moth

FAQ.md

 1Frequently Asked Questions
 2=================
 3
 4I should probably move this somewhere else,
 5since most of it is about 
 6
 7Main Application Questions
 8=====================
 9
10## Can we add some instructions to the user interface? It's confusing.
11
12The lack of instruction was a deliberate design decision made about 9 years ago
13when we found in A/B testing that college students are a lot more motivated by
14vague instruction and mystery than precise instruction. We've since found that
15people who are inclined to "play" our events are similarly motivated by
16weirdness and mystery: they enjoy fiddling around with things until they've
17worked it out experimentally.
18
19Oddly, the group who seems to be the most perturbed by the vagueness is
20professionals. This may be because many of these folks spend long amounts of
21time trying to make things accessible and precise, and this looks like a train
22wreck from that perspective.
23
24Another way to think about it: this is supposed to be a game, like Super Mario
25Brothers. We were very careful about designing the puzzles so that you could
26learn by playing. The whimsical design is meant to make it feel like trying
27things out will not result in a catastrophic failure anywhere, and we've found
28that most people figure it out very quickly without any instruction at all,
29despite feeling a little confused or disoriented at first.
30
31## Why can't I choose my team from a list when I log in?
32
33We actually started this way, but we quickly learned that there were exploitable
34attack avenues available when any participant can join any team. One individual
35in 2010, having a bad day, decided to enter every answer they had, for every
36team in the contest, as a way of sabotaging the event. It worked: everyone's
37motivation to try and solve puzzles tanked, and people were angry that they'd
38been working on content only to find that they already had the points.
39
40## Why won't you add this helpful text to the login page?
41
42It has been our experience that the more words we have on that page, the less
43likely any of them will be read. We strive now to have no instruction at all,
44and to design the interface in a way that it's obvious what you have to do.
45
46## Why aren't we providing a link to the scoreboard?
47
48It's because the scoreboard looks horrible on a mobile phone:
49it was designed for a projector.
50Once we have a scoreboard that is readable on mobile,
51I'll add that link.
52
53## Why can't we show a list of teams to log in to?
54
55At a previous event,
56we had a participant log in as other teams and solve every puzzle,
57because they were upset about something.
58This ruined the event for everyone,
59because it took away the challenge of scoring points.
60
61
62Scoreboard Questions
63=================
64
65## Why are there no links or title on the scoreboard?
66
67The 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.
68
69Think of the scoreboard as sort of like the menu screens at Burger King.
70
71
72## Will you change the scoreboard color scheme?
73
74The scoreboard colors and layout were carefully chosen to be distinguishable for
75all forms of color blindness, and even accessible by users with total blindness
76using screen readers. This is why we decided to put the category name inside the
77bar and just deal with it being a little weird.
78
79I'm open to suggestions, but they need to work for all users.