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As a web application, our project was implemented with HTML, CSS, Javascript and JQuery (and JQuery UI) on the front end. For the back end, we used the Python framework, Flask. While all the pages are written with HTML and formatted with CSS, most of it is generated on the server side with Flask and Jinja2 templating. Through the use of Flask and Jinja templating, we were easily able to make each page within our site inherit a set of properties, notably the header bar that included the BrackeTracker logo and icons. Similarly, all the tournament (active, create, and join) pages were generated on the server side with the relevant tournament information. Any of the changes on the page that were made after being loaded were dynamically updated with Javascript and Jquery, while simultaneously sending the updated information to the server in order to persist the data.
One of the design choices we made during the implementation was to only implement one type of interactive. We decided that this would be sufficient because the different tournaments are similar enough in concept that fully implementing the interface for a single tournament type would illustrate how to interact with the other tournaments types as well. While this design does not allow the user to explore every possible scenario that a fully implemented site would offer, it does allow the user to experience one course of action (for that given task) fully.
Another design choice was that we did not implement user accounts. While this does limit the amount of social interaction user would have on this site, it does not prevent the user's experience for the main tasks. While many of the possible tasks in the site are social, these are not the primary focus of the site's interface. Our implementation has a single user, and supplies enough scenarios to give that single user the experience of the three defined user types (i.e., tournament administrator, player, and administrator+player).
Describe the internals of your implementation, but keep the discussion on a high level. Discuss important design decisions you made in the implementation. Also discuss how implementation problems may have affected the usability of your interface.
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