Back to MetaDeck Project Home

GR2 - Designs

Scenario: Start playing a round of bridge
Steps:

1. Four users agree to play bridge. The teams are Harrison and Tuan vs Jack and David.
2. All four users sit down at a table, in clockwise order: Harrison, Jack, Tuan, David.
3. Harrison is randomly chosen to be the dealer. He sets the deck to be a standard 52-card deck and shuffles it.
4. Harrison distributes 13 cards to each player's hand.
5. After all cards have been dealt, person to left of dealer (Jack) begins bidding process.
6. Tuan calls 1 spade. David calls 2 clubs. Harrison passes. Jack passes. Tuan calls 2 spades. Everyone passes after that. The contract is 2 spades.
7. Harrison is the dummy.
8. David starts with ace of clubs.
9. Harrison lays down his hand face up for all to see. Tuan plays the 3 of clubs from the dummy's hand.
10. Jack plays the 7 of clubs.
11. Tuan trumps with the 2 of spades.
12. Tuan wins round, takes trick, and play continues.

Design A:

Storyboard

• Steps 1-3: Initialization
• Steps 4-6: Bidding
• Steps 7-11: Playing

Design Description

In this design, each individual card can be in one of several locations: it can be in a player's hand, or it can belong to the main table. If it is in someone's hand, only that person can see the value of the card, but the other players can tell that it is in the player's hand. If it is on the main table, then it has a (x,y) coordinate as well as an orientation and could be face up or face down. Each card also has a priority layer which determines which cards are on top of which other cards if multiple cards overlap. There are no stacks in this design, in the strict sense of the term. Users select cards by single clicking to select a single card, or dragging a selection box to select multiple cards. Double clicking selects all the cards touching the player's cursor. Right clicking flips the selected cards between face up and face down. To move the cards, the user simply drags a selection. If the cards are moved onto a position for potential stacking, the cards are slightly staggered so that one can tell how big the stack is.

Other features include:

• a list of sort comparators for the cards in a users hand
• expandable score display
• a shuffle button that appears in the bottom of the main table if multiple cards are selected
• simplistic chatbox used for communication and status messages(such as saying when a stack gets shuffled)
• a drag cursor that updates in realtime, showing when other players are dragging cards around
• if a user selects a card in his hand, they will poke up above the other cards, making it easier to select multiple cards before playing 
• design should allow for arbitrarily many people to join table

Usability Analysis

Learnability

• pros: affordances for highlighting selection
• cons: user must discover actions by experimentation

Efficiency

• pros: very efficient, types of clicks map to set actions (ie single click selects top, double click all)
• cons: natural constraints on actions (ie pick random card from deck)

Visibility

• pros: staggered stack, names are color coded to distinguish user specific selection user color on cards played will fade over time
• cons: user must discover some options

Errors

• pros: no need for undo - easy to fix with next action
• cons: may be hard to select certain cards

Design B

Storyboard

• Steps 1-4: Dealing
• Steps 5-6: Bidding
• Step 7: Group Select
• Scenes 8-12: Stackify

Usability Analysis

Learnability

• pros: options are made visible via circular pop up
• cons: terminology (ie. stackify)

Efficiency

• pros: dealer privileges might speed up big actions via buttons
• cons: making large stacks is tedious (lots of clicks)

Visibility

• pros:** mouse cursor changing to express object interaction** stack size numbers attached to each stack** glowing card selection
• cons: hard to tell owner of last played card

Errors

• pros:
• cons: hard to correct mispressed card for stacking

Design C

Storyboard

• Steps 5-6: Bidding
• Steps 8-12: Collecting

Usability Analysis

Learnability

• pros: very simple,
• cons: no notion of hands, actions must be discovered

Efficiency

• pros: hotkeys to select card and mode
• cons: all players must unanimously vote to approve global modes

Visibility

• pros: right click shows drop down menu of options
• cons: display of card is universal

Errors

• pros: all actions are easily undo-able
• cons: lots of selection errors but easy to undo. mode errors likely but undo-able