Life In 19x19
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Wish we had a better introductory Go website + goban applet!
http://www.lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10068		 Page 1 of 5
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Wish we had a better introductory Go website + goban applet!
Hello everyone! I'm Hayang, and I'm a college student who leads a Go club.

I worked as a web designer and front-end developer for a couple years, and when I discovered the game of Go I was surprised by the clunky, stuck-in-the-90s designs of our online community's websites and web applications. I think the game of Go could be spread much better across various contexts if we had a couple of excellently designed/developed web applications to share with anyone who was interested in learning Go. I'm sure you have thought so too.

Among the things that would be the biggest help to spreading Go include:
- A beautiful and easy-to-use website that introduces the rules of Go in an interactive way.
The interactive way to play Go is the closest thing to this as far as I know, but IWTG could benefit so much from a more attractive design. Other good resources are locked away in sites like cyberoro/wbaduk. Books are not as friendly or fun to beginners.

- A embeddable, resizable goban web applet that looks great.
Eidogo seems to be the highest-quality plugin available at the moment, and if it were just width-responsive and perhaps reskinnable, it would be flexible enough to be incredibly useful for teaching websites and online lectures. I unfortunately don't have the JS expertise to develop this javascript goban applet, but if such an applet existed, I think I could develop an amazing website to serve as a first-point-of-entry to beginners who are interested in learning about Go.

For now, I have been using Powerpoint presentations to teach club members, and they have been extremely effective in teaching the rules and basic concepts with zero confusion. I plan to release a "Club starter" suite of presentation/teaching materials in the near future on sites like L19.

Here are some screenshots:
Image Image
Image Image
At some point I'd like to turn these presentations into interactive websites.

Do you guys agree that the community could benefit from some well-designed and developed web tools?
(Developers, do you know about any current development projects in Go?)

Also, are there any developers here who are vaguely interested in developing stuff like these?
Author:  DrStraw [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
While I agree that it may not do any harm I do not think it is necessary. Go attracts a certain type of person and I am not sure how much that sort of person is attracted by that kind of stuff. Sure, it may attract some temporary passersby, but I don't think it will make a lot of different with long term adherents.

Having said that, I have to say that the kids I try to teach cannot concentrate on anything longer than two seconds if it doesn't have an exciting web interface.
Author:  lemmata [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
Hayang wrote:
Do you guys agree that the community could benefit from some well-designed and developed web tools?

Yes. :tmbup: You sure have a way of phrasing the question so that I cannot disagree. Hehe.
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
I agree that certain types of people will stick with the game and naturally have more motivation to learn!

I also would add though that a bad first learning experience can really kill the potential for a person to be interested in the game. I have had much more success teaching Go with the help of interactive presentations than without them. In the right contexts they can be very effective.

Of course, we are not out to spread Go like it is the gospel, but I think having good resources at hand can really help us to interest the people we want to reach. Like in my case, I've thought many times that it'd be nice to have a good website to guide club members through ladders, nets, and other simple concepts without making the experience feel like homework.
Author:  DrStraw [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
Hayang wrote:
Like in my case, I've thought many times that it'd be nice to have a good website to guide club members through ladders, nets, and other simple concepts without making the experience feel like homework.


I thought we did already. Those screenshots in the first post would turn me off completely. But then I don't spend my entire live glued to one of those interactive devices which most people seem to have.
Author:  Bonobo [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
I think this is a great idea!

Hayang wrote:
I agree that certain types of people will stick with the game and naturally have more motivation to learn!
Yes, but … when we look at these “certain types of people”, we can distinguish again between sub-types … and anyway:

“There are two types of people: one type distinguishes between two types of people.” (no idea who said this)


Quote:
I also would add though that a bad first learning experience can really kill the potential for a person to be interested in the game. I have had much more success teaching Go with the help of interactive presentations than without them. In the right contexts they can be very effective.
I agree. I teach Go to children and youths at the local school, and also to adults, and whatever is a nice edutaining diversion to me talking or us/them playing on the board has always been helpful (most notably doing Tsumego with EasyGo on my iPad). I think the time is over when Go only was for uptight and overly serious people. HnG showed that Go can become POPular, let’s put back the POP in Go! ;-)

Another reason why I believe that this is the right direction is the fact that more and more people are used to fast switching (others say this is attention deficit, but it may be an adequate adaptation to a changing world … chicken vs. egg), and so using all possible new kinds of media seems to be a good thing to me, using as many input channels as possible.


Quote:
Of course, we are not out to spread Go like it is the gospel
Uhm … :twisted:

Quote:
but I think having good resources at hand can really help us to interest the people we want to reach.
This. SO MUCH this!


Quote:
Like in my case, I've thought many times that it'd be nice to have a good website to guide club members through ladders, nets, and other simple concepts without making the experience feel like homework.
Multi-language, please, like The Interactive Way To Go :-)

I’d love to see whatever you’re going to come up with, I already like the images you posted.


