OGS has design issues

General Go Discussion
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I will shim in, because one of the main reasons I brought this up to begin with (albeit in a clunky and overly optimistic way) is the following:

If someone else develops and app that runs smooth, looks pretty, is childishly easy to navigate and start playing on (even for the absolute beginner of beginners) and implements features such as

  • Curated AI bots with different playstyles and strength levels.
  • An site/app official curated list of problems, with a similar progression and reward system as chess.com . Possibly for different categories of problems. I know many friends who spend majority of their play-time solving puzzles (for chess), and then play games here and there when time allows.
  • A clear indicator of how many players are online, and some way to better “chunk” players so it doesn’t dilute too much over different formats (might be difficult, but would be amazing. But it’s mostly an issue with few players available). At the very least have some way to not clutter the screen with 9 different formats AND custom games AND some semi abstract way too even see if people are online.
  • Etc, but you probably get a sense for the sort of features I consider. It’s not only design, albeit design is a large part of it.

Then I, and I believe many others, would jump ship over time. And with just some right marketing (even just one influencer giving endorsement) it could quickly grow.

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Yeah - needing a high-end device to render it was an achilles heel :laughing:

It was a slightly tangential question.

The real topic is here:

I suspect that CGS is relevant because of point 1 :

It demonstrates that the perceived risk of “the community being fragmented by the emergence of a new platform, rendering the one we love hamstrung” rather less than one might think by just asking “how hard is it to code up a new one?”.

Coding it up is barely the start of the challenge.

It’d be nice if we could take stock of what has emerged about “OGS has design issues”.

It seems to me that (this is not AI generated! :slight_smile: ) :

  • Everyone agrees there are design issues. I know that you know that he knows that everyone knows and agrees that there are. It’s no secret, it’s not a mystery, or something argued against. No-one needs to tell us :slight_smile:

  • “Point-level” design issues can be tackled by someone with appropriate knowledge and judgement making a proposal for change here in the forum.

  • Systematic improvement needs process and an end-to-end approach - a designer and empowered developers.

  • There’s an opportunity for a motivated designer to take that on proactively (voluntarily).

  • Evidence so far suggests that this isn’t going to happen. Perhaps “design just isn’t amenable to that”.

  • The “only other way” systematic UI improvement is going to happen is if anoek commissions it proactively.

  • That will either happen if/when he independently concludes it is needed OR if the community (or a proactive champion in the community) makes a persuasive argument that he should.

This particular thread has explored some of the arguments around “systematic UI should be a prioirty”, but its very messy - tangled up with “specifics of design issues that could be fixed”, “ways that volunteer design might be engaged” and other tangents.

It strikes me that a fresh start on the question “is there a persuasive argument that ‘now is the time to invest in major UI overhaul’” might be needed, to tackle that one cleanly.

The purpose of this new thread/topic would be to test the arguments or help formulate them clearly.

If anyone thinks that they already have a good argument for prioritising UI design by OGS investing in it (as opposed to offering themselves to do it) they might want to just chat direct to anoek, to find out the actual challenges that need to be overcome :slight_smile: And then you could report back what you learned about the vision and priorities for OGS :tada:

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Of course marketing is a big part of it, but I should clarify what I meant about CGS: It focused primarily on making a better platform for new players, meaning players new to the game. And my point was that this is extra difficult because new players are unlikely to find your app, even if it is the best one out there, if it’s not the first google result.

You and I know about the options and choose OGS. A new player clicks the first option in google and will be able to make an informed choice only after they have gained some experience. So even if CGS had been the best option for new players (it wasn’t), 99.99% of them never knew about it.

When it comes to existing players, the equation is different. Some marketing is still required, but you can expect your platform to grow quickly by word of mouth if it’s the highest quality option. If there was an option better than OGS out there, you and I would find out fairly quickly.

Evidence so far suggests that [a motivated designer contributing for free] isn’t going to happen. Perhaps “design just isn’t amenable to that”.

I think this is true and some points were brought up before to explain it. I thought of another one earlier. It’s speculative, but my guess is that UI/UX designers are very busy right now. There was always plenty of work for them, but especially now that software developers have become so much more productive. The demand for designers, who haven’t become significantly more productive with AI, has certainly grown.

That’s a bit of a tangent. Suffice to say that I think if OGS is serious about a UX redesign, it will probably have to be a financial investment.

It strikes me that a fresh start on the question “is there a persuasive argument that ‘now is the time to invest in major UI overhaul’” might be needed, to tackle that one cleanly.

