How intuitive is OGS for new users?

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61

I started using OGS pretty recently, and I’m not a heavy user. I had no trouble finding the menu. I did have trouble finding the correct wiki page to teach me what the review icons mean.

I find the way you arrive at a user profile page surprising, and it still catches me out, even though I know what it is. In the box that pops up after clicking the user’s name once, there are a number of things that are very, very clearly buttons. In that context, the users name looks very much like a label, not a button. After staring at the buttons for a while looking for ‘profile’, I remember that the name-text is a nee link somewhere else. I expect it to be plain text, or maybe a toggle.

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62

When I first time tried go the game itself was much more unintuitive than the website.

Most go players don’t care about features. The “play” button is the only thing that interests them. The second is playing with a friend, hence questions about the menu.

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I think the fix would be to change the user floatbox to appear on hover instead of on click. This is what Lichess does. However that has the obvious impact of not working on mobile, but that can be handled.

Also, typically a site shows it’s top used links or pages in a primary place and then hides the rest under an organized more section. I’d suggest this instead of just organizing everything.

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Most of the site has been fairly easy to navigate as a new user. The one stumbling block I’ve run across so far is trying my first tournament. Nothing in the tournament page tells you to go to your home page to access your game (in fact, every page tells you to go to the tournament lobby page). I ended up timing out of my tournament game because it wasn’t obvious to me it had started!

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Intuitive enough
The only thing for me was that the first time I logged in (barely knowing how to play the game!) I clicked Play>Normal and it would “start a challenge” so I freaked out not knowing who or how I was challenging to what :laughing:
I thought by default it would get me to play a bot or something, I don’t know…

But still I think it is the interface makes complete sense and it’s not difficult at all

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I see that this thread is quite long, so I will just say that I am in the camp of those who find OGS difficult to understand without studying the documentation, and even the documentation is not always complete or easy to use. In my case, as a user of OGS for several years, I will even state that accomplishing something new in OGS (such as downloading SGF files containing game analysis trees, or turning off the suggested numbered move patterns provided by AI review) is typically so unintuitive that I have to post on the Forum to find the answer.

You can see corroboration of my experiences right here on the Forum by the many postings and lengthy threads asking how to do simple things in OGS. I believe that if OGS were intuitive most of those postings would not exist.

Note that I’m not complaining about the bugs in OGS. I’m sure they are being tracked and prioritized, since it has been stated here that the developers are overworked. I’m only referring to how this site is seen by newcomers, that is, the design of the interface.

While some parts of OGS are superb, such as finding a game, getting a ranking, the beauty of the displayed board, the nice click sounds, and making moves with a mouse if one has sight, other parts of OGS seem awkward, such as the initial specification of the parameters for games one wishes to play (example: you can choose Fischer time control, but how to choose the three timing parameters for Fischer is a major problem). Even finding one’s profile can be a challenge, even though there are three ways to do it! And it is not at first obvious that a list of all played games with links is right there, in the profile.

And for strong newcomer players, the fact that they cannot provide an initial ranking is an unfriendly hurdle that they don’t experience with most other Go websites. Imagine a 3 dan player having to work their way up from an initial assumption of 25 kyu (I’m guessing here). Ugh, I’m imagining that would be tedious for the 3 dan, and unfair to all the opponents along the way!

Don’t get me wrong, I like OGS more than IGS or KGS, for many reasons. But being a friendly interface for playing Go for newcomers is not one of them.

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*13k :slight_smile:

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It is ironic, because as a new user (two days ago) with a son who also uses OGS (started yesterday), I gotta say: It is a mess to figure out. We have spent so much time today trying to teach each other how to use it…the blind leading the blind! Great service, an absolute hassle to use, and the reason I’m often on Pandanet instead, today.

Don’t even get me started on the app.

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Welcome to OGS. Perhaps you could explain what things you’re having difficulty with, or how they could be improved?

The app is not made by us, but by @MrAlex, by the way.

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I am very curious how you would have designed the @MrAlex app too, if you can enlighten me sometimes.
Please use then the relevant thread (or open a new one).

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The Android one is made by me, the iOS one by @HongAnhKhoa it depends which platform he’s on.

@ramatheson if you have suggestions for the app please feel free to make them. Do realize though mobile apps are really hard to implement. I am just one man and I do have to work a full time job, so obviously the app won’t be perfect. I am also not a UI/UX designer, so obviously the app could be improved there.

That being said, I have put many hundreds of hours into that app. If I were to invoice all those hours at my usual dayrate the total would be in the tens of thousands of pounds. And I am offering it all for free.

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Respect!

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Of course the app is not perfect, but it’s going in the right direction, great work!!!
[If/when I learn to code apps I’ll make sure to help out if you are interested by then]

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Sometimes when the criticism is so empty of contribution to make things better, it’s good to remind that IGS is a payed server for the Japanese audience and free only outside Japan when comparing it to OGS.
Because not everyone is aware of this.

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One thing I’m curious about as well is how intuitive the word Rating is for the Puzzles.

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I know we also have the word difficulty beside it, which should be interpreted as how tough the puzzles are in the set (although it’s clear these “Difficulties” are often not appropriate/meaningful in general). I also know that we have a bunch of stars under the word Rating which is usually an indicator of how happy you are with the puzzle/puzzle set.

However what are the chances the word “Rating” gets interpreted as “how difficult did you find the puzzle(s)” as opposed to “did you enjoy the puzzles or were there issues/things you didn’t like”? I also don’t know what the word Rating translates to in other languages on the site, and whether it would make it less/more likely to be misinterpreted.

If we compare to something like Lichess’ puzzles, the word Rating is used instead as like an ELO for both you and the puzzle you’re doing, where as they have an up/down arrow to voice your opinion of the puzzle. So I don’t think the misinterpretation is completely impossible/out of the question.
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(and also if the up/down arrow wasn’t intuitive, they have a pop up telling you to vote up or down to say whether you liked the puzzle - I can screen shot it if it comes up again)

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Ranking (Kyu/Dan targeted by the problem) would be more appropriate as rating (numerical value issued from competition, generated to put a rank or others)

Then yes if you join some “likes” it’s very ambiguous to know what is liked, if the ranking is fair, if the problem is well commented, with exhaustivity, if the problem is aesthetic, historical, surprising…

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What would be a superior word to “Rating”? Maybe “Popularity”?

Slightly related: it might be worth considering a binary thumbs-up/thumbs-down system. There’s lots of literature on the UX differences between thumbs and stars. I’m not an expert by any means, but there are a lot of benefits to thumbs that would probably apply here.

EDIT: Oh I see the Lichess example uses up/down system I was talking about, sans thumbs. I think that would be great!

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I know rating is the “right” word but it just happens to be a bit overloaded at the moment. Yeah maybe popularity/feedback/score or maybe Quality would work?

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maybe votes or reputation?

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Hey just thught id chime in. . .OGS definitly takes some figuring out. . . especially if you are new not just to OGS but Go in general. Have you considered having some help boxes on each page that jut give a brief explination of what everything means. . . which like some of the other settings can be toggled on or off in the settings menu so that once you get everything you can just switch it off. . . ? just an idea.

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