb tourney) is typically 1 hour 15 mins. It means 75/12 = 6.25 mins per board.

 

The overall tourney finish time (all players finish) would probably be similar for both bbo/okb. But bbo is lacking the ability to move on before all players finish in a round? Or is bbo capable to do it (= unclocked tourney?) There is replaying same pair problem in unclocked tourney? Appears most tourneys in BBO are clocked tourney?

 

BBO is also lacking the Swiss movement within a pair tourney? But I think it is not as important.

 

Guess similar has been mentioned before. Probably it is too difficult .... :angry: :D

 

In general I am VERY HAPPY with the current form of BBO ... THANKS ... :lol: :lol:

[andych]

Sorry one more pain... probably to only a group of players.

 

We play 14 boards pair match. Results compared within main bridge club (yes some luck involved :angry: ). From time to time, a board sucks, and no other players play it. Or it sometimes sucks in the middle and the there is not 16 results for it.

 

Would very much appreciate if it gets fixed before too long. Uday mentioned sometime ago it is something related to separating human hands with GIB hands? But now GIB is only available rental? Would it be of some help? :D :lol:

[helene_t]

When I was new to BBO, I disliked the strange interface and missed the Dutch StepBridge that is based on the Windows UI paradigm. After I got used to it I found the BBO interface better than Windows. In windows, you have to double-click all the time.

[Sigi_BC84]

Many functions that are provided by the BBO main lobby are actually subsumed into the chat system.  Case in point:  Suppose that i wanted to search for all online players with "Hamman" as part of their user ID.  I'd simply type "/who Hamman" in a chat window and voila!  I get all the information that I want. 

[...]

My worry if that the wide range of options that I appreciate might overwhelm other elements

[...]

This is all gonna be a caareful balancing act....

Having access to a command line does not preclude providing a graphic interface for the unassuming user -- the GUI functionality does not even have to be a subset of the CLI functionality. One approach, for example chosen by FIBS (First Internet Backgammon Server) is to give the server a text-only interface with a special mode for graphical clients to use. In other words, the graphical client is merely a front-end for the "actual" service, which would be purely text based. This would add some transparency to the communication with the server however, and apparently this is not wanted at the moment by BBO.

 

Anyways I don't see the balancing act to be performed here, as you would always have the choice to hide certain "power" features from the masses by simply not offering a GUI option for them. Take FPS games: all of them are featuring a "console" which you don't need to play the game, but if you want to access advanced functionality you have that option.

 

Centering the entire application around a chat system like Internet Relay Chat (or multi user games which merely mimic it in that regard) would be a wise decision in any case. The paradigm used in these systems is highly useful for a game server where people meet in groups to communicate. If you look closely at it, most of BBO is related to communication between groups of people:

• users chatting with users (not at a table)
  
• players talking to players (while at a table)
  
• kibs talking to players and vice versa
  
• players talking with TDs
  
• users listening to commentators while talking to eachother
  

The only time users are not chatting is while they are playing the cards (mostly). So clearly, the system would be reasonably design around chat not around card tables or any other concept.

 

How could such a system look in practice? The basic entity would be a "room", with a freely chosen name and a set of members. Members could be "invisible" and "away". Rooms could be "invite only", "invisible", "read only" etc. Every room has a set of "operators" who have extended rights in that room (e.g. changing room parameters or kicking and banning users from the room). NB this is all nothing new but stolen from IRC.

 

Now we're still missing the Bridge:

 

One way to add it would be to have special types of rooms, which could contain a bidding table, a playing table, a kibbing table (for training and vugraph) and possibly more.

 

Another way could be to give the possibility for room operators to add tables to a chat room. So the new way of opening a table would be to create an empty room (simply by entering it) and then create a table in the room. Users in the room would then have the ability to sit down at that table. When the playing is over you simply delete the table -- the room remains, giving the remaining players the option to chat around for a bit longer, or consider going to another room with a table, or maybe open a bidding table and practice a bit. It is very flexible.

 

Of course there are special situations to be considered, for example money bridge and other tournaments. Also, some constraints would need to be checked, for example a user already playing at a table will be in a special mode, imposing certain restrictions (eg. "cannot receive/send personal messages", "cannot read/write in certain classes of rooms" etc.).

 

What fun could it be to log onto BBO and have

> /join +i #funtable
* Joining channel #funtable
* set to "invite only"
> /topic no fake experts please
* Topic is now "no fake experts please"
> /create table imp
* Playing table created
* Scoring set to IMPs
* Room is now a play room
> /invite myon
* Sent invite to "myon"
* myon is joining the room
* myon is sitting down North
> /sit south
* Sitting down South

(just a very raw sketch here, and not very original even).

 

Part or all of it would be accessible through simple GUI functions as well, at no additional cost.

 

From a software engineering perspective this will not be more complicated than todays BBO (especially considering that todays BBO already offers much of the described functionality, only not in the systematic way outlined above). In fact I'm sure it would even be easier, for several reasons:

• you have a clearly defined, easy to grasp concept around which to design the system
  
• you can draw from an extensible base of code implementing these kinds of systems
  
• the paradigm is tried-and-true, tested and in use for decades, so you certainly won't make a lot of mistakes and design errors because others have avoided them for you already
  

Simply install an IRC client and a MMORPG and have a look how it's done there.

 

I'll stop here now, rambled on for much too long already.

 

--Sigi

[Sigi_BC84]

To the dange of sounding terribly presumptous I'm stating an observation which might be related to BBO:

 

It is very, very important towards the usability of a software product that the developers actually use the product intensely themselves. If you are never playing pickup-games, it's of course hard to spot problems in that area. If you are not chatting a lot on your own server, of course you won't be aware that many users are actually doing that, making the chat system woefully inadequate.

