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Need some feedback

This is the thread that got me to join to be able to post, so I'm a newby... but I was posting on Mike Nolan's email list back in the Osborne years as 'Doug in MN' (oh please bring the glory back Scott!).

I'm an HPC analytics guy and visualizing complex information simply is a big part of the domain space, so this intrigues me.

My reactions (without looking at the guide:

1. This is a really cool way to understand the flow of a game very quickly -- would be really cool to glance through a set of these on commercial breaks from Husker games (or other less interesting games I happen to be watching on a Saturday). Pretty intuitive on the first alpha release. Great job!

2. I could care less about video links to plays. One of the reasons I hate espn these days is if want to get information you have to watch a time bound video far too often. Give me the summary. What they have is textual. I read hundred page specs and even bigger slide decks for a living. I want visual information presentations in my free time.

3. Large color blocks convey a sense of larger accomplishments - there are three challenges with your format:
a) All drives for one team move out, the other move in. On the radial presentation that means one team gets an advantage. One way to mitigate this would be to alternate the out/in presentation by quarter. Of course if the dominant team makes their moves on the in-bound quarters, it diminishes the presentation. Not perfect, but overall it probably normalizes things.
b) fast drives are 'thin' and easy to look over. Maybe that's the place to apply some animation.
c) Colors - some colors are naturally dominating to the eye...like red. Works in our favor so I don't care too much, and I don't have a solution. Just an observation. Keep colors aligned with team colors

Other comments:
* clean is better than cluttered, some comments recommended adding opponent score beside the recent score. It wasn't hard for me to look back to see the last score of the other color. Hover or click would be a way to satisfy those comments, don't make the static view cluttered.
* Forgot we had a safety against Florida in the '96 sugar bowl (funnest game I ever watched in a sports bar) and was confused by the 'running touchdown' icon on a safety. This would have been more intuitive with a referee safety symbol.
* Quarter breaks -- these break the color blocks, would be nice to find a way to make these contiguous - perhaps inverting the color scheme with the legend. Of course, if you invert the direction, this gets harder, but maybe you could extend the direction through the end of the drive.
Again, great alpha, I hope to see you make enough money on this from ESPN to reduce the number of pop up ads on Huskermax!
 

One thing I think would have helped me is if there was a way I could look at the game from my team's perspective. Not sure how to fully describe what I am saying, but this presents a summary of the entire game from a wholistic view. Is there a way that I could mute the other team stuff? I can try and think about how to clarify this later.
 
bikedoug said:
This is the thread that got me to join to be able to post, so I'm a newby... but I was posting on Mike Nolan's email list back in the Osborne years as 'Doug in MN' (oh please bring the glory back Scott!).

I'm an HPC analytics guy and visualizing complex information simply is a big part of the domain space, so this intrigues me.

My reactions (without looking at the guide:

1. This is a really cool way to understand the flow of a game very quickly -- would be really cool to glance through a set of these on commercial breaks from Husker games (or other less interesting games I happen to be watching on a Saturday). Pretty intuitive on the first alpha release. Great job!

2. I could care less about video links to plays. One of the reasons I hate espn these days is if want to get information you have to watch a time bound video far too often. Give me the summary. What they have is textual. I read hundred page specs and even bigger slide decks for a living. I want visual information presentations in my free time.

3. Large color blocks convey a sense of larger accomplishments - there are three challenges with your format:
a) All drives for one team move out, the other move in. On the radial presentation that means one team gets an advantage. One way to mitigate this would be to alternate the out/in presentation by quarter. Of course if the dominant team makes their moves on the in-bound quarters, it diminishes the presentation. Not perfect, but overall it probably normalizes things.
b) fast drives are 'thin' and easy to look over. Maybe that's the place to apply some animation.
c) Colors - some colors are naturally dominating to the eye...like red. Works in our favor so I don't care too much, and I don't have a solution. Just an observation. Keep colors aligned with team colors

Other comments:
* clean is better than cluttered, some comments recommended adding opponent score beside the recent score. It wasn't hard for me to look back to see the last score of the other color. Hover or click would be a way to satisfy those comments, don't make the static view cluttered.
* Forgot we had a safety against Florida in the '96 sugar bowl (funnest game I ever watched in a sports bar) and was confused by the 'running touchdown' icon on a safety. This would have been more intuitive with a referee safety symbol.
* Quarter breaks -- these break the color blocks, would be nice to find a way to make these contiguous - perhaps inverting the color scheme with the legend. Of course, if you invert the direction, this gets harder, but maybe you could extend the direction through the end of the drive.
Again, great alpha, I hope to see you make enough money on this from ESPN to reduce the number of pop up ads on Huskermax!
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for signing up to provide your input. A lot of interesting points and we will definitely consider them as we continue development.

It's interesting that you hit on two that garnered a lot of back and forth as these graphics were being designed. One is the direction of the drive. Whether it should stay one way throughout the game or switch at the quarters. Originally we had the drives switching directions with the quarters as they do in the real game. Ultimately, we thought it was easier to follow the drives that span quarters if we maintained the same direction for each team all the way through. You mentioned this above also. I would be interested to hear from any other posters that have a feeling on this one way or the other. I think switching drives direction by quarter is more accurate but it would necessitate breaking those drives that span quarters into two different pieces. That is the way the real game works so I could see that being more intuitive. Would love to hear opinions on that.

