AUDL Championship Game -- Leaguevine Experience

[Ben Murphy]

Hi LV Developers,

I was at the AUDL championship game on Saturday and wanted to take
stats for the game using Leaguevine. I had trouble and ended up
stopping after 3 points (you can see my efforts under my username,
o2bnited). I want to recount my experience to the developers so we
could brainstorm and/or discuss possible solutions or alternative
methods for stats entry that would alleviate the problems I had, and
discuss whether or not those are worth exploring (and/or when they
would be worth exploring) as actual functionality.


Problem 1: not enough time to figure out the lines and enter the correct players
The time between points in the AUDL is rather short--less than 60
seconds by rule--which means that if you don't recognize players from
a distance, or have somebody helping to read the list of players to
you from the field, you will not have time to enter the lines for each
team before the point starts.

Problem 2: once you're behind, it's hard to catch up
I couldn't find a way to enter actions for a point until you finish
with the lines, which meant that I missed many of the passes at the
start of the three points I did try to track. The app shows on the
screen the last event, but in cases with lots of handler movement or
repeated give and go types of passes, it was hard to figure out
whether I was caught up or not, and if I was behind, what throws I had
missed.

Problem 3: mistakes on the line/list of players (related to 1)
In points after the first, I ended up just using the same line that
I'd seen on that side of the disc for both teams, but the D lines were
different and there wasn't an easy way (that I could tell) to correct
the faulty line that I'd entered.

Problem 4: sometimes you don't want all that detail
The solution that I found myself seeking once I realized I could never
get the lines down in time, and that I'd be stuck if I didn't finish
that task correctly before the point started, was to forego tracking
touches and only mark down the significant events that the AUDL
tracks--goals, assists, turnovers, d's (and then they also track
callahans and penalties but I didn't expect to find a way to do that
easily). There doesn't seem to be a way to only mark down those events
and eschew the single pass level detail that lets you track touches.

Problem 5: single team usage is tough and overly public
Relatedly, I could see wanting to use LV for tracking stats for one
team and have the time to setup the lines for one team and have no
interest in tracking the touch level details for the opponent, for one
reason or another. As part of that task, it might be the case that a
user would want to have the stats tracked for his/her team remain more
confidential or at least be able to restrict access. I think it would
be popular to have a single team mode that by default keeps the stats
tracked private until the user chooses to release/publish them.



I think many/all of these could be resolved by having more people
helping me, but in the end, we probably don't want stat taking to
require a team of 3+ people to do correctly. I'll confess that this
was my first effort at tracking stats with the new application and the
root cause of several or all of these might be my own ignorance.
Please educate me in that case so that I can utilize LV more
effectively and go out and advocate for its use. Otherwise, I hope
that my experience proves helpful for the developer team going
forward.

Thanks,
Ben

[Chadwick Boulay]

Thanks for the great feedback.

Of course it is difficult to get all of the substitutions done in time if you aren't intimately familiar with the team or you aren't sitting next to the captain/coach listening to him or her call the lines. Doing this for two teams simultaneously is a bit much and I don't expect a single user to be able to do that. The answer to almost all of your issues is simply "don't enter that information". You don't HAVE to enter every touch. You don't HAVE to enter the other team's lineup, touches, or anything other than events that change possession or change the score. Even then, you don't have to know which player was involved in the event if you don't want to: use the "unknown" button.

When I'm tracking a game by myself yet I know I can't handle it by myself, I take my time setting up the lines correctly (even while the disc is in play) and I don't track any events until there is a score. I do this because it gives accurate assists, goals, and (hockey-style) +/-. I've commented on more specific details below.

  

Problem 3: mistakes on the line/list of players (related to 1)
In points after the first, I ended up just using the same line that
I'd seen on that side of the disc for both teams, but the D lines were
different and there wasn't an easy way (that I could tell) to correct
the faulty line that I'd entered.

You can substitute players by rotating to the roster screen (the button is available at the top right of the screen). This can be done at any time. This button might be more visible once i implement lowlighting buttons that are unavailable.

 

Problem 4: sometimes you don't want all that detail
The solution that I found myself seeking once I realized I could never
get the lines down in time, and that I'd be stuck if I didn't finish
that task correctly before the point started, was to forego tracking
touches and only mark down the significant events that the AUDL
tracks--goals, assists, turnovers, d's (and then they also track
callahans and penalties but I didn't expect to find a way to do that
easily). There doesn't seem to be a way to only mark down those events
and eschew the single pass level detail that lets you track touches.

I just wanted to comment that I think having a column for "callahan" in any situation other than "Here's a silly fact!" is pretty ridiculous. It's too rare to be informative, it speaks more about the team defense (and usually the pull) than about the individual that got the callahan (maybe a team total of callahans would be interesting), and it's really no different than any other catch block except you're lucky enough that you don't have to complete another pass. The only thing that's interesting about it from a statistics perspective is that it is a goal without an assist.