 

In fact, it's more or less impossible to see certain classes of serious issues with your software if you don't use it a lot yourself. I've bought several mobile phones already, discovering serious usability issues several weeks into using them which were clearly caused by the fact that the designers themselves probably are using a phone by another manufacturer...

 

(Please don't take offense Fred, but deducing from several remarks you made about lack of time I get the feeling that you might be underusing your own product...).

 

--Sigi

[hotShot]

Every piece of software that has grown in fuctionality over more than 5 years usually hat to be redesigned and recoded.

The ovious reason is, that the original concept did not include things that were added later, so they do not fit where the logically should be.

Also efficency is not important, if there are only a few user around, but when you start to reach system limits, they become a major issue.

A lot of design decisions seems to have been made thinking of about a (few) hundred user. (Have you ever tried to look for users begining with z kibbing at a vugraph?)

I don't think what we see of BBO will have to change much, it's the internal design that needs a lifting.

We all will benefit from that, once it's done.

There will be more results/board in the MBC, the myhands area and other services might be reachable from within the BBO client.

Of cause directing/creating team and tourneys will get a better management system.

The downside of a redisign is of cause, that all your development capacity is locked redoing something that had been done before and your product will seem to have stopped evolving for a long time.

[bid_em_up]

No offense guys, but really....chat?? Lets try and worry about actual bridge improvements first.....(yea yea, i know, design ahead......) :(

 

#1 on my list would be: The ability to prevent a seat from automatically becoming "available" when a player leaves. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to reserve that seat for the next player while 100 people try to sit in that seat. Close/reject all, click on table, start typing reserve name, nope....name erased, accept player? close/reject all, click on table, start typing name, nope....name erased, accept player? close/reject all, click on table, repeat ad. infinitum. It becomes a battle of who is the fastest. The host typing names, or the players trying to sit. Aggravating. Both to the table host, and the users who are being rejected. If nothing else, make it so where close/reject all automatically reserves the seat for "X" or prevents anyone else from attempting to sit for a minimum of X seconds (maybe 10-15?) to allow host time to type a name.

 

The ability to bar enemies (of mine and/or anyone at a table/or by direction) from attempting to sit at a main bridge club table. They got on the list for a reason, I really dont want to let them sit again, and having to reject them, just further aggravates the situation. (Maybe enemies dont see empty seats?)

 

I still dont understand why you cannot get a traveller in tournaments. On another internet bridge site, all you had to do was click the board #, and it would bring up all the results for that board (similar to what you currently see in the main bridge room). Why is this not available in tournament play? You have the results, it doesnt matter if you were N/S, E/W? Whats the problem?

 

A full disclosure interface that is actually usable (I tried for several hours before finally giving up in frustratation with the current one).

 

These are just a few that pop into my mind.

[uday]

I presume you mean that you want the ability to look at the other results of a board w/o waiting for the tourney to complete?

 

It could be done. I dont think this is an often-requested item, though.

[bid_em_up]

I presume you mean that you want the ability to look at the other results of a board w/o waiting for the tourney to complete?

 

It could be done. I dont think this is an often-requested item, though.

Yes. Thats exactly what I mean. For a few reasons:

 

I like to know what kind of field I am dealing with. Why was -50 against what should be their 140 only 34%?

 

It is a pain to have to go "off-site" to have to review results at end of tourny. Even if the traveller wasnt available until tourny end, it would be a big improvement over the current method, imo.

 

It gives the players who finish early, something to occupy their time with.

[bid_em_up]

This is a good point... when you set tournaments, you have to choose time per board in full minutes. I think for 3 boards per round, 7 minutes if fine. For 2 boards per round, 7.5 minutes would be better, but now we have to choose between 7 (a little fast for 2), and 8 (too long for two board).

Simply change it to time per round, not time per board.....

 

Ie, 2 board rounds are 15 minute rounds, 3 board rounds are 21 minutes, etc.

 

After all, this is much closer to f2f settings anyway.

[MickyB]

The ability to bar enemies (of mine and/or anyone at a table/or by direction) from attempting to sit at a main bridge club table. They got on the list for a reason, I really dont want to let them sit again, and having to reject them, just further aggravates the situation. (Maybe enemies dont see empty seats?)

Similarly, preventing enemies from sending an invite to play in a tournament would seem wise. Not something that particularly matters, of course.

[Echognome]

As long as requests are being solicited (and I'm not sure they are), the way that hand records show up on the movie during tourneys could use a lot of improvement. I would rather be able to click on a board and see what happened at all the other tables. In particular I'd like to be able to see this as a kibitzer. I.e. what I'm asking is that the results in a tourney look exactly as they do in the MBC. You click on a board and see all the results. Then you can access the movie for each time it was played. Currently you only see the hands played at a particular table, not even for a particular pair (unless they are stationary). Couldn't we have all the info from the boards played? Would be nice. :P

[twcho]

How about the pastability of the chat area? Sometimes you click the wrong name and type a lengthy message and found that it was directed to the wrong person. You have to retype all once again. If the characters in the chat area can be copy and paste, the job will be much easier.

[hotShot]

How about the pastability of the chat area? Sometimes you click the wrong name and type a lengthy message and found that it was directed to the wrong person. You have to retype all once again. If the characters in the chat area can be copy and paste, the job will be much easier.

If you right click on the name you posted to there is a "copy chat message option" you can use to get your message back.

After that you can past it with Ctrl-V wherever you like.