Information Architecture and feature set, part I. — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Information Architecture and feature set, part I.

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	OK, I've been making some notes, and doing some thinking, and have come up with some overall framework decisions here, that should effect most everything else (layouts, especially.) I could have put this into that thread, but I'm going to break this up into some general areas, and this really is its own topic, I think. First, we have the entry, and we realize we have two different groups who will use this site, "Spectators" and "Players". Players will also sometimes function as spectators, but except for a few minor differences, they can be treated like everyone else when not actually playing. The "Spectator" site is the real entry, and [b]it's main focus should be to allow people to find matches they'd like to see.[/b] There will of course be other options, but this is the main meat of this site; find a match to view, and then view it (viewing matches is another module, more later.) I think this cvan be mostly handled by the proper application of a good search engine, and the front page can be a portal of different search views into the matches in play, or great matches from the past. (Last 5 played volleys, top 5 ranked current matches, top 5 ranked of all time, etc...) I'd like to force viewers to register for the site, but it's only necessary if you want to "rank" a match, or save preferences such as window positions, favorite players, etc... Without logging in, a viewer will see the default entry, and find the current matches as well as being able to search the archives and player roster and find games to look at that way. If someone does register, they now can place "flags" on their favorite players and have that as one of the search views on their front page. The other benefit to logging in is that you can now rank the different volleys you view while spectating, and also make comments from the "peanut gallery". (We'll need to discuss the ranking methods used, this can get complex, more in a bit.) The "Match View" is one of the most complex design issues we'll deal with, and this should be handled as a seperate module, since it does so much! For any game, we'll need to see a) who's playing in it, maybe graphic thumnails, "XXX vs. YYY"? and their screennames. These should be linked to their bio, which might be tied to that search engine as well, listing all the games they competed in. Then we need b) a description of the game, elapsed time, whose play it is, which category it might be being played in (more on this aspect too, later), and any explanatory text, possibly written by the players themselves? (hopefully) After this, we need the image being viewed, it might be round three, return volley by "YYY", in which case we'd se the comments YYY made when he uploaded the image, and also another window where we'd get the "peanut gallery" comments associated with this match, and this round. Everyone could read this, but only logged users (or players) can comment, of course. Logged users can also choose to "rank" this particular volley of the game, if they view it again and vote again, it doesn't count again, one user, one vote. (An issue was raised here, should players votes count for more? How about if they've played a lot of games? How about if they've played a lot of different opponents? How about if they've ranked high? We want this to be fair, without leaving too many holes for people to cheat too badly with the scorings!) Other than those features, what more does the Match View need? Just an interface to get to the next volley, or jump to some other point in the game (each will have a different image, different peanut-gallery comments and a different option for ranking [b]that specific volley[/b]. That's about it. So! This "public" face to the site has these few things we need to do, and I think they might be best broken up into tasks we can all try and work on, here's what I see: [ulist] * The [b]Logo[/b], think not just website, but coffee cups, t-shirts, etc... * The [b]Look & Feel[/b] of the entry portal (cooperation with the search team, next). * The [b]User Database[/b], we need to let people register, (with emails, confirmed, I'd hope), save their favorite players, save their votes (and on which matches), and their portal preferences. If they are also players, we need also their rankings, games played, and bios, which also imlies pictures. (Maybe one looking right, one left? That'd look good in the "XXX vs. YYY" bit of the match view.) * The register page, what info can we get from people? * The [b]Search Matches[/b] section, this is also tied to the back-end team, of course. * The [b]Search Player[/b] section, related to the above project. Note: I'd like to include the option for registered users to "flag" certain players worth watching. * The [b]Match View[/b] section. This is a busy and cool section, lots of stuff happening here. * All that other crap. (ie: what is PSPong, news, contact, possibly a forum.) All good stuff, and important to the overall performance of the site, but still, fluff. [/ulist] A couple of issues that have been raised concerning the workings of this section, if we have rankings, how will they be calculated? How about handicaps for great players versus newbies? Since bandwidth will be an issue, påerhaps we should have "ladders" that must be climbed before being allowed to play the big games, first ladder could be <= 480x360px, second is 640x480-800x600px, third is 1024x768 and up? This way we don't clutter the server with multi-megabit crappy images, heh, and also allow for entry level players to compete more in their own division, so to speak. This "middle ground" could probably be it's own debate and project, it'll all have a big impact on the work at large. I'll stop for now, and discuss the "flip side" of this site, the "Players" section in my next post. This section is going to get a lot more technical, and it's here that all those database bits from the front have to tie into. I don't see any need for this part of the site to work with the exact same interface as the front end, it might be best to make this one the "low tech" site in terms of fancy interface tricks, and confine our technical expertise to the back-end coding. More on this in a bit, expect a note at least as long as this one! (I'll save it as a TXT file for download somewhere.) Your pal, -doc- [url=http://www.ozones.com/] [img]http://www.ozoneasylum.com/examples/ozoneSIGc.gif[/img] [/url] [This message has been edited by DocOzone (edited 12-03-2001).] Loading...
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