 

Problem 5: single team usage is tough and overly public
Relatedly, I could see wanting to use LV for tracking stats for one
team and have the time to setup the lines for one team and have no
interest in tracking the touch level details for the opponent, for one
reason or another. As part of that task, it might be the case that a
user would want to have the stats tracked for his/her team remain more
confidential or at least be able to restrict access. I think it would
be popular to have a single team mode that by default keeps the stats
tracked private until the user chooses to release/publish them.

You're not the only person to mention this to me when transitioning from the iphone app (single team, 100% private) to the web app (two-team, 100% public). This is sort of a business issue that I'm not fully clued-in on. I've been meaning to talk to Mark and Roger about some of the comments that I've received and some of the ideas that I've had but I've been crazy busy lately and I will continue to be for the next couple weeks. I'll try to make time this weekend.

[Ben Murphy]

Thanks Chadwick. The next time I try, I will use the unknown buttons
more--I did use them some this past weekend as I saw them sitting
there and knew I had the lines wrong. I guess I didn't realize how
much was really required and how much was not. I'm not sure if there's
an easy way to distinguish that information or not. Maybe as part of
the visual separation you mention for low lighting buttons can include
some type of required/optional distinction? I'm not a UI guru so I
don't have any constructive ideas here, sadly.

I totally agree with your comment about callahans, for the record. The
league tracks them and had us submit them this year as part of the
stats each week. I handled all the stats for the Detroit Mechanix this
season and we would just track G, A, D, T and then assume zeroes for
the penalties and such unless we were able to review the game footage
and video.


In light of your comments, I think the only feedback that I had that
is worth considering for the next round of updates would be the
privacy of a single team's data, and the ability to optionally
customize the visibility of stats that are collected. I think that
would add tremendous value to teams that are otherwise hesitant to use
LV because they want the information kept private.

I had two other comments that are more general and might be worth considering:

1) internet connectivity -- it's not quite as ubiquitous as we'd all
hope and that means using a web app isn't 100% reliable for stats; I
recognize that development for a web app is much easier than
developing stand alone apps for various platforms, so perhaps this is
a sacrifice worth making for long run adoption

2) screen real estate -- I had accessed the stat taking section of the
page from a computer and from a tablet and was using my iPhone during
the game, and the screens appeared to be exactly the same regardless
of the user's access engine of choice; I have no concept of the
difficulty here, but utilizing the larger spaces available on
non-phone devices would probably make it easier to distinguish the
optional/required issue mentioned earlier, in addition to other
potential interface upgrades


Overall, I think LV is on pace to pioneer new ground on a continual
basis for stat taking in ultimate, and the achievements that the
developers have attained so far are remarkable. Keep it up!

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[Mark Liu]

Hi Ben,

Thanks so much for your feedback in this. I couldn't agree more that Chad is doing an amazing job with this app.

Chad is the go-to guy for Ultistats but I just wanted to chime in on one aspect that relates back to our leaguevine platform and not necessarily leaguevine-ultistats. When you ask for private stats for teams, we do not have this current functionality on Leaguevine. Currently, all of the stats data is public. Because of the way Leaguevine is set up (it's basically a community wiki), making stats private brings up a boatload of permissions issues that need to be addressed first. 

For instance, if Revolver were to take stats and these stats were private so only revolver players could see them, someone else could add themselves to Revolver's roster and then see those stats right away. This would make private stats useless. Any solutions to this require some sort of ownership of a team entity, but because the permission structure is flat and it's a wiki, this becomes complicated. We want to maintain the openness of our system. 

We realize there is demand for private stats, but most likely this won't be live on Leaguevine for a while. Leaguevine-Ultistats may help with this by allowing users to take stats in offline mode so the stats are never synchronized to our servers. However, that opens up a whole new set of tasks to take care of because then Leaguevine-Ultistats would need to do all the stat calculations locally rather than pulling from Leaguevine as it currently does.

Sorry to bring the bad news about no private stats on Leaguevine for the moment. 

Thanks again for all your feedback,

Mark

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[Christian Schaffner]

Hi guys

Thank you very much for the feedback, Ben, and your answers, Chad. I
have been trying out ultistats at the Windmill Windup in Amsterdam and
have run into very similar problems as Ben. I basically needed somebody
next to me helping me with the names (and I was only trying to keep
track of one team).

For the main issue of not having enough time to enter the current
line-ups, maybe the following suggestion could help:
Instead of having to choose the line-ups beforehand, they could be build
up "on the fly". At the beginning of the point, the whole team roster is
displayed (preferably in some smart order, depending on defense or
offense, the people who have played those points in the past are listed
first, thereby guessing the D and O lines). For every action by a
player, we know for sure that this player is on the current line-up etc.
If we had actions by seven different players, we know the line-up and
stat-keeping can proceed as before. Otherwise, if not all players were
"in action" when the point is finished, the app would ask for the
"remaining players" on the field.