Greetings, Tom
Author:  EdLee [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 7:00 pm ]
Post subject: 
Hi Hayang, your designs are very pretty! Thanks! :)
Author:  Boidhre [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
That green is a terrible choice of background colour. I would find that text extremely hard to read. I do agree that many of the Western UIs are very 90s, KGS looks like something I'd have messed with 10-15 years ago. I don't care personally but I've met younger people who were a bit surprised by the lack of context menus and similar.
Author:  often [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 8:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
typically people who like playing go only like playing go, haha
this might be one of those situations where the response you'll typically it get is "that -is- a great idea, you should do it!"


honestly, i think the spread of Go is mostly hampered by the difficulty of Go, how long a "real" 19x19 game would take for most beginners, and it also takes awhile before someone can really understand the "depth" of Go.
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
often wrote:
typically people who like playing go only like playing go, haha
this might be one of those situations where the response you'll typically it get is "that -is- a great idea, you should do it!"


honestly, i think the spread of Go is mostly hampered by the difficulty of Go, how long a "real" 19x19 game would take for most beginners, and it also takes awhile before someone can really understand the "depth" of Go.


That's true, and I certainly see where you're coming from, but I want to add this:

At a place like my university, the spread of Go is almost completely dependent on whether or not people are introduced to it, and whether or not people are introduced to it well. It's obvious that people either will or will not want to learn the game, but how you present it impacts how interested they become after the 10 minutes they invest into learning the basics.

If you look at it one way, Go is indeed one of the hardest games. It's amazingly complex, and to hold your own against an experienced player is almost impossible when you start out.

However, if Go is "hard", it is also "easy". The rules are easy and even the 6-year-old I babysat learned to play Go in 10 minutes, and he even watched a professional game with me and noted things like "oh, these only have one breathing space" and "that group is getting surrounded". The newcomers in our club progress to only 15k strength, but it's not like they are not enjoying Go (they are). I say this because the attitude that Go is "easy to learn and deep enough to keep you learning for centuries" is attractive to newcomers and keeps them more interested than the attitude that "Go seems easy but is really hard". It's an arbitrary distinction that the people who introduce the game can influence, and good introductions change whether new players see the game as fun and worth trying out or not. Whether they are "the kind of person who plays go" comes afterward.

...Which is why I advocate things that make the initial learning experience more accessible, intuitive, and fun.
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
Boidhre wrote:
That green is a terrible choice of background colour. I would find that text extremely hard to read. I do agree that many of the Western UIs are very 90s, KGS looks like something I'd have messed with 10-15 years ago. I don't care personally but I've met younger people who were a bit surprised by the lack of context menus and similar.


Hey Boidhre, do you think the white on light green is hard to read? I'll consider that when I revise them. The text is big and I don't use this on a projector so legibility hasn't seemed too much a problem to me, but I can see how it might be straining.
Author:  Boidhre [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
Hayang wrote:
Boidhre wrote:
That green is a terrible choice of background colour. I would find that text extremely hard to read. I do agree that many of the Western UIs are very 90s, KGS looks like something I'd have messed with 10-15 years ago. I don't care personally but I've met younger people who were a bit surprised by the lack of context menus and similar.


Hey Boidhre, do you think the white on light green is hard to read? I'll consider that when I revise them. The text is big and I don't use this on a projector so legibility hasn't seemed too much a problem to me, but I can see how it might be straining.


The white text is perfectly readable. The black text is extremely hard to read even though text that size isn't generally for me. There's insufficient contrast between the black text and the background.
Author:  Bantari [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
I agree with Dr.Straw on this.

Making things pretty is nice and good, but I rather put effort into better content and better services. There is tons of stuff out there which is extremely popular/usable but with function takes the front sit to form. For example - Google. Or, if we look for examples in design/developer realms, things like Stack-Overflow, Github, List Apart, W3Schools, just to name a few of the prominent ones. Never heard that Github's design "severely hampers" programmer productivity, or that List Apart would be read by more people if the interface was more glossy.

We have recently had a failed experiment with "pretty" - called Kaya.go - and it seems that functional trumps pretty, so this is what I would put my energies into.

Another experiment - the new panda client - will be interesting to observe. Will the pretty interface translate into upsurge of usership? I doubt it, but I was wrong before.

On the other hand, pretty looks cannot really hurt by themselves. But lack of them "severely hampering spread of Go"? This, I think, is severely not true. There are so many other things much more important than pretty looks which influence the spread of Go (or lack thereof) - I am not sure pretty even makes it on the list, and if it does it sits right-smack at the bottom.

Still, as I said, pretty cannot hurt, so if somebody has time and needs a hobby and does not think they have anything better to contribute - prettify away! But for all the good intentions, I think the original article was slightly (highly?) dabbing in sensationalism just for the sake of it. And this, in my eyes, undermined otherwise interesting message.