The defensive score was also one that had several iterations. The icons denote "scoring methods" - running, passing, kicking or defensive. Since defensive scores can be both touchdowns, 2 point conversions and safeties we thought it needed to be a generic defensive player. Finding the best silhouette for this is a bit of a challenge but we landed on a running/hitter linebacker/safety type. We are hoping it's evident he doesn't have the ball but it is a small distinction. We also hope that once people get used to the icons, it becomes second nature. So that is the rationale for what we are using but would be interested in more input on that as well and what could make it clearer given the limitations stated above.

Again, thank you so much for signing up to give your valuable input - you hit on a couple that have been in our minds as well.
 



Kwajsker said:
One thing I think would have helped me is if there was a way I could look at the game from my team's perspective. Not sure how to fully describe what I am saying, but this presents a summary of the entire game from a wholistic view. Is there a way that I could mute the other team stuff? I can try and think about how to clarify this later.
Click to expand...

Great suggestion. This is another feature we've actually been working on. Later today I will try to get back to this thread and post a link to graphics with each team isolated so you can see what that might look like.
 
keep drives going same direction Otherwise too confusing.

Use different symbols for defensive scores, fumble recoveries, intercepted pass, etc.
 
bikedoug said:
2. I could care less about video links to plays. One of the reasons I hate espn these days is if want to get information you have to watch a time bound video far too often. Give me the summary. What they have is textual. I read hundred page specs and even bigger slide decks for a living. I want visual information presentations in my free time.
Click to expand...
100% agree. Adding highlight/play video as an additional clickable option is fine, but textual information is the way I want to see the summary 100 times out of 100.

Fanalytix said:
One is the direction of the drive. Whether it should stay one way throughout the game or switch at the quarters. Originally we had the drives switching directions with the quarters as they do in the real game. Ultimately, we thought it was easier to follow the drives that span quarters if we maintained the same direction for each team all the way through. You mentioned this above also. I would be interested to hear from any other posters that have a feeling on this one way or the other. I think switching drives direction by quarter is more accurate but it would necessitate breaking those drives that span quarters into two different pieces. That is the way the real game works so I could see that being more intuitive. Would love to hear opinions on that.
Click to expand...
I much prefer the current way. The largest barrier to entry on this is going to be understanding how to interpret the graph, and switching directions like that adds complexity. If this were overlaid on a football field, that would be more realistic, but on the radial display, it's more relevant to be communicating field position than a diagram.

Fanalytix said:
The defensive score was also one that had several iterations. The icons denote "scoring methods" - running, passing, kicking or defensive. Since defensive scores can be both touchdowns, 2 point conversions and safeties we thought it needed to be a generic defensive player. Finding the best silhouette for this is a bit of a challenge but we landed on a running/hitter linebacker/safety type. We are hoping it's evident he doesn't have the ball but it is a small distinction.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't argue against having different defensive icons, but with the small circle that shows how many points were scored, I don't think it's a huge deal one way or the other. For the defensive player silhouette, he looks quite similar to the rushing touchdown guy at a glance - would be a bit easier to differentiate him visually if he's a classic middle linebacker pre-snap pose.
 
More excellent responses - thanks. Along with possibly exploring another icon for defensive scores, maybe we need to make it more obvious that it's a different type of score. What do you all think of reversing the color scheme for the defensive scores? Something like the attached. That may make the delineation clear and evident.
Defensive icons REV2.png
 




Another feature we could add in the future that might address the relative pie size determined by the direction of play for each team that we discussed above. The direction of each team's drives could be toggled so that when the user clicks on "Team A" their drives end on the outside of the graphic and when the user clicks on "Team B", their drives finish on the outside. That would give the user an accurate comparison between the two. It might be a 2.0 feature but let me know if you all think that is something we should pursue.
 
Fanalytix said:
More excellent responses - thanks. Along with possibly exploring another icon for defensive scores, maybe we need to make it more obvious that it's a different type of score. What do you all think of reversing the color scheme for the defensive scores? Something like the attached. That may make the delineation clear and evident.View attachment 53712
Click to expand...
I think that's a good possibility too.
 
Kwajsker said:
One thing I think would have helped me is if there was a way I could look at the game from my team's perspective. Not sure how to fully describe what I am saying, but this presents a summary of the entire game from a wholistic view. Is there a way that I could mute the other team stuff? I can try and think about how to clarify this later.
Click to expand...
Below is a link to the Fanalytix graphic for the Clemson Vs LSU National Championship game from earlier this year. The page has the regular game graphic with both team's drives and then two graphics with each team's drive isolated.

Clemson V LSU 2020 — Fanalytix

www.fanalytix.net www.fanalytix.net
 



I like the separate graphics showing teach team's drives.. Similar to toggling between teams, but I like being able to compare one against the other. Curious what it would look like when both teams have similar colors. Say... NU vs Wisconsin.
 
If it has not already been suggested, a suitable for framing poster of games of interest would be great. Even a poster with a complete season, or a compilation of a series of games, For instance, certain years of rival games like with Oklahoma or Colorado.
 

Fanalytix said:
More excellent responses - thanks. Along with possibly exploring another icon for defensive scores, maybe we need to make it more obvious that it's a different type of score. What do you all think of reversing the color scheme for the defensive scores? Something like the attached. That may make the delineation clear and evident.View attachment 53712
Click to expand...

In terms of graphics for a defensive and special team scores; I agree with the earlier poster on the safety, just a ref making the symbol. For a fumble, I was suggest the classic "scoop and scoot" stance, where the ball is just in front of the player, who is hunched over ready to grab it and run. For kick/punt returns for TD, I'd suggest a player positioning himself under a ball which is "falling" towards him.

Not sure how to do an interception. It would be hard to show a simple, visual difference between offensive and defensive players catching the ball.
 
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