My best argument is “to get ahead of future competitors”, supported by the fact that they are much more likely to start popping up now.

To put it more succinctly: The quality of software will start increasing quickly. The bar for existing software to retain its users will rise. UI/UX is OGS’ biggest opportunity to improve. Therefore it should be prioritized.

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On the same note, experienced players are perhaps not as zeroed in to design as this thread seems to imply. They are much more likely to care about things like:

  • how easy is it to get a game?
  • what is the culture like?
  • how easy is it to connect with teachers and learn?

I’m not saying OGS is perfect in any of these, but incumbents will naturally excel - AI does not speed this up in the same way.

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Honestly…I can’t really say that a full UI/UX overhaul is needed. There are certainly changes I would like to see made. Font sizes, accessibility, and better use of real estate on desktop. And while these issues are connected and linked, each can be tackled and taken on, along with various others that I’ve not mentioned, to create a larger feeling of positive change.

The impression I get is that some proposals with some level of detail need to be made for these changes to be considered. And one must also consider that there is an ongoing list of priorities within the Dev team that they may well be right to prioritise over what many would simply call an aesthetic choice.

However, if a full UI/UX redesign and overhaul is needed, I, nor many others, have the capacity to realistically envision what this is, and what it would look like.

Moving on to the question of competition within the Go server world…There is some level of competition already, and some would argue that any design fault that OGS has is somewhat irrelevant when compared to other issues, such as a player base that extends beyond the 2d rank. This isn’t an issue that a nice UI/UX is going to realistically solve.

There are some fundamental issues that exist in the Go world that extend beyond the scope of what OGS is realistically able to do anything about, and it’s worth noting these things, if for no other reason than to create a more detailed and fuller picture of what’s going on in the Go world.

Realistically speaking, there could be 10 good competitors to OGS, but very little, I think, would functionally change. There are arguably worse UI/UX places that people still go to play, because functionally, people just want to play, regardless of how easy or nice a platform is to use. I’m not saying this to dismiss the idea that some work does need to be done with the UI/UX, but rather, putting it in perspective, that it may not really be the most important thing for OGS to be working on.

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Can you put some reasoning behind this statement.

I know of a lot of other competing opportunities for improvement that get more attention right now.

Why is UI/UX “bigger” than the others?

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My understanding was that the team would like to give it attention, but lacks the human resources to do so. So you might be working on things that are less important but more realistic. Correct?

The reasons I think it’s the biggest opportunity to improve:

  • There is room for improvement.
  • Improvement would impact all users.
  • OGS is already very feature rich and the most important bugs were weeded out a long time ago. This means new features and bug fixes are becoming relatively less important.
  • The more features you have, the more important a coherent UI that links them all together becomes.

Again, I don’t think OGS’ UI/UX is bad by any means. Just that it’s not unlikely a future competitor does it better. When it comes to features and reliability, it would be much more difficult for a competitor to catch up to OGS. Generally, the area where competitors would have the easiest time catching up would be the area to focus on.

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While all that is likely true the question remains..

Who is going to do it? OGS head of design is currently a vacant post. While the role comes with heaps of respect I hear the pay isn’t great…

It does seem like the opportunities to make a profit in Online Go in the west are slim. GOMagic says they want to be the Chess .com of GO but there is no server to play on.

While an interface like chess .com, with puzzle scores and the lot would certainly lower the entry bar for beginners its up to the actual owner of this server to decide if its worth the investment do do this.

For all we know the owner might have other plans, like GreenAsJade postulated, he likely started this as a hobby, its likely unexpectantly grown into the full time job and he might now wonder if he still has the ambition to take it further. He might be happy with what he’s already created. Which it the premier GO server outside the far east (no small feat). Maybe he doesn’t want to take the risk of hiring an design team to fulfill the wishes of all his demanding grandchildren here.

As Jeth said. If somebody else creates a better server and interface so be it, its a free market, let competition drive enhancement, as users we stand to gain from it.

I too am partial to OGS and hope to this this place grows and excels as the premiere GO hub in the west, but a little competition doesn’t hurt.

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Just for the record: I never said anything like that. GreenAsJade is responding to me but addressing someone else it seems.

I would have personally guesstimated that a skilled and diligent fulltime dev with a modern tech stack and AI would need about 18-24 months to create a fullfledged Go Server. Looking at the development progress of that competitor project it seems that that estimate is relatively close to reality. Out of curiosity I also asked ChatGPT and got 12-18+ months as an estimate.

