Awesome Pairs

Mon May 28 17:04:07 UTC 2012

On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> FWIW he has unsubscribed from the list.
>
> Albert
>
> El Dilluns, 28 de maig de 2012, a les 17:33:35, freemind va escriure:
>> On 28-05-2012 09:20, Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
>> > On 05/28/2012 01:14 AM, freemind wrote:
>> >> Hi,
>> >
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > First thank you for testing Pairs and writing your suggestions and
>> > drawing mockups.
>>
>> Yea, that's like asking "How are you" when you pass by someone you know.
>> It's politically correct but in reality you don't give a sh*t. I'm
>> starting to think it was a big waste of my time.
>>
>> >> Saw this blog post :
>> >> http://www.proli.net/2012/05/25/pairs-is-finally-in-kde-edu/ - and
>> >> thought of giving my feedback on the UI design.
>> >>
>> >> Some issues, for me at least, that i found were:
>> >>
>> >> *Players' panel should include the "join" panel, since they're
>> >> correlated.
>> >>
>> >> *A delete icon with no text is confusing, specially if it means to
>> >> quit the application.
>> >
>> > Yes, I would click on it to stop the current game.
>>
>> What?
>>
>> >> *It's not intuitive to get back to the previous menu/screen when you
>> >> press the Info button.
>> >
>> > Yes, I had trouble finding out a click would get me out
>>
>> So what are you planning to do about it?...
>>
>> >> *There should be some kind of visual clue in the "game panel", that
>> >> showed that the last row is a subgroup of the first row. Otherwise it
>> >> appears that each icon is a different type of game.
>> >
>> > I agree. We have the right pane full of icons and it's not that
>> > evident the 6 firsts are for choosing the type of game while the rest
>> > are for choosing the theme. There shoudl be a clearer separation
>> > between Types of games and Themes.
>>
>> What about what i suggested?!
>>
>> >> *The gameplay for multi-player seems nonsensical if it's meant to be
>> >> played on the same computer/device. A better way to do it would be to
>> >> let each player finish the entire game and then a chronometer would
>> >> count the amount of time each player took and the one with lesser
>> >> time would win.
>> >
>> > When played in real life, a Memory game is played by kids one after
>> > another, they discover 2 cards then if they match, discover 2 again.
>> > If they do not match, the cards are turned back to be hidden. The aim
>> > is for them to remember the cards they turn and the cards other kids
>> > turn.
>>
>> The multi-player part of the game, as it is working now,  is a big fail!
>> The game doesn't even pause to give time to switch players, that's my
>> big problem with it. You have 3 options to fix this:
>> -Put some delay to switch players or wait for a tap on the screen/mouse
>> click;
>> -Follow my idea that each player has a turn ( could be with a time
>> limit) to find all cards, then the next player would have his turn to
>> find all cards and so on.
>> -Come up with a better idea.
>>
>> >> *Perhaps changing the background to something more colorful would be
>> >> better.
>> >>
>> >> *There should be a way to pause the game while it's running.
>> >
>> > Agree
>> >
>> >> *The delete icon for the player should appear on mouse click instead
>> >> of mouse hover, so it can work on touch devices as well.
>> >
>> > For touch screens we got another report with suggested improvements.
>> >
>> > There's a bug currently in Pairs as you can suppress the existing
>> > player. Pairs should not allow to start playing without a player (the
>> > game looks for the last name entered if there is no player but that's
>> > not very intuitive)
>>
>> Yea, what about my suggestion?
>>
>> >> I understand that some things i pointed out are more technical bugs
>> >> than actual UI design issues. But just in case i put them there.
>> >>
>> >> My suggestion is to change the game menu into a typical game menu.
>> >> What i mean by typical is that at first we have the menu with options
>> >> like Play, Scores, Get themes, About, etc. Each option, when clicked,
>> >> would then show a new group of options (clearing the previous ones
>> >> out, obviously). This leaves bigger space for the game icons for
>> >> example, which is a good thing if we're on a touch device with a
>> >> small screen.
>> >>
>> >> I also made some mock-ups, let me know what you think...
>> >>
>> >> http://wstaw.org/m/2012/05/28/pairs2.png
>> >
>> > We should conduct after 4.9 some usability tests with kids. Hopefully
>> > the KDE Usability Team will get strong again and could help.
>> >
>> > Best regards,
>> >
>> > Anne-Marie
>>
>> Yes, you sure should.
>>
>> On 28-05-2012 09:55, Marco Calignano wrote:
>> > On 05/28/2012 10:20 AM, Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
>> >> On 05/28/2012 01:14 AM, freemind wrote:
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> First thank you for testing Pairs and writing your suggestions and
>> >> drawing mockups.
>> >>
>> >>> Saw this blog post :
>> >>> http://www.proli.net/2012/05/25/pairs-is-finally-in-kde-edu/ - and
>> >>> thought of giving my feedback on the UI design.
>> >>>
>> >>> Some issues, for me at least, that i found were:
>> >>>
>> >>> *Players' panel should include the "join" panel, since they're
>> >>> correlated.
