[novajon]

I have a suggestion for what I believe would enhance the already outstanding BBO user interface.
It regards the confirm options for bids and card play.

Current problems:

Anyone that has played a bit on BBO but is not using a confirmation option has experienced
a misclicked bid or card played.

If using confirmations, many people, myself included, find the 2 step confirmation very annoying.
I turned it off after a week long trial.

Also, software designers know that when a confirmation is required for frequently executed actions,
the confirmation becomes part of the action and is executed without consideration.

Suggested alternative:

I would like the ability to "reject" a bid or card play before the other players see what I've done.
This is the opposite of the confirmation option. Rather that confirming every bid/card play,
I reject those made by accident.

The scheme I envision would have the player click on a bid or card as now. Some change, only on
that users screen, would indicate the selection has been made. This is similar to the
confirmation option. But instead of waiting indefinitely for another click (confirmation),
the software waits a short time, perhaps 0.5 second, before posting the selection to the server.

If a pointer click occurs within the delay period, perhaps anywhere in the table window,
the selection is rejected and returned to the bidding box or hand.

I feel this "timed rejection" option would enhance play on BBO
without seriously impacting the pace of the game.

[pescetom]

I agree that the current confirmation mechanism is frustrating and self-defeating.
I do not agree that any confirmation mechanism becomes automatic in time: this depends at least partly upon the design of the mechanism.
I think that a better confirmation mechanism (such as dragging the selected bid to the table or a bidding tray) might work well.
Your alternative has a clear problem: half a second or a second will often not be enough, and more on each call will slow things down generally.

[barmar]

pescetom, on 2020-August-09, 15:15, said:

I do not agree that any confirmation mechanism becomes automatic in time: this depends at least partly upon the design of the mechanism.
I think that a better confirmation mechanism (such as dragging the selected bid to the table or a bidding tray) might work well.

The problem is that there are competing UI design issues.

If you do something frequently, it should be easy to do. Making it more complicated just to prevent mistakes will be annoying most of the time. If we did this, we'd probably get lots of requests to go back to the old way of just clicking on the card.

An example where confirmation works well is when the Claim button turns into Concede when playing against robots. This doesn't come up so often, so the extra step of having to click on the checkbox doesn't become automatic, and it catches the mistakes.

[johnu]

barmar, on 2020-August-09, 15:26, said:

The problem is that there are competing UI design issues.

If you do something frequently, it should be easy to do. Making it more complicated just to prevent mistakes will be annoying most of the time. If we did this, we'd probably get lots of requests to go back to the old way of just clicking on the card.

I don't understand why drag and drop isn't added as card and bidding option. It's simple, and you have time to see if you have grabbed the wrong bid or card before finalizing your action.

[Vampyr]

johnu, on 2020-August-09, 21:21, said:

I don't understand why drag and drop isn't added as card and bidding option. It's simple, and you have time to see if you have grabbed the wrong bid or card before finalizing your action.

Or the selected card could pop up above the other cards and you could then confirm. I am not sure whether drag and drop would work. I know that my finger would cover the whole card.

[mycroft]

Drag and drop was available in V2. I used it all the time. I really wish it would come back.

Popup exists in V3. I use it all the time.

I agree that finger covering entire card is a problem. Benefit of my extremely skinny and long fingers, I guess. There aren't many. You could use a conductive stylus, to smaller the contact patch, if it is comfortable to use a pen for a long time.

[Vampyr]

mycroft, on 2020-August-10, 09:43, said:

Drag and drop was available in V2. I used it all the time. I really wish it would come back.

Popup exists in V3. I use it all the time.

I agree that finger covering entire card is a problem. Benefit of my extremely skinny and long fingers, I guess. There aren't many. You could use a conductive stylus, to smaller the contact patch, if it is comfortable to use a pen for a long time.

That’s good to know. I will try V3. Usually I play on my iPad app.

[pescetom]

barmar, on 2020-August-09, 15:26, said:

The problem is that there are competing UI design issues.

If you do something frequently, it should be easy to do. Making it more complicated just to prevent mistakes will be annoying most of the time. If we did this, we'd probably get lots of requests to go back to the old way of just clicking on the card.

Dragging and dropping onto the bidding box (or table) is easy to do and not at all complicated - it is the graphic representation of what one does face to face.
I can't imagine why anyone should think the current method is preferable or even useful.