A variant would allow to enter the lineup while the opponent has the
disc (assuming you are tracking only one team). It would help to have
some quick(er) way to enter in the app if a player is on or off the
field, I could imagine swiping over the name either to the left for
players in or to the right for players out.

These are just some ideas I had...
Chris

[Ben Murphy]

I think I would add that in my opinion, the sorting for all
players--either in the case where you've selected 7 and are only
displaying those 7, or are selecting from a list longer than
that--should be either alphabetical or by uniform number (maybe this
is an option the user can set?), and I would find it more intuitive if
they were listed straight down instead of in a little grid. I had
trouble finding players quickly in the little grid setup, at least
partly because I was trying to do too many things at once, but also
because my brain couldn't sort through the order and layout fast
enough each time. Caveats about my brain function apply as well, of
course. :-)

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[Chadwick Boulay]

You can change the sort order in settings. Full name, first name, last
name, nickname, jersey number are all possible sort orders.
The players are ordered in rows first, like reading words across the
page, then go to the next line.

To be honest I don't use the app at all because I only play pickup or
watch my daughter. I can't make an informed opinion about usability.
Maybe some design tricks can make the important information stick out a
bit more so it becomes easier to find the players on the roster screen.

As for the previous comment, about building the on-field player list on
the fly... I really like the idea, but I don't see how that would work
on a phone with limited real estate
unless we make the player-button area scrollable. That's difficult to
do, but it also means that sometimes when you're going to tap a player
you'll accidentally scroll the screen and the tap won't be registered.
It's important to me that the stats entry screen be reliable, hence no
scrolling, but maybe having access to all of the players on the stats
entry screen is worth having a section of the screen scroll.

So let's say that section did scroll, how would it work?
Everytime you tapped a player that wasn't already in the top 7, then a
player that was previously in the top 7 (but had no events yet this
point) would get kicked out and put in their normal sort order? That
might get annoying if you kick out a player that's on the field and not
one that isn't on the field, but how would you know?
Would the roster automatically scroll to the top whenever a player
button was pressed? I guess it would have to. This might be annoying, at
least at the beginning when you have to make some swaps.
Would there be any way to add multiple players without it snapping back
to the top? After a score we could do that, to fill out the onfield
roster, or we could bring up the normal roster screen for that
portion... but there would be no way to do it during the point unless
you're entering an event.

Did you try rotating to the substitution screen mid point? You can start
a point with however many players you want, then rotate over to the
roster screen when you've realized you're missing someone. If you
already have 7, then realize you're missing someone but you don't know
who you should remove to replace them, then things become a bit more
difficult. You can have more than 7 players on the field at a time.
Maybe we can an indicator on the player buttons to show who has touched
the disc this point.
I just realized that having more than 7 gets rid of the unknown
button... maybe I should just always add one unknown button no matter
how many players are on the screen.

Any other thoughts on this?

[Ben Murphy]

I understand why you may not be using the application but it seems like it would be very difficult to determine how things would/should work if you don't use the program.

[Chadwick Boulay]

That's definitely true. When I was writing the iPhone version I was
testing it out at summer league and I had a couple friends testing it as
well. That made it easy to spot usability issues early on. Later I got
some beta testers, they helped quite a bit too. I'm sure if I were using
this web app regularly then I would have fixed a lot more things and I
would've tweaked a lot more of the UI but I simply don't have the time,
for playing or for coding. Being a father is so much fun though, at
least at this stage.

Can you tell me a little more about the use-case when you were having
trouble with the grid? Did you know the team at all or were numbers all
you could go by? If you had known that you could order by jersey number,
would that have made it OK? Were the grid buttons too small? Was it too
hard to get the important information? (e.g. when sorted by last name,
but still showing the players' names as "First Last", it is a bit
difficult to visually key in on the various last names)

[Ben Murphy]

Completely understandable, and if I was at all unclear, let me say
that I hope you put being a father in priority spots 1, 2, and 3, and
somewhere around 10 you might find something related to ultimate and
programming.

I didn't know either team well. I knew the stars on each team readily,
but otherwise I was left wishing I had brought binoculars to see the
player numbers better on either end of the field. Especially when they
are facing you from 100+ yards away, it's tough. The grid buttons were
not too small, but they were arranged in a way that made it tough to
find people easily. I think a scrollable list would have been easier
for me, personally. Knowing that I could change the sort order would
have been great, but I think I'd still have preferred them presented
in one dimension instead of two. I realize that screen real estate is
at a premium and that's probably a bigger factor than my sorting
preferences, though.