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Frequently Asked Questions
I should probably move this somewhere else, since most of it is about
Main Application Questions
Can we add some instructions to the user interface? It's confusing.
The lack of instruction was a deliberate design decision made about 9 years ago when we found in A/B testing that college students are a lot more motivated by vague instruction and mystery than precise instruction. We've since found that people who are inclined to "play" our events are similarly motivated by weirdness and mystery: they enjoy fiddling around with things until they've worked it out experimentally.
Oddly, the group who seems to be the most perturbed by the vagueness is professionals. This may be because many of these folks spend long amounts of time trying to make things accessible and precise, and this looks like a train wreck from that perspective.
Another way to think about it: this is supposed to be a game, like Super Mario Brothers. We were very careful about designing the puzzles so that you could learn by playing. The whimsical design is meant to make it feel like trying things out will not result in a catastrophic failure anywhere, and we've found that most people figure it out very quickly without any instruction at all, despite feeling a little confused or disoriented at first.
Why can't I choose my team from a list when I log in?
We actually started this way, but we quickly learned that there were exploitable attack avenues available when any participant can join any team. One individual in 2010, having a bad day, decided to enter every answer they had, for every team in the contest, as a way of sabotaging the event. It worked: everyone's motivation to try and solve puzzles tanked, and people were angry that they'd been working on content only to find that they already had the points.
Why won't you add this helpful text to the login page?
It has been our experience that the more words we have on that page, the less likely any of them will be read. We strive now to have no instruction at all, and to design the interface in a way that it's obvious what you have to do.
Why aren't we providing a link to the scoreboard?
It's because the scoreboard looks horrible on a mobile phone: it was designed for a projector. Once we have a scoreboard that is readable on mobile, I'll add that link.
Why can't we show a list of teams to log in to?
At a previous event, we had a participant log in as other teams and solve every puzzle, because they were upset about something. This ruined the event for everyone, because it took away the challenge of scoring points.
Scoreboard Questions
Why are there no links or title on the scoreboard?
The scoreboard is supposed to be projected at events, to participants. The current scoreboard isn't something we intend participants to pull up on their mobile devices or laptops.
Think of the scoreboard as sort of like the menu screens at Burger King.
Will you change the scoreboard color scheme?
The scoreboard colors and layout were carefully chosen to be distinguishable for all forms of color blindness, and even accessible by users with total blindness using screen readers. This is why we decided to put the category name inside the bar and just deal with it being a little weird.
I'm open to suggestions, but they need to work for all users.