I agree with many many of your points but you can answer this one for yourself.

You did bring this up but to be fair you are one person in a long series of people to bring this up, see:

I just want to point out that this discussion has been going on quite some time and we just happen to currently have it in a thread you started.

This is actually not factual. There’s at least one counterexample in this very thread:

You always have at least one guy for every possible opinion on something.

GreenAsJade is making a very fair point here.

I’m pretty sure the main goal of OGS right now is to increase the player base.

So the question is “What is the most valuable activity when it comes to increasing the player base”?

And while most of us agree that the UI/UX should be improved it is hard to tell if that would be the best answer to the question. Especially so since the biggest competitors are actually worse at UI/UX while being better in other aspects. So it’s not as straightforward as some people here make it sound.

Furthermore people here are overestimating the amount of revenue that can be realistically generated from offering a Go Server. The harsh reality might be that Go just doesn’t bring in the money needed to hire a professional UI/UX designer.

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I literally quoted you. You can tell this is true by clicking the downarrow in the top right of the quote:

Screenshot 2026-04-15 at 8.35.24 am (3)
Screenshot 2026-04-15 at 8.35.24 am (3)1597×1170 129 KB

Just for the record, as you say, and also for sharing forum features more widely :slight_smile:

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So true!

In fact, the first professional that might be worth hiring could be a marketting person!

I wonder if I can allow myself an ironic quip: it appears to be the case that it’s largely designers who think that the top priority should be design :laughing: < smiley OK? :slight_smile:

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are they designers? is it the armchair variety?

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I know how quoting works I use this feature quite a lot. What I’m saying is that I never stated that “it can be done in a week”.

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Pretty sure he means me, but of course it’s not what I said either. What I said was that the OGS features that I use could be vibe coded in less than a week. It was a point to illustrate that most users, even some heavy users who visit the site many times in a day, don’t use even a fraction of the features and are really just here to play go. And that would not be hard at all to vibe code in less than a week. If such a server had excellent UX and continued working on more features afterwards, that could very quickly become a serious competitor to OGS.

Somewhat predictably people misinterpreted me thinking I meant you can vibe code all of OGS in less than a week. I thought I was clear about that but apparently not clear enough.

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It’s easy to vibe code a board. But I think you undersell that even a barebones implementation needs core gameplay UX elements to succeed, such as:

  • have games be free from cheating > requires specific detection algo’s and a moderator system
  • not having trolling and spam take over your server > requires detection and countermeasures
  • fast and accurate matchmaking > requires users and a reliable rating system

As much as I see the capabilities of vibe coding, these things block growth after the first few users, and they aren’t easily vibe coded away.

I do agree that the OGS UI can simplify and streamline in places, and expose features in a more natural way. But I also think those things can be (and are) done incrementally.

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Will marketing be a worthy pursuit if the site isn’t pretty enough in the eyes of the general public?

People who are interested in GO will search out GO. People who are potentially interested in GO, but just out of casual curiosity, won’t stick to it unless it’s instantly fun and engaging in some way. I don’t feel that OGS has this sticking point to it, neither visually or in terms of functions.

But as someone said, I am only an “armchair designer” (quite a disrespectful term. I never claimed to be an designer). I bring this up from having felt some sort of friction to the site myself (although mild), but mainly having observed friends be very confused about how and where to start, with me acting as guide and motivator. They did not have this same issue with chess. Although that could very much be cultural, I do feel there’s more to it. Especially since most people I’ve thaught have enjoyed GO far more once they pass that initial hurdle of “Huh?”, which I believe wouldn’t require a helping hand if done correctly in site/app.

Edit: I won’t claim to know exactly how to achieve this. But with over 10 years of experience as an educator, and some extensive work in visual arts in one form or another, I can tell that something is missing. And while it won’t affect the core player base much, it does affect new players and those who wish to engage very, very casually for periods of time. Marketing won’t change this.

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Sorry didnt mean to direct that at you specifically. A few people had suggested design/UX/UX was a weak point of OGS, and none of them appear to be “designers”.

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Aren’t we all the designers of our own destiny?

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This goes far beyond UI/UX though. Go is a niche hobby in the West (and, apparently, declining in the East since a while); I highly doubt website design is a major factor in that situation, especially as the largest go servers are even worse than OGS in this respect.

Still, my point isn’t that we shouldn’t care about it and I don’t deny that there’s a lot to improve on OGS.

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my teacher said :

human design is not perfect, and that perfection is reserved for a divine creator.