>> >>>
>> >>> *A delete icon with no text is confusing, specially if it means to
>> >>> quit the application.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, I would click on it to stop the current game.
>> >
>> > This Icon will be changed soon. We put that just to meet the beta
>> > testing tagging. Abhash has more time after his exams in June and we
>> > will change it before
>> > the Artwork freeze
>>
>> Good.
>>
>> >>> *It's not intuitive to get back to the previous menu/screen when you
>> >>> press the Info button.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, I had trouble finding out a click would get me out
>> >>
>> >>> *There should be some kind of visual clue in the "game panel", that
>> >>> showed that the last row is a subgroup of the first row. Otherwise
>> >>> it appears that each icon is a different type of game.
>> >>
>> >> I agree. We have the right pane full of icons and it's not that
>> >> evident the 6 firsts are for choosing the type of game while the rest
>> >> are for choosing the theme. There shoudl be a clearer separation
>> >> between Types of games and Themes.
>> >>
>> >>> *The gameplay for multi-player seems nonsensical if it's meant to be
>> >>> played on the same computer/device. A better way to do it would be
>> >>> to let each player finish the entire game and then a chronometer
>> >>> would count the amount of time each player took and the one with
>> >>> lesser time would win.
>> >>
>> >> When played in real life, a Memory game is played by kids one after
>> >> another, they discover 2 cards then if they match, discover 2 again.
>> >> If they do not match, the cards are turned back to be hidden. The aim
>> >> is for them to remember the cards they turn and the cards other kids
>> >> turn.
>> >>
>> >>> *Perhaps changing the background to something more colorful would be
>> >>> better.
>> >>>
>> >>> *There should be a way to pause the game while it's running.
>> >>
>> >> Agree
>> >>
>> >>> *The delete icon for the player should appear on mouse click instead
>> >>> of mouse hover, so it can work on touch devices as well.
>> >>
>> >> For touch screens we got another report with suggested improvements.
>> >>
>> >> There's a bug currently in Pairs as you can suppress the existing
>> >> player. Pairs should not allow to start playing without a player (the
>> >> game looks for the last name entered if there is no player but that's
>> >> not very intuitive)
>> >
>> > I though I fixed this bug. Maybe I did fix some other bug. I'll look
>> > into it.
>>
>> What bug are you talking about?
>>
>> >>> I understand that some things i pointed out are more technical bugs
>> >>> than actual UI design issues. But just in case i put them there.
>> >>>
>> >>> My suggestion is to change the game menu into a typical game menu.
>> >>> What i mean by typical is that at first we have the menu with
>> >>> options like Play, Scores, Get themes, About, etc. Each option, when
>> >>> clicked, would then show a new group of options (clearing the
>> >>> previous ones out, obviously). This leaves bigger space for the game
>> >>> icons for example, which is a good thing if we're on a touch device
>> >>> with a small screen.
>> >>>
>> >>> I also made some mock-ups, let me know what you think...
>> >>>
>> >>> http://wstaw.org/m/2012/05/28/pairs2.png
>> >>
>> >> We should conduct after 4.9 some usability tests with kids. Hopefully
>> >> the KDE Usability Team will get strong again and could help.
>> >
>> > The kids using it are quite happy about the flow and the usability. Of
>> > course they use a big screen (22") so the size is not an issue.
>> > I wonder if we could keep two different application (tablet with
>> > optimized screen and desktop as it is now)
>>
>> Well they probably don't have anything else to compare to, so they think
>> that's how it's supposed to be.
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> And now it's time for the rant... so basically i just wasted yesterday's
>> afternoon for nothing. Because you don't really care about feedback
>> unless it matches what you already want. You didn't even bother to think
>> about my proposals, you think you got all the answers and you don't give
>> a crap about what others say. This is not unique to this project, this
>> happens in probably most free software/open source projects, that's why
>> there are forks for nearly every application out there, because
>> developers can hear what you say but do not pay attention. Silly of me
>> to think this project could be different.
>>
>> It's clear that you obviously don't know anything about kids'
>> applications, as so did i yesterday but after doing a bit of research i
>> quickly found a couple of UI holes in your design. Beginning with the
>> background image, that at least two of you didn't find anything odd
>> about it and that just shows how well you're into the subject.
>>
>> Well i guess that's all folks, good luck (you'll probably need it), i
>> won't bother to answer anymore (really what's the point), so don't
>> expect answers from me. kthxbai.
>>
>>
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Well, all in all it's really hard to collaborate with such strong opinions.

In any case, some of the ideas were already adopted, others will
definitely be considered.

Aleix

PS: anybody would be interested to try it out?