PS>
No offense.
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 9:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
This is 100% pixel ratio:
Image
Author:  Monadology [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 10:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
EDIT: Sorry for being grumpy.

It seems to me that someone is trying to do something productive and helpful here, I'm just a little frustrated by some of the negativity.
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 10:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
Bantari wrote:
I agree with Dr.Straw on this.

Making things pretty is nice and good....


You're right on that the title is a little sensational, and hearing what you said calls for some correction. Maybe "Well designed/developed introductory website for teaching Go, and better java applet" might be better to describe this thread.

Let me just reiterate what I'm trying to say:

I think a good introductory website - one that is both well-written, well-designed, and yes, pretty, would be useful for many people who want to teach others about the game of Go. We could probably do better than what is available, and I have some ideas that I would put into use if there was a really good responsive, embeddable goban applet available.

-----------

A side note about design, since you mentioned it and I like talking about it:
I don't think that design is about making things pretty at all, and I don't advocate just making things shiny. I'm totally with you on that! I never meant pretty, I meant well-designed.

I think all of those examples of good websites you gave are extremely well designed because their form follows their function. I think they are well-designed precisely because they do their job extremely well, with minimal fluff. Speaking of "pretty" though, they are actually very pretty websites, including Google, Stack Overflow, and A List Apart, even Github. And their aesthetics add to their attractiveness.

In the specific case of an introduction website for Go, the most important thing to design is still the content, but I think making it "pretty" is important too. Again, form follows function in good design, and I think part of the function of a website introducing Go is to retain interest in new players. A interactive tutorial that looks good while having a well-thought out teaching path will retain the interest of users (particularly young ones) more than, at worst, one that looks like our grandfathers' computers, with everything in long paragraphs of text.
Author:  goTony [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 10:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
A great idea! I think you can't go wrong with a professional looking presentation. I always recommend the Interactive Way to GO, its simplicity and teaching style are hard to beat. However modern graphics are more eye catching, and the what many people expect.

I also think well done fliers and posters can help to attract people.

Keep up the good work!
Author:  RobertJasiek [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 11:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Spread of Go severely hampered by lack of design/develop
Needless to say, information must be correct. "Whoever has more territory wins." is false. (See the go rules forum for related explanations. Hint: prisoners are not part of the territory.)
Author:  Hayang [ Fri Mar 28, 2014 11:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Wish we had a better introductory Go website + goban app
You are right, Robert. I better find a more correct way to put it.
Author:  moyoaji [ Sat Mar 29, 2014 1:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Wish we had a better introductory Go website + goban app
I like the last line of the Japanese Rules of Go introduction: These rules must be applied in a spirit of good sense and mutual trust between the players.

---

If you are wondering what Robert is referring to, here are Robert's orderly rules of go: http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/simple.html (Not to be confused with Robert's Rules of Order)

These rules are an absolute definition of the game of go. The rules don't have any holes in them where someone can create an illegal board position (assuming you allow suicide) and it contains examples of the rules being played out.

That being said, I find the document's wording difficult to understand. I don't see how the phrase "A black / white point is surrounded if no leaving path reaches empty first after black / white; an empty point is surrounded by black / white if any leaving path reaches black / white first after empty" would make sense to someone without an understanding of the game. Yet that is the definition of liberties and territory respectively. Additionally, it does not use these terms and that also seems like a glaring flaw.

In my mind any ruleset that does not include the terms "intersection," "stone," "capture," "liberty," "ko," or "territory" is limited because new players will need to understand these terms to effectively discuss the game with existing players. That's like making a ruleset for chess that doesn't use the terms "check," "checkmate," "capture," "castling," or "en passant." A ruleset without these terms can be useful in defining the game, but not so great for playing it with other people.

Your goal with this website is to create something where people can show people how to play this game with other people. You want it to look nice because people like things that look nice. Your whole purpose is too human for something so dry and heavy. Go theory and fights over rules and scoring is best left to people who want to fight over that.

If you can create something that concisely marries these two - the clarity of your presentation and the correctness of this ruleset - then you'd have something really special. But don't try to please everyone. I posted a set of rules here and what ensued was pages of debate over how "correct" the rules were. It was not productive.

RobertJasiek wrote:
Needless to say, information must be correct. "Whoever has more territory wins." is false. (See the go rules forum for related explanations. Hint: prisoners are not part of the territory.)

Actually, in his rules prisoners are. The PowerPoint he posted has this statement about capturing - "The black stone is captured and taken off the board. It is now White’s prisoner, and counts as a point of White’s territory." There is nothing wrong with defining territory this way. It works exactly the same as traditional territory scoring; the margin of victory will be identical.

If your problem is with territory scoring itself, please direct all complaints to the Nihon Ki-in (http://www.nihonkiin.or.jp/english/contact.html) and/or Kansai Ki-in (http://www.kansaikiin.jp/doujou.html). If they stop using it, so will I.
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