I spent the week frantically trying to get enough pieces into place that would allow me to take the stats for the Saturday game. Some features had to be scrapped for less functionality just so it would work well enough (not be a stopper). No other beta testers have come online yet, so it was just me on Saturday (in hindsight this was the better way to approach it).
First, let me say that it is one thing to come up with an idea and code it, but once you are forced to see it in action at the speed of a Lacrosse game, one can see some immediate improvements. The previous game ran over so the refs were on a fast pace to get the game started. I had anticipated having a few minutes to populate the field for the first time. Sadly I didn't get that time and was rushed to get players on the field as the game started within seconds of them taking the field. They won the faceoff which gave me time to get everyone on the field. I may have missed a ground ball, but otherwise was able to catch up. The other thing was that without knowing each players name well, I was forced to rely on other parents to help me fill out the roster. What I mean by that is that I just struggled quickly finding a number with a name which pointed out my first real bug in the system. I designed it to be number specific, so that all you needed to do was see the Jersey to tell what happened. But since I neglected to sort my list (either alphabetically or numerically) finding players was a bit of a strain.
Defect 1 - sort by jersey number.
My player list is setup on the right hand side of the screen (which is great for right handers - need to address for lefties at some point), but I had originally designed it to be a fixed width. Some of the names causes wrapping and thus made if more confusing as I couldn't see the numbers neatly lined up on the left hand side of the box.
Defect 2 - eliminate wrapping (either by truncating the name, allowing for an indent on the wrap, or something else).
Although the dragging idea is sound, the problem I had was that the entire name and jersey number were part of the draggable item. The drop point was the center of the draggable item, so players with long names had drop points to the right of where my finger tip was. I missed dragging a couple of players that way. Perhaps this needs a smaller, more reliable draggable item, such as a button with only the jersey on it.
Defect 3 - make jersey the draggable item.
During the game the app worked as expected. The one annoying thing was that on an event, the focus was to a drop down list that I had (which I had already fixed, but not deployed to the live site). Also, the text list was a little small and didn't allow a lot of room for error. This was partially due to my having so many entries for Penalties.
Defect 4 - separate penalties better, make events bigger.
It also occurred to me that I may be missing some event items. I was missing things such as interceptions and turn-overs, but that was due to the reference material I used. My son is U11 and some of those things don't show up until later in his career. But I could have easily recorded that during the game.
Feature Request - more inclusive events.
Lastly, I only had a rudimentary statistics page up, it was the last thing I did on Friday night before the game, and it was raw at best. However, it allowed me to give good stats, but since I had each position on the field as a separate entity, I had to do some adding on the fly (not an issue, but obviously something to address). So not a bug per se, but functionality to complete. One thing I did notice is that a touchable application is tough on a 39 degree day (my poor finger was all but frozen).
I did get a chance to introduce my app to a few new people. Although we lost, I noticed that the opposing team stat keeper was doing everything by hand, literally a list of who did what when and then he would have to add everything up at the end. I showed him the app and asked him if he would like to be part of the beta. He was very interested and I expect to hear from him before next week's game.
That's it for now. I'll update you as things continue to progress.
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