Edit: updated version: UI update v0.2: All-in-one home page / Play page rework
There are many parts of OGS’ frontend that need improvements, from the SGF library to the settings page, but my main focus in this thread will be the home page and the Play section of the main menu. I believe an interface to play Go should be part of the home page even for unregistered users, because what is the purpose of an online Go server if not to play Go?
So I gathered all the ideas and feedback from Home page ideas megathread – thank you to everyone who contributed ideas – and made this mockup (excuse minor spacing/font/alignment inconsistencies, I’m not a pro UI designer):
I was digging around and found this post from 2022 which, to my surprise, is almost exactly what I wanted to type here:
I 100% agree with @Regenwasser. These extra settings need to be removed from automatch. What exists currently is a half-assed effort to give automatch players half of the customizability of custom games. Why are there even Fischer time options? Most beginners don’t understand what that is, it can cause confusion in the UI, and some veterans like myself don’t even enjoy it. For example, 5m + 7s Fischer feels much slower than 5m + 5x30s byo-yomi to me, even if the total game lengths are similar.
Additional changes that are needed to finish the re-design:
- Clicking “Play” in the main menu directly should redirect to the home page.
- Add a new page and link to the main menu: “Play → My Games”.
- Users’ active games, which are currently displayed on the main screen, would be located here.
- This page should also list recently finished games so users who don’t play correspondence games won’t stare at a totally blank page.
- Users who haven’t played a single game yet can be redirected to the home page or faced with some helpful text similar to a “404 Not Found” page.
- Add a new page and link to the main menu: “Play → Custom Games”.
- If possible, improve filtering and layout on this page to better separate board sizes and game speeds.
- Remove “Home” from the main menu. Clicking the OGS logo already redirects the user to the home page, as well as “Play” after the above changes.
Together, I predict these changes would improve the quality of both the automatch and custom game pools. I’m open to making a few edits to better serve correspondence players, include custom games on the same page, and graphic design improvments, but I think the layout and main menu re-organization is solidified. This will be my first and last big effort to re-design the frontend before moving on to developing my own websites. I truly hope OGS can become the best Go platform on the Internet so that I don’t need to make my own Go server in the future.
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Is this the home page for unregistered users, registered users, both, or the play page for either?
This is for a home page for all users (registered and unregistered), and clicking Play directly in the main menu redirects to this as well. lichess.org does this, for reference.
Since unregistered users won’t have a user badge in the top right, a small box prompting the visitor to “Get Started” like chess.com can go there instead.
My feedback:
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So in this redesign, the active games are removed from the homescreen and put on a second page. People who check OGS have a sense of urgency: “am I in time to play my move?”. So hiding that for all players, live and correspondence, behind an extra click makes it a less smooth experience.
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OGS has a strong correspondence player-base, and the impact for those players is now negative by adding an extra click.
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I don’t think the game-creation widget is the most important aspect, but just to point out that the option to play a bot is now gone. There are around 100.000 to 300.000 bot games per month I think so that’s worth consideration when adding extra clicks to those users.
The game-creation widget options could be an improvement. I feel you could just replace the left three buttons of the current game-creation widget with yours, without any negative to any users. I’m not sure what the benefit is of removing ongoing games, can you expand on that?
For reference: current homescreen, with on the left space for the game-creation widget.
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This is what my screen looks like:
We are on opposite ends of a spectrum, that’s why I think a middle ground is needed. But I appreciate the feedback and definitely don’t want to add an extra click unnecessarily. I’ll see if I can think of a better solution. One possible adjustment is to move the player card to the top left / top of the page on mobile screens, and if you look closely there is an “Active Games (5)” link in my mockup. Clicking there would take you to your list of ongoing games. It would only be a mild inconvenience.
I agree, a “Play Computer” button can be added back in there. The middle part of the page is relatively empty, anyway.
That’s what I think about clicking the play page.
A redesign should achieve more than just swapping inconveniences between player groups.
I think the best of both worlds solution here is to:
- show a rich “play game widget” in the center of the page: the current play page or your redesigned widget, and
- show the current Ongoing Games style homepage if you have at least one ongoing game.
Edit: This could be a quick-win, though I don’t think it reduces the need to properly think about the process, as I outlined in my other post, for a front end overhaul.
Who can say how many potential users and customers were turned away from the current user experience? The ones who stayed like you and me are a vocal minority. My goal is not to swap inconveniences, it’s for the site to be more welcoming to the general population – people who don’t know what Fischer time settings are or what handicap even means. (To be clear, I’m not against handicap stones in Go, I’m against having it as an option cluttering the UI.)
Saving clicks for automatch/live game players is a plus. Separating the custom game interface would also be a plus – it’s currently stuck at the bottom of the Play page so custom game enjoyers have to scroll all the way down every time they visit the page.
Don’t you think it’s possible that OGS has more correspondence than live players because the experience for live players needs improvement? Of course it’s possible that the experience for live players is already good and the experience for correspondence players is simply 10x better, but which is more likely, objectively speaking? If we can greatly improve the experience for non-correspondence players AND increase new player retention at the cost of mild inconvenience for existing correspondence players, I think it’s a reasonable price to pay. The proposed inconvenience(s) can be further mitigated as well.
So in what way does my proposal not suit exactly those needs?
Just having one active correspondence game is enough to replace an entire UI?
A better best-of-both-worlds solution would be a toggle under the player card and/or Settings page like what @shinuito suggested in the other thread:
As for your main concern:
Another way this can be resolved is to replace the “Active Games (5)” link under the player card in my mockup with “Pending Moves”, with the number displayed in a red badge:
I’m aesthetically in favor of minimalism. I like the current OGS home page and the original (i.e., last month) home page. I did not like the previous version that was quickly abandoned, and I do not like Shamisen’s mock-up (with all due respect).
Obviously when you say “what shall we change?” you get people who want changes, and when you say “what shall we add?” you get people who like complexity, confusion, and visual clutter. But there are all kinds of brains, and some of us really dislike visual clutter and like the simplicity of a blank screen that only gets populated when we choose what feature we want to appear. I’m speaking up on behalf of those people; I don’t know how many of us there are, but I’m not the only one.
Minimalism is at the core of my biggest proposed change, which is the Quick Match UI, removing all extraneous settings that could confuse beginners and divide the matchmaking pool. I further improved on this in multiple ways in UI update v0.2: All-in-one home page / Play page rework .
I think the almost zero amount of upvotes I got on both threads is a clear sign that I did something wrong, but it’s not easy to pinpoint or vocalize what the problem is because I’m so bad/inexperienced at graphic design and I was lazy making the draft. I don’t think the problem is lack of minimalism – I’m a proponent of that too. If you look at lichess.org and chess.com there is a lot more bloat on both their sites whether it’s links to donate or shop or advertisements.
I’d prefer if a mod closes this thread and move discussion to the v0.2 thread which I spent more effort on. The main purpose of this v0.1 thread was to hastily draw up a visual to accompany the walls of text in Home page ideas megathread , because it’s what anoek asked for. It wasn’t meant to be refined or complete in any way.
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Closed, as requested, conversation moves to the new thread.
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