rickinsf
Several days ago, while watching a FIBS match, several of us were discussing “Team Gammon” and you asked for feedback.
I had found the site to be extremely confusing and difficult to navigate, but I didn't think it fair to state that without making an effort to explain why I found it confusing or without offering a few suggestions as to how it could be improved.
Although I declined give a quickie superficial response in kibitz, I agreed to put something here on fibsboard, where I can give a more thoughtful and hopefully constructive response.
1. The name “Team Gammon” is a confusing choice for the project name as it infers “Team Gammon” is one of many “teams”, including the current team Callithumpian or team Triplet, when in fact “Team Gammon” is not a team at all, but a league.
“League Gammon” would perhaps be a more logical and semantically apt descriptor, as a “league” can be comprised of “teams” but a “team” cannot be comprised of “leagues”.
2. The use of “match” to describe what is actually a tournament is confusing, especially how they are used in menu headings. When one team comprised of 3 players challenges another team to a series of matches, as for example a 9-7-3 match length format, that competition cannot be called a “match”.
Two teams of 3 players each playing individual matches in successive rounds of play until a certain number of points are accumulated and a victor declared would best be described as a “tournament”.
For the sake of clarity and consistency I suggest a changing wherever you have used “match” or “matches” to “tournament”. “Complete Match List” would therefore become “Complete Tournament List”, “View Your Matches” would morph into “View Your Tournaments”, etc.
Team is to league, what match is to tournament.
3. I found navigation to be difficult and not very intuitive. This is not related to programming per se, but more to do with organizing information in a manner so that it is readily accessible. With that said, and after having spent some effort thinking about how to improve site navigation, I’ve come up with the following suggestions for possible consideration.
The menu headings facilitate navigation and are hopefully organized to avoid going down dead end cul-de-sacs. For the information on each page I've put actual links from the current site to indicate what information would go under a particular grouping of menus.
==========
HOME PAGE
SIGNUP RULES LOGIN==========
TEAM PAGE
HOME PROFILE RULES CREATE TEAM TOURNEYS LOGOUThttp://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonTeamList.aspx==========
CREATE TEAM PAGE
HOME PROFILE RULES TEAMS TOURNEYS LOGOUThttp://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonUserPage.aspx==========
TOURNEY PAGE
HOME PROFILE RULES TEAMS CREATE TOURNEY LOGOUThttp://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonActiveMatches.aspx==========
CREATE TOURNEY PAGE
HOME PROFILE RULES TEAMS TOURNEYS LOGOUThttp://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonNewMatch.aspx==========
Hope this is helpful and constructive,
moon