ThymePuns Posted September 22, 2011 Report Share Posted September 22, 2011 Firstly, I enjoyed the USA 1 vs. USA 2 match immensely and believe it's a better way kibitz bridge than anything else out there. Still, there are some ways to improve that can make it an even greater experience. Some of these may already be on the road map, but hopefully some of my ideas will be new and helpful. Not all the ideas apply exclusively to matches like these, but they would probably be most beneficial in such matches. 1. Audio qualityThis was very distracting. Kit's audio was particularly bad, but everyone was having problems at one point or another. Probably the easiest way to improve this is to have everyone use better headsets. Twit.tv, a podcasting network, sends Plantronics 400 DSP Headsets to its remote contributors, and they always sound pretty good to me. They look affordable enough to send to frequent voice contributors. 2. Enabling individual commentatorsThis is the part of the experience that I found most confusing. Wanting to mute a specific commentator seems to be the 1% case. In order for the voice to really transcend text chat, commentators should have a real conversation; muting a participant and hearing only one side of the conversation seems like it would be a bad experience almost all of the time. I'm sure there are some people who just don't like certain commentators, and maybe that's what was in mind for this feature, but I'd suspect this is uncommon. The way I would present the feature is when you for the first time enter a vugraph room that has voice, it pops up, "Would you like to enable voice commentary?" and then after the answer is given, the dialog has a closing animation to the right side of the chat where a permanent "enable/disable" (or "play/stop") button resides. Underneath that, the individual commentators are simply listed and the VU is nice to see who is speaking. If we need the ability to mute individuals, a "mute" button could be added here, but default would be all on or all off. The slider for the individual commentators also seems out of place. Picking and mixing individuals is not something that a kibitzer is going to want to do. I suggest having a "host" to handle the mixing as well (more on that below) 3. Host roleI'll mention twit.tv again because I think they've really nailed how to do collaborative podcasts with a format that shares much with what vugraph could be. An episode of TWiT has a single Host who adds and introduces all the guests, keeps everything moving and the like. Dead air is probably alright for bridge, but it would be good to have someone who can generate a conversation with the other commentators when needed, like during an 8-minute tank (not naming names). That can obviously be a daunting task, but I thought Gavin did a great job. 4. Commentator videoI'm not entirely sure how effective this would be, but instead of having the VU for each commentator, you could have a small video feed. This would feel a bit more interactive and might help foster more natural conversations between the commentators. 5. Contract at other tableShowing the play of both tables at once is probably excessive for most people, but I do like where it will show me the other table's result instead. Often the play is fairly routine and it's only the contract that really matters. In those instances, seeing the contract at the other table before the result is finished would be nice. This of course could be implemented in all TMs, so maybe there's a good reason you haven't. Some of the existing elements could be combined to better effect. Hovering over "Other table" can show the auction and so could hovering over the score in the Results section. Clicking then would open up the full thing either as a popup or just go to the results tab like today. The idea here is to minimize the context switching by making the most frequently used information easily available in place. 6. RecordingsI had to watch the last two sessions on the recorded video which was good, but would have been better using more layers. How many people who watched those tried clicking on the alerts? I'm only slightly embarrassed to admit that I sure did. You should be able to add time information to the .lin files so you could replay the hands in something much like the hand viewer, and the just add the audio and text chat over that. It could be made nearly identical to watching it live. Again, I was very glad to be able to watch such great teams play and the audio commentary really started to make it come to life. I'm hopeful that you'll consider these suggestions as I think they would make it an even better experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diana_eva Posted September 22, 2011 Report Share Posted September 22, 2011 Thank you for the feedback. Some nice suggestions here, I am sure the programmers will consider them. ~~~1. Audio qualityThis was very distracting. Kit's audio was particularly bad, but everyone was having problems at one point or another. Probably the easiest way to improve this is to have everyone use better headsets. Twit.tv, a podcasting network, sends Plantronics 400 DSP Headsets to its remote contributors, and they always sound pretty good to me. They look affordable enough to send to frequent voice contributors. This could happen for several reasons - it could be from us, since the whole thing is still in beta phase. We are trying to fix it, if it is indeed something that can be fixed- it could be a matter a settings. Some laptops have a built-in microphone and the sound settings must be changed to activate the headset instead. - the sound volume seems to vary from one receiver to another. I could barely hear Fred for instance, but the rest of the audience seemed to hear him well. BBO did send headsets to some of the commentators as far as I know. 2. Enabling individual commentatorsThis is the part of the experience that I found most confusing. Wanting to mute a specific commentator seems to be the 1% case. In order for the voice to really transcend text chat, commentators should have a real conversation; muting a participant and hearing only one side of the conversation seems like it would be a bad experience almost all of the time. I'm sure there are some people who just don't like certain commentators, and maybe that's what was in mind for this feature, but I'd suspect this is uncommon. The way I would present the feature is when you for the first time enter a vugraph room that has voice, it pops up, "Would you like to enable voice commentary?" and then after the answer is given, the dialog has a closing animation to the right side of the chat where a permanent "enable/disable" (or "play/stop") button resides. Underneath that, the individual commentators are simply listed and the VU is nice to see who is speaking. If we need the ability to mute individuals, a "mute" button could be added here, but default would be all on or all off. The slider for the individual commentators also seems out of place. Picking and mixing individuals is not something that a kibitzer is going to want to do. I suggest having a "host" to handle the mixing as well (more on that below) Actually this is something that i feel is well thought. Yes the mute/play button is to turn on and off people you don't wish to hear. This can be something temporary - for example i turned off the other commentators when Grue was talking because i wanted to make sure i understand everything he said. After that i turned the others back on. The volume slider is also necessary because not everyone hears the commentators at the same level. Plus people may have different comfort levels. If someone cannot hear well, he might want to turn everyone to the max.It is better to have a flexible layout IMO. ~ some excellent suggestions ~ The rest is up to the programmers :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted September 23, 2011 Report Share Posted September 23, 2011 I brought up the individual commentator buttons in another thread (past discussions have been in the Vugraph forum down below). The explanation given was that they might mix and match languages, so you'd enable commentators John and Peter if you want English, Juan and Pedro for Spanish. What I then suggested was that there be buttons for groups of commentators. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgoetze Posted October 3, 2011 Report Share Posted October 3, 2011 What was annoying was when you had already enabled one commentator, and that one got disconnected and came back, you had to enable him again. It would be nice if BBO could remember for at least a short time that you had enabled that commentator and automatically enable him on return. In other news, I feel that 4 commentators is plenty and it gets confusing with more than that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barmar Posted October 5, 2011 Report Share Posted October 5, 2011 In other news, I feel that 4 commentators is plenty and it gets confusing with more than that.I agree. If I have to scroll the list of commentators, it